Mail, money, and now the big one: internet! Of all the questions I get about living on the road, “okay but how do you get internet?” is the one people ask like they’ve caught me in a lie.
So, my credentials: I work a full-time remote 9-to-5 from my van. I take video calls from dispersed campsites with zero bars of cell service. I play Path of Exile 2 online at night, in the woods, with no complaints. My internet is better than some of my coworkers’ home internet, and my office is a mountainside.
This is the full setup, what it costs, what it demands from your batteries, and the gear I wasted money on so you don’t have to.
Starlink Opened Up the Whole Country to Me
Before Starlink, I ran on a Verizon 5G unlimited plan, and it was not enough. Not because Verizon is bad, but because I have cats, and cats mean I camp in very remote places, and very remote places are where cell coverage goes to die.
Starlink changed the map for me. Suddenly the whole country was campable, not just the corners with towers. And it has been more than a work tool. I got stuck on Mt. Hood in Oregon with no phone service at all, and my Starlink is what let me call a tow truck. It saves the day more often than my cell phone does.
I even leave it on while I drive, so I have music and Google Maps on remote roads. That alone has been a small revolution for road days.
Which Starlink Should You Get? (I’d Pick the Mini Today)
I have the Starlink Roam Gen 2, flat-mounted on my roof. It works great. And if I were starting over, I’d buy the Mini instead, and I say that as someone who watches my partner Alex use his Mini every day.
- The Mini sips power. Starlink’s own spec sheet puts the Mini at 25 to 40 watts average, while the current full-size Standard dish lists 75 to 100 watts. My older Roam lives on the hungry end. In a van, where every watt comes off your battery bank, that difference is real money in solar and batteries.
- The Mini runs on native 12V. Its spec sheet lists a 12-48V DC input, so it can run straight off a van’s 12V system. My Gen 2 runs through an AC router, which means inverting battery power to household power and back. That’s wasted energy doing nothing but existing.
- Mount it on a pole, not flat. Alex has his Mini on a flag pole, so he can raise it, rotate it, and chase the gap in the trees without moving his rig. My flat roof mount means my van IS the mount, and the van doesn’t rotate. If I could redo one thing about my setup, it’s this.
How Much Clear Sky Does Starlink Need?
The dish wants a wide cone of open sky; the spec sheets list a 110-degree field of view. In practice that means your campsite choice IS your internet plan.
- You no longer need a bald site. In the early days I picked campsites with almost no tree cover. These days the network is more forgiving; some trees around the edges are fine. You just can’t park directly under the canopy.
- Since getting Starlink, I have never moved camp for signal. Not once. That used to be a regular event in my cell-only era.
- Snow is the one thing that has beaten it. One winter morning my dish went dark even with pre-heat mode on. I climbed up, wiped the snow off, and it came right back. Rain, wind, and desert heat have never knocked it out.
Can You Really Work a 9-to-5 on It?
Yes. My whole job runs on it, my team knows I live in a van, and it affects my work not at all.
- Video calls are flawless. Better than some coworkers on home fiber, which delights me every single time someone else’s screen freezes.
- In three years, it has failed me during work hours exactly once, when Starlink had an outage everywhere. I could have driven to town. I chose to wait, and it was back within the hour.
- The only other drop I’ve ever had: I was borrowing someone else’s Starlink and they drove away with it. There is no router setting for that.
What It Costs
Deep breath: I pay $175 a month for Starlink Roam and $100 a month for Verizon. It’s a lot. It’s also the thing that lets me earn a full-time salary from a mountainside, so it works out. Two ways to soften it:
- Cut the phone plan, not the Starlink. A budget carrier like Visible gets you the backup line for a fraction of what I pay Verizon, and I plan to switch.
- If you earn money from the road with your own business, even a side one, the business-use share of your internet bill is generally deductible as an ordinary and necessary business expense; the IRS covers this in Publication 334, Tax Guide for Small Business. I write off half of each bill. Your split and situation are your own, so run it by a tax professional; I am a cat mom, not an accountant.
- Roaming has never complicated the service. State lines don’t matter, and even Mexico didn’t cause a hiccup.
Example Power Requirements for Internet & Computers
Starlink is only as good as the electrical system feeding it, and this is the step people skip. A sample day, using rough estimates:
- Starlink Mini, 12 hours at roughly 30W average = 360 watt-hours
- MacBook Air, 2 hours of charging at 35W = 70 Wh
- iPhone, 1 hour of fast charging at 20W = 20 Wh
- Roof fan on medium, 6 hours at about 20W = 120 Wh
- 12V compressor fridge, running 24/7 (the compressor cycles on and off) = about 600 Wh
That’s roughly 1,170 watt-hours a day, or about 100 amp-hours from a 12V battery bank. These are estimates; heat makes the fridge work harder, fan speeds vary, and a full-size dish roughly doubles the Starlink line. The takeaway: a setup like this wants something in the neighborhood of a 200Ah lithium bank with 300 to 400 watts of solar, so a cloudy day doesn’t end your workday. Budget your watt-hours before you buy your dish.
Or you can budget your power like I do, download things you need for offline usage, and try to be in sunny spots. I only have 200W of solar. I upgraded to a 4000Wh set up. Plus I have a Bluetti DC-to-DC charger so I can charge while I drive (but I don’t drive every day). It’s still tight and I can’t use internet 12 hours a day.
Skip the Signal Booster (and Other Ways to Save)
- Signal boosters are not the move. I had a WeBoost. If I had one bar, it would “boost” me to two. The impact was so small it cost me more in fiddling time than it gave back, and they are not cheap. Starlink made it irrelevant anyway.
- Campground wifi is a game of proximity. It works near the office and fades with every site further out. Fine in a pinch at a tree-filled campground, not a plan.
- Coffee shops are fun, not infrastructure. I use them for a change of scenery, but my campsite is my office.
- The true budget path exists. No remote job, no cats, total freedom? A phone plan plus camping near towns can carry you; it carried me for a while, back when I camped in civilization more. I just learned that I love the internet and I love being nowhere, and only Starlink lets me have both.
Internet on the Road: Quick Checklist
- Buy the Mini for the lower power draw and native 12V; put it on a pole so you can chase open sky.
- Pick campsites with a view of the sky. Some trees are fine now; directly under them is not.
- Keep a cell plan as backup, on a cheap carrier. The dish will outperform it most days.
- Do the watt-hour math before you buy. A working setup is batteries and solar first, dish second.
- Skip the booster. Put that money toward the Starlink.
- Wipe the snow off in the morning. Pre-heat mode has limits, and so does everything.
Living on the road used to mean choosing between the view and the connection. It doesn’t anymore. Somewhere out there, a coworker’s suburban wifi is buffering while I take the same call from a mountainside with two cats asleep on the bed. The future is weird and I love it.
Sources
- Starlink: Mini Specifications (spec sheet, PDF)
- Starlink: Standard Specifications (spec sheet, PDF)
- Internal Revenue Service: Publication 334, Tax Guide for Small Business
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