How we get Internet on the road in 2025
How to get WiFi for RVers in 2025
How do you get Internet on the road? What’s the best way to save money and is Starlink still the best answer or is there something better, faster, cheaper or what? We share how we get Internet on the road and what might work best for you.
Other places to hear the podcast
Mentioned on this episode
The Family RV Association’s Tech Connect: https://www.frva.com/techconnect-learn-more
TravlFi mobile Internet service
We spoke with Keith Larson about the Winegard remote monitoring system for RVs
We are using the Winegard 5G Gateway Router for our RV internet
The RV Mobile Internet Resource Center - how much can you get on Starlink standby
If you’re confused about solar, battery power or just want to upgrade your RV we have found the solutions from ABC Upfitters are both reliable and exceptional.
We have a podcast episode and video where you can learn more here.
Automated transcript of StressLess Camping RV podcast episode 328
Peggy
How do you get internet on the road?
Tony
What's the best way to save money and is Starlink still the best answer? Is there something better, faster or cheaper?
Peggy
Or what? Yeah.
Peggy
We share how we get internet on.
Tony
The road and have some great tips for you too. You can find this week's podcast at our home on the web at stressescamping.com where we also have deals discounts, a whole internet resource center and so much more.
Peggy
We really appreciate your likes, your shares and all that stuff. And thank you for joining us for what episode is this?
Peggy
328.
Tony
Of stressless camping. I'm Tony.
Peggy
I'm Peggy.
Tony
And we're two RV industry veterans who.
Peggy
Travel part-time in this Rockwood mini light.
Tony
Looking to share big adventures and help you with great tips, tricks and discounts and We're on the web.
Peggy
We are on the web pretty much everywhere we go. Now we are sitting in our camper right now. We're not technically camping. We are at home, but there's some construction going on in our house.
Peggy
It's very noisy in there.
Tony
Yes.
Peggy
So hopefully you can't hear that. But we are, we love sitting in the camper anyway. We've got a great view of our yard.
Tony
Yeah, the desert.
Peggy
The desert. And we are going to talk about how we get internet, whether we're at home or away.
Tony
But first let's talk about what we talk about every week and that's our friends at ABC Upfitters. Right now at our house we have another person with the same mini light, a 2506 camping in our yard with a system from ABC Upfitters and I said oh you know we have a 30 amp plug and they're like I don't need no stinkin 30 amp plug.
Peggy
Hi Steve and Kathy.
Tony
Yeah, hi Steve and Kathy. But also we were at Balloon Fiesta this week week. And there were so many RVs around us running generators. It was, it smelled bad.
Tony
It was noisy. It was kind of a little bit not so great.
Peggy
You know, we've had other groups that we do big rallies that have embraced the quiet off-grid camping, and we're hoping that Balloon Fiesta will begin to do the same so that there's a, you know, it's all off-grid but if there could be a section where it's all solar so we don't have any generators around us. Then we'll go back.
Tony
And Patrick and Wendy were there too and they had their system from ABC Upfitters.
Peggy
That's right.
Tony
So lots of ABC Upfitter systems at Balloon Fiesta. Now we just need to get us all together. Right. But what we all shared was that we were off-grid camping.
Tony
We were there for a good number of days. Some are staying the whole event, some not. And we were quiet, enjoying full power of the sun, and gosh, we ran our air conditioner just about every day. So it was terrific. If you want a system that's reliable and quiet and just serves you well, our friends at ABC Upfitters can help you with our quality Master Volt systems that just work together and just work.
Tony
How do I find those guys?
Peggy
Well, let's see. You could try calling 574-333-3225.
Tony
That'S 574-333-3225. 3225 or if you're here at stress to scamping.com, there's a link below and you can see interviews and look at our system and all of that. So whatever it is, if you're looking for a high quality, reliable system that just works, the answer is ABC Upfitters.
Peggy
It is. So what's the answer for internet?
Tony
It depends. Don't you love that?
Peggy
I love that answer.
Tony
Yeah. Well, first of all, not everyone's internet needs are the same.
Tony
This is very true. I mean, some people Well first of all, I'm going to address something. A lot of people go, why do you need internet? You're going camping. And I know some people whose jobs are such that if they have a problem at work, they can address it maybe from an email or something like that and once they're past that, they're just good to go.
Tony
So having some access to the internet is important enough that if they didn't have it, they couldn't get away.
Peggy
Right. And for those of you who go to get away, to be away from the internet, fine. Skip this week.
Tony
No, don't do that.
Peggy
Come back next week for sure. Well, if they don't need internet, they're not going to be that interested.
Tony
Well, I think a lot of people do.
Peggy
And even if, I'm sorry. And even if you don't need to work and you don't need to be connected, it's kind of, it's a little disconcerting nowadays to be somewhere where you just have absolutely no connectivity.
