Starlink just launched in the UAE. I ordered one immediately.

Starlink went live in the UAE on March 18th. I placed my order the same day.

This isn’t my first Starlink. I ran one back in Norway in 2022, and it was solid for the time. 224 Mbps down, 23 Mbps up, which was impressive for a satellite dish sitting on a rooftop in Stavanger.

The ping was the weak spot (75ms idle, spiking to nearly 200ms under load) but for a backup connection it did the job.

The old Gen 2 dish had motors that physically moved to track satellites. In Norwegian winter, that meant the dish was constantly repositioning itself in snow and freezing temperatures. It handled it fine, but I always wondered how long those actuators would last.

The new Gen 3 Standard has no moving parts at all. SpaceX removed the motors entirely. With thousands more satellites in the constellation now, mechanical alignment is no longer necessary. The dish uses electronic beam steering with a 110 degree field of view. You set it up once using the app, and it stays put.

Which brings me to the real experiment here. That old dish survived Norwegian winters. Can the new one survive a Dubai summer? We’re talking 50°C ambient temperatures, direct sun exposure on a rooftop, and zero shade. Going from extreme cold to extreme heat with Starlink across two different hardware generations is a test I didn’t plan, but I’m glad I get to run it.

I already have 1Gbps fibre at home, so this won’t be my primary connection. It’s purely a backup and a curiosity. I want to see how far the speeds have come since 2022, whether the latency is any better with the expanded constellation, and how it holds up through a full UAE summer.

The Standard kit costs AED 1,545 upfront (they also sell a Mini for AED 1,099 but I went Standard for the better specs). No contracts, 30 day trial. Ships in one to two weeks. With the current regional conflict it might take a little longer to get it.

Will update this note once it arrives and I’ve run some tests. Genuinely curious to see the numbers compared to that 2022 speed test.