If you live in rural South Texas, you’ve probably seen the Starlink ads. A small dish, satellite internet beamed from space, no cable required. It sounds like the answer to every rural internet problem. But after serving hundreds of customers across Medina, Atascosa, and Frio counties — and hearing from dozens of people who switched from Starlink to STI — we can give you an honest, ground-level comparison. Not a marketing pitch. Just what we see every week.

The Price Difference Is Bigger Than It Looks

Starlink’s standard residential plan runs $120/month. That doesn’t include the hardware — you pay $599 upfront for the dish before your first bill arrives. South Texas Internet’s Velocity 400 plan is $65/month with no equipment purchase, no setup fee, and no contract.

Run those numbers over 12 months: STI costs $780. Starlink costs $2,039 in year one (hardware plus 12 months of service). That’s a $1,259 difference in year one alone. Even in year two and beyond — when you’ve written off the hardware — you’re still paying $660 more per year with Starlink for a service that delivers less.

For a family on a fixed income, a ranch operator watching expenses, or anyone who just moved to the area and has other startup costs, that gap is real money.

Speed: What the Ads Say vs. What Customers Get

Starlink advertises 50–200 Mbps download speeds. That range is wide for a reason — actual performance depends heavily on how many users are connected to your local satellite cell at any given moment. During peak evening hours, we’ve had customers show us Starlink speed tests running 20–40 Mbps. That’s not a fluke; it’s the nature of shared satellite capacity.

STI’s Velocity 400 plan delivers consistent 400 Mbps download and 25 Mbps upload because your connection runs to our local towers — not a satellite shared by hundreds of users in your area. That 25 Mbps upload matters more than most people realize. Video calls, cloud backups, remote work, uploading files — all of that runs on upload speed. Starlink averages 5–15 Mbps up in South Texas. That’s the number that actually limits your workday.

Reliability: South Texas Weather Is Not Satellite-Friendly

Starlink dishes are sensitive to obstructions. Trees, metal roofs, and even heavy cloud cover can degrade your signal. South Texas thunderstorms — the kind that roll in fast and hit hard from April through October — affect satellite performance in ways that ground-based fixed wireless doesn’t experience the same way.

Our Air Fiber equipment uses towers located right here in South Texas. The signal travels a few miles, not tens of thousands of miles to orbit and back. That means weather that would knock out a Starlink dish often has no effect on your STI service. One of our long-term customers, Kerry Kinsey, has been with us for over five years in an area she describes as “not signal friendly.” Her word for our service: exceptional.

Latency: The Number That Matters for Real-Time Use

Latency is the delay between when your device sends a signal and when it gets a response. Starlink’s latency typically runs 20–60ms but can spike significantly during congestion. That’s actually improved from the early days, but it’s still satellite physics — the signal is traveling to space and back.

Our network runs under 50ms consistently, and often under 30ms. For most web browsing and streaming, latency differences aren’t noticeable. But for video calls, online gaming, VoIP phone systems, and remote desktop connections, latency is everything. If your household has kids who game, adults who work remotely, or a business that runs VoIP phones, lower latency is a real quality-of-life improvement you’ll notice every single day.

The True Cost of Starlink Outages

Starlink outages aren’t common, but when they happen, your support options are limited. You submit a ticket through the app and wait for a response from a company headquartered far from South Texas. There’s no local technician to dispatch. There’s no one to call.

When something goes wrong with STI, you call (830) 429-4149. You speak to someone who lives and works in South Texas, who knows our towers and your equipment, and who can often get a tech out the same day. Christian Taylor, who switched to STI after years of satellite frustration, described the difference simply: “Now I have no speed or connection problems. A lot cheaper than Starlink.”

That’s not a coincidence. Local infrastructure, local support, local accountability.

Who Should Consider Starlink

We’ll be straight: Starlink is a legitimate option if you’re in an area with no ground-based coverage whatsoever — extremely remote ranchland, far outside our current tower footprint. If there’s no line of sight to any of our towers and no other provider can reach your address, Starlink is a reasonable choice.

But if STI covers your address, the comparison isn’t close. Faster speeds, lower latency, more reliable service, same-day local support, and roughly $600–$1,200 less per year depending on where you are in the contract cycle.

How to Check Your Address

Call us at (830) 429-4149 or check availability online. We’ll confirm whether your address falls within our coverage footprint and what speeds you can expect. Most new customers are live within one business day of confirmation.

If you’re currently on Starlink and wondering whether to switch, we’d encourage you to check. Hundreds of your neighbors already have.