Peggy
Even if you're just there to disconnect because you know what if there's an emergency or something?
Tony
Yeah, that's the thing. So some people like us, we're uploading videos and audio, we're managing our website. Like we need to be very connected with pretty decent quality service pretty much all the time, which is you know, it is what it is. That's the life we've chosen.
Tony
Some people just might need to address an email or whatever, maybe post pictures of your campsite on Facebook, whatever it happens to be and your needs are pretty small. And some people might want to watch videos like the Stress Less Camping Podcast YouTube channel.
Peggy
If you're camping on a Thursday, you're gonna need that access.
Tony
But the first thing I would do is figure out, okay, how much content or how much internet do you need? And you can measure the amount of data that you need and how fast it has to be, right?
Tony
If it's email, it doesn't really have to be all that fast. If it's watching videos, yeah, you're gonna need more speed and more capability. So I guess step one, figure out what you need. And that's kind of the same thing with the solar system, right? It's like figure out what you want to do.
Peggy
When people ask about portable power, well, which one do I need? Well, what are you gonna use it for?
Tony
Right? So we've tried all kinds of different gadgets and that's what we'll kind of share is our experience with those gadgets and what we're using now to come to you from this trailer. So the first thing I want to share is there's a lot of noise about this company, TravelFi, and we got this little Journey Go hotspot and tried it out for a couple of months, whatever it was, for a good while.
Tony
The selling point of this is that it can theoretically go on AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile networks. I did not find that to be the case with this. It did go on T-Mobile sometimes on was it 18? It seemed to go between two, but mostly stuck with T-Mobile. And the speeds were slow.
Tony
They were now if you're doing video streaming, they may have been fast enough. So this might be TravelFi. I shouldn't say this because a lot of you are listening and not watching. This is a TravelFi JourneyGo mobile Wi-Fi hotspot. So it's like a little puck for lack of a better description that uses cell connectivity to get you internet.
Peggy
We would show it to you but we've hidden it in a drawer somewhere. We don't know where we put it.
Tony
Yeah, I lost it. But I have the box. And it looks like if you're watching this, it looks like the picture on the top of the box.
Peggy
It's about the same size. Well, a little bit bigger, maybe. Yeah. Anyway, four or five inches.
Tony
The good thing about this service is that you can travel by service is that you can turn it on and off.
Tony
It's not that expensive, but until you start getting into the unlimited plans. So the plans on this are. There are 5G plans that are $129 for unlimited and $159 for premium unlimited and there are 4G plans that start at $19 a month. So you can do, you know, if you don't need much internet and you want to be able to shut it off and turn it on, it might be a good solution. I wasn't that impressed with it, but again, consider that we use the heck out of the internet.
Tony
If I were just doing email, well, let's back up. You could just use your stinking phone.
Peggy
Right.
Tony
I mean, that's the so we have the way we do things is we have an AT&T phone, a Verizon phone, and then a T-Mobile hotspot type device. So in theory, if there is a cell signal wherever we are, we've got access to that.
Tony
Right. My Verizon plan, that's my phone is Verizon. My Verizon plan says it's unlimited and all of those unlimited plans seem to be unlimited until they're not. Right. And they say, oh, you get this much premium data until, you know, the end, and then we slow you down if the network traffic is heavy.
Tony
The network, it always happens.
Peggy
Right. Right.
Tony
So the phone, when it's fast, when my Verizon phone is fast, it is ooh la la. I have seen up to 1200 megabits down, which absolutely blew my mind.
Tony
I mean, I was like, holy smokes, this is like having a, so what is it? Fiber optic cable to my phone.
Peggy
Yeah.
Tony
So it was impressive. Usually it's still even when it's not like, oh my gosh, impressive.
Tony
Usually when it's decently impressive, it's still like 200 to 300 megabits down, which I think is impressive. Same thing with Peggy's phone. Peggy's phone is the AT&T phone. Not as fast, but it seems to be pretty good in most places we go camping. Except of course there are times when there's no cell signal at all.
Tony
Or it's pretty weak. And then we've had experience with cell phone boosters but not great experience with them. Some travel trailers do have or some RVs do have Wi-Fi antenna on the roof and we'll get into that.
Peggy
Hold on, hold on. If you're yelling, is the one on the roof?
Peggy
Just give me a minute.
Tony
But there are also external amplifiers that will, if there is a cell signal available, they will grab that and boost it inside the RV. And we have had that.
Peggy
Yeah.
Tony
And we didn't like it.
Tony
It did. Ours did not work for beans, but I've heard that, you know, this was years ago and things keep getting better.
Peggy
Yeah. I think kind of one of our first solutions was just to get that external cell phone booster. And boost whatever cell we had.
Peggy
Right. And then there were places we went where we didn't. Well, way back when we only had AT&T cell phones.
Tony
Yeah, that's true.
Peggy
Right.
