Starlink Ireland

All three home plans come with unlimited data. What you pay extra for is a higher speed ceiling and, on Max, first place in the queue when a local cell gets busy. Starlink states that the 100 and 200 Mbps tiers are sold only in select areas, so it is entirely possible to enter your Eircode and see only Max. That is not a glitch; it usually means the satellites over your area are already well used, which is worth knowing before you decide.

You will find older Irish guides quoting €29, €49 and €69 for the same three plans, and some still quoting a single €50 plan from before the tiers existed. When we lined up the official Irish plans page, a national newspaper report from September and a comparison site’s August price table, all three agreed on €35, €55 and €75. Anything lower is either an earlier promotion or out of date. Comparison sites also list the advertised uploads as roughly 15, 20 and 30 Mbps across the three tiers, which matters more than people think if you work from home.

The €0-upfront offer that appears for some Irish addresses is genuinely useful for anyone treating Starlink as a stopgap until fibre. You are not left holding a €349 dish you no longer need when the NBI van finally arrives. The trade-off, in every market where Starlink has run this type of offer, is that the hardware stays Starlink’s and the account carries more restrictions: you typically return the kit when you cancel, and features like pausing or moving the service can be limited.

Buying makes more sense in three cases: the house is outside any realistic fibre plan, you want to reuse the dish at a holiday home or mobile home later, or you want the freedom to sell it on. Second-hand Starlink kits change hands regularly on Irish classifieds as NBI connections roll in, which is worth checking before paying full price. If you go that route, make sure the seller has removed the dish from their account, or you will not be able to activate it.

Put 100 GB in perspective before choosing the cheaper Roam plan. ComReg’s figures show the average Irish home broadband line used about 576 GB a month in the second quarter. A family that moves into a holiday home for August and streams every evening will burn through 100 GB within days. For a couple checking email and the weather forecast at weekends, it is plenty. Once the allowance runs out the dish keeps working at a very low speed, so you are never fully cut off, but video and video calls stop being practical.

Ireland does well on Starlink speed partly because demand, though growing fast, is spread across a lot of open countryside. Ookla’s later Europe-wide report, covering the first quarter of this year, found Starlink’s median across 27 European countries had climbed to about 166 Mbps, up 45% in a year, with speeds rising in 26 of the 27. The same report is the honest counterweight: Starlink beat the national fixed-broadband median on download in only 11 of those countries, while fixed lines had lower latency in every one and stronger upload in 26.

That pattern is exactly what you feel day to day. Downloads are good enough for several Netflix streams, gaming downloads and big software updates. Uploads are where satellite lags: Irish comparison sites list advertised uploads of roughly 15 to 30 Mbps depending on tier, against the symmetrical or near-symmetrical upload on most fibre packages. Latency is typically in the 25 to 60 millisecond range, which is excellent next to old geostationary satellite and perfectly fine for Teams or Zoom, but a step behind fibre for competitive online gaming.

One Ireland-specific detail stands out from Ookla’s analysis of the National Broadband Plan. In rural areas still waiting for fibre, Starlink made up about 14.3% of the fixed-broadband devices running speed tests by mid-year. In communities that got NBI fibre in 2021 and 2022, its share stayed below 2%. In plain terms: most Irish Starlink users are waiting for fibre, and most of them leave once it arrives. That should shape how you buy.

Starlink uses radio frequencies that heavy rain can weaken, and academic studies from the Nordic countries have measured throughput drops during downpours. In practice, Irish owners on forums such as boards.ie report that ordinary rain rarely causes noticeable trouble; the moments they mention are intense hail or sleet, or snow building up on a dish with its heating turned off. The far bigger weather risk in Ireland is wind. A dish on a loose pole that sways in a gale will lose lock, and a branch that bends into the dish’s view during a storm causes the same short dropouts as a permanent obstruction.

