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.

Starlink order confirmation email: Welcome to Starlink, the team has received your order and is preparing it for shipment, 30 days from activation to try it

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.

A Starlink dish on a flat roof in Norway, with houses, a fjord and mountains under a blue sky — The Norway setup in 2022, on the roof above the fjord.

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

Speedtest result on an iPhone over Starlink in September 2022: 224 Mbps down, 23 Mbps up, idle ping 75ms, 196ms under download and 147ms under upload, zero packet loss

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 Starlink dish on the same roof in winter, surrounded by snow, with the fjord and mountains in grey mist behind — The Gen 2 dish in a Norwegian winter, repositioning itself all day.

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.

Starlink's order page for the UAE: order residential, no contracts, 30 day trial, the Standard dish selected over the Mini, Residential Lite, total due today AED 1,545

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.