Peggy
And so that's why we kind of branched out and Tony got on the Verizon cell phone service and we got the hot spot on the T-Mobile cell phone service. So we weren't relying on one cell service. We were, we had all those different cells to rely on. Right.
Tony
So then, so.
Tony
That's we talked, I think, about TravelFi and like I say the pluses are you can turn it on and off, you can buy data as you need, you can pick plans. But I was not super impressed with the connectivity. It was not very fast and I know they also offer better devices. So this was the TravelFi device that we have is their least expensive device. And as with any radio, which is what all this basically is, the better the antenna, the better the connectivity.
Tony
So the fact that it's just a teeny little puck with the antenna inside the puck is not going to be that great, which is also true of your cell phone.
Peggy
Yeah. Right.
Tony
Your cell phone is a device with a tiny little antenna in it and.
Peggy
Buried somewhere in all those other things.
Tony
Right.
Peggy
And all that.
Tony
Tech. So then we decided to try this, which is the frva, formerly FMCA Tech Connect product. This is the one we chose is a T-Mobile based product that is unlimited and it's 60 bucks a month.
Tony
And I forgot, I think it's 35 for the device, if I'm not mistaken. You can turn it down, but not necessarily off for periods of time.
Peggy
We'll put a link down, meaning less data per month.
Tony
You can turn it down like park it, sort of kind of.
Peggy
So it doesn't work, but it doesn't shut off.
Tony
Yeah, I believe that's the case. This device had actually done the, I'm sorry, the T-Mobile hotspot, which is what this is from FRVA or FMCA, if you know, you can't change like I can actually worked pretty darn well. In fact, we bought this at Perry, Georgia, the T-Mobile from frva. We bought it at their convention in Perry, Georgia, and in March of this year.
Peggy
Yeah.
Tony
And parked our starlink, like, just turned it off.
Peggy
Yeah.
Tony
Until we got to Indiana, at which point we had basically no connectivity from the T-Mobile device. And so then I lit up Starlink again. Well, I realized that, oh, then we got to Pennsylvania with Bill, who also has this T-Mobile device.
Peggy
Yep.
Tony
And he was like, what do you mean it's not working? It's working great.
Peggy
It's working great. And ours was not.
Tony
So I reached out to FRVA and they're like, oh, yeah. And they flipped some switch and it was back.
Peggy
Great again, which we maybe could have done in Indiana and not put the starlink up. But we didn't think to check then because we just figured, oh, well, in this place, that cell signal isn't very strong because, you know, that's gonna happen.
Tony
Oh, yeah.
Peggy
All over the place. Well, and part of the problem with, you know, like, okay, fine, we'll just use starlink. Well, when we were in Pennsylvania, we were camped among many, many, many trees, and we couldn't find a starlink pathway. Whatever we. The starlink antenna couldn't find starlink.
Peggy
And so we couldn't get Starlink and we couldn't get that. And so we were a little concerned because we were there for quite some time and we can't be disconnected for that long.
Tony
So the funny thing is, after Bill said, what do you mean, mine is working great? I reached out to FRVA and they reset something and then the T-Mobile Hotspot was fantastic. That's how we did all of our Pennsylvania stuff is with the T-Mobile Hotspot.
Tony
This is the frva's plan is 60 bucks a month. And if you're a member of frva, they also have some Associated T-Mobile phone plans for your mobile phone that are incredible in price. So this is a, I thought this was T-Mobile from frva was a very good solution and worked very, very well. And until that little glitch, it was was not an issue and the performance was incredible.
Peggy
But in the future, if that starts to have a problem, we'll verify that it's actually no signal and not that something needs to get reset.
Peggy
Right.
Tony
But I was amazed that my opinion of T-Mobile when we got this and hadn't used it is that it's going to be okay in places but not that great. This T-Mobile device and especially what if you're not... Well, we'll have an article about this with pictures of these devices. But this, it's like a candy bar.
Tony
It looks like a kind of a computer candy bar.
Peggy
It's a cell phone size.
Tony
Yeah, it's like a cell phone size. I figured, oh, it's not going to be that great. Now, the advantage of this T-Mobile device is that it's 12 volt and it has a battery.
Tony
So you can run it, you know, you charge it with your car's power port. Some of you call that a cigarette lighter. I understand that. But you can charge this with your car's power port. It has a battery, and it lasts, I don't know, about a day or any USB.
Tony
Yeah, any USB. I mean, you could charge this with a portable power station, whatever. So that's an advantage, right? You don't have to have Shore power. To make this little T-Mobile device work.
Tony
And so I do like that. So performance was good, price 60 bucks a month. I thought that was fair for un, truly unlimited. I mean, it, there's not those data caps, like on some plans, and frva is a legitimate, some of these companies are questionable how they're getting the internet in terms of their contract with the cell phone carriers. FRVA is a legitimate company dealing with T-Mobile so I have zero complaints about the FRVA's T-Mobile system.