Storm Éowyn in January 2025 is the clearest local test. Eir reported more than 160,000 premises without broadband, with power cuts at exchanges as the main cause, while ESB Networks had over 725,000 homes and businesses without electricity. Ookla recorded a 62% jump in Starlink speed tests in Ireland on the storm day compared with the previous week, as people checked whether their backup was working. Starlink’s satellites were unaffected by the storm, but a dish with no power is as dead as a fibre line on the ground. Resilience comes from having power, not from the satellite alone.

By the end of July, NBI and the Department said 89% of the Intervention Area had been passed, and NBI’s late-August update put the total above 510,000 premises with more than 187,000 connected. The main infrastructure rollout is described as on track to be completed by the end of this year. Nationally, ComReg’s first-quarter data showed fibre-to-the-premises available to 85.7% of premises and gigabit-capable broadband, fibre or cable, available to 91.1%.

That leaves a shrinking but real group of homes in a bind: in the plan, not yet passed, and stuck on a weak copper line or patchy mobile signal. For them, the question is not “Starlink or fibre?” but “how do I get by until fibre?” Here is how we would think about it based on the timing your Eircode shows at nbi.ie.

For a house, Class 4 of the exempted development rules lets you put up a dish-type satellite antenna without planning permission if you stick to four conditions, as set out by councils including Cork City and South Dublin: only one such dish on or within the curtilage of the house; no more than one metre in diameter; not on, or forward of, the front wall; and not on the front roof slope or higher than the highest part of the roof. The Starlink standard dish is comfortably under a metre, and councils generally treat it as falling under the same rules as a conventional satellite dish.

Two practical traps follow from those conditions. First, if you already have a Sky or Saorview-era satellite dish on the house, adding Starlink would mean two dishes; taking the old one down is the simplest way to stay inside the exemption. Second, the obvious fix for trees, a tall pole above the roofline, can push the dish higher than the ridge and out of the exemption. A pole in the back garden that stays below ridge height, or a bracket on the rear wall or gable, is usually the safer choice. An An Bord Pleanála referral involving holiday homes in Kilkee confirmed that dishes on front walls were not exempt, which shows these rules are applied in practice.

Apartments are not covered by the house exemption, and councils say planning permission is generally required for a dish associated with an apartment. Management companies and leases usually add their own restrictions. Protected structures need extra care: Cork City Council’s guidance is that a dish following the rules can often still go in the least prominent exempt spot, but check with your council’s conservation or planning office before drilling into anything historic.

Starlink handles support through tickets in your online account and the app, not a phone line. Write one issue per ticket, put the dates and any order number in the first two lines, and attach screenshots of the app’s speed test and obstruction map. Keep copies of everything.

Irish rules give you a clear escalation path. ComReg requires broadband providers to have a complaints code of practice, to acknowledge a complaint with a reference number within two working days, and to issue a formal complaint response within 10 working days. If your provider ignores your issue, it counts as a complaint after two working days anyway. If it isn’t resolved, ComReg’s Consumer Care team can engage with the provider on your behalf, as long as you first complained to the provider within the previous 12 months. Their team works 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays.

For problems with the hardware itself, such as a faulty dish bought from a shop, your rights under Irish consumer law run against the retailer who sold it, and the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) has guidance on faulty goods and online purchases. If you paid by credit card and something promised was not delivered, your card provider may also be able to help, but act quickly as deadlines apply.

ComReg’s broadband checker and the providers’ own Eircode checkers are the fastest way to see what reaches you. If a 5G router is an option, try it on a provider’s trial or cooling-off period at the exact spot it will live: mobile signal in rural Ireland can be strong at the gable and useless in the kitchen. Storm Éowyn also showed the mobile network’s weak point, with hundreds of mast sites knocked offline as power failed and battery backup ran out.

Amazon’s Leo network is the long-term competitor to watch. Amazon said in July that it had enough satellites in orbit, then around 390, for an initial service later this year. Reports on its rollout name the US, Canada, the UK, France and Germany as the first consumer markets. If Ireland follows, it is unlikely to be soon, and there are no Irish prices to compare against. If you need broadband this winter, it is not part of the decision.