Thread by @yuhi_tech

#RwOT at Yuhi we have been testing the @SpaceX #Starlink in Rwanda so that you don't have to venture into it blindly and not knowing what to expect, and here are a couple of observations we have made for the last couple of weeks of using it... 🧵

1. It took about 12 days from the day it was shipped to be delivered to us. This was a door-to-door delivery, so there was no hustle with customs or getting licenses from RURA.
2. From the packaging it seemed like the dish wasn't new, it looked like it had been used (had dust)

3. The setup is straightforward - you just need to plug in the power cable to the router, then the ethernet cable from the router to the dish (For power and data).
4. They don't use the usual connectors, so make sure not to damage them cause it'll hard finding a replacement/spare

5. If you are a business trying to use it, make sure you order the #EthernetAdaptor, that way, you will be able to feed it to your existing LAN. And this is mostly it for the hardware part. Next is functionality and performance.

6. You really need a clear view of the sky to get it to work, practically nothing between the dish and the sky. Tree leaves in the middle won't allow it to work
7. For businesses eyeing to use it, hold on just a bit, it consistently drops 10% of the packets with very high latency

8. We took it for a test in Musanze and the packet drops rate was consistent across.

9. During the rainy season we just started, it wasn't able to keep us connected and had to shift back to @liquidtelecom, so not yet stable.

10. Over the past few days, the drops seem to have improved to around 4.5% and we are expecting this to get even better in the near future.

11. There are no base stations yet in #Rwanda and it seems like the next hop from here is to Nigeria via ISL - explaining the high latency.

12. It has worked very well with streaming content that is pre-stored (Youtube, Netflix), but not yet reliable for real-time stream content.

#RwOT if you are a business and would like to know more about how this can help you significantly reduce your #Internet #cost, reach out and the team at Yuhi will be happy to assist you through it!