Tony
Yet we still switched because I'm a nerd and we're here for you.
Peggy
That's right. We're doing this all for you.
Tony
Yeah, legitimately.
Peggy
Well, we are.
Tony
So our trailer, like many, many, many newer RVs, comes with what looks like a dog dish upside down on the roof from Winegard. And there are various models of this. And the reason RV companies put these up there is they have TV antenna, but they also have a Wi-Fi antenna and they have cell phone antennas. So, yeah, it's all under this. Black dome that's up on the roof.
Tony
Well, I think they have white ones too. So anyway, it's under this dog dish on the roof. And you might go, ooh, well, what's that? Well, if you don't upgrade anything, it's basically just TV antenna, right? That's all you have access to.
Tony
However, Winegard, the company that makes this, and I believe they're, I think King makes a similar system. But Winegard offers an internal device that uses these antenna to take advantage of them. So for example, you could buy, there are 4G and 5G versions of this internal gateway router is what they call it. The 4G, the router itself is $350, at least it was last I checked. The 5G is $799.
Tony
Which is like, wow, that's not cheap. And I had been hesitant about, you know, there's the nerd in me who's like, I've got all these antennas on the roof. I should be able to use them. And then there's the, what, for 800 bucks? Are you kidding?
Peggy
Now let me ask you to stop for just a second. You probably already said the amount that It cost to buy the FRVA thing was...
Tony
I think it's $35 is your initial.
Peggy
Initial.
Tony
We will put a link to their Tech Connect website.
Peggy
And then we talked a little bit about Starlink and that initial... Well, wait, wait, wait.
Tony
We're getting the Starlink.
Peggy
But I just, I want to make sure that we at some point give a price comparison.
Tony
We will.
Peggy
Okay.
Tony
We'll even make a chart.
Peggy
He did all the notes for this one.
Tony
I made a chart. There'll be one in the show notes.
Tony
I basically talked to Winegard and I'm like, look, can I try one of these just to see what it's like? So I did get one of their 5G routers to put in the RV. So the way you put this thing in, it's permanently mounted to the roof or ceiling rather of your RV and it's essentially on the underside of those antenna. And there is a series of wires that come down from that antenna. You hook it to the router and you also have to hook it to 12 volt power.
Tony
But like in our Rockwood, they just have the wires right there. I mean, it's already ready to just plug right in. Well, you wire them right on. Push in the antenna pin and then screw this thing to the roof and you're bing, bang, boom. You're good to go.
Tony
I will say a few weeks ago, put a link to that in the show notes, too. We talked to Winegard about their sensors system. So they have like motion sensors, water sensors, temperature sensors, all this stuff. That also works with the 5G gateway and I believe the 4G gateway. So that's another feature that you can take advantage of if you choose to upgrade the gateway inside your RV.
Peggy
If you don't know whether you have this, you don't, you haven't looked on your roof to see if there's an upside down dog bowl, look on your ceiling and somewhere on your ceiling is probably just like a flat cover. Yeah. That says Winegard or says something on it. And it doesn't really make any sense. No air comes out of it.
Peggy
No light comes out of it. You're like, why is there this flat panel on the ceiling? Yeah, that's probably it. Yeah.
Tony
And I think it has a QR code, too.
Peggy
Okay.
Tony
To buy the device.
Peggy
We don't know where we put ours after we replaced it, so we can't show you.
Tony
But we do have a picture, so.
Peggy
Yeah, we do have a picture.
Tony
We'll show you the COVID So anyway, so we install this. Winegard also has various cell plans. We chose the 99 a month unlimited plan. Now, here's what I love about this system, and it's the system that we have chosen to use now. Yeah, it our plan.
Tony
You could get various plans. Ours uses T-Mobile again. Ours is a 5G Gateway. That Gateway is always wired in because it's in part of the 12 volt system in your RV. So you don't have to recharge it, you don't have to plug it in, it's just up there and working.
Tony
Then you sign up for one of their cell phone plans. Like I said, I thought, I'll try the $99 unlimited. And it's been fantastic. It has had the best speeds of any of the cell phone based systems. So TravelFi, FRVA, and this Winegard router, it has had the best speeds and that makes sense because the doggone antenna is up on the roof, right?
Peggy
So the signal is not trying to get through the walls of the RV or the framework of the RV really.
Tony
And you figure how little the antenna is in your phone or this, any of these portable 5G, any of these portable cell phone devices, it's a teeny little antenna. The Winegard one is up there are two, up on the roof and they're they don't have to care how big they are so they're great antenna. They are not boosted so don't let someone tell you they are amplified antenna they're just antenna antenna.
Peggy
Okay.
Tony
However optimal placement of the antenna up on the roof exposed great large antenna blah blah blah so that system works well. I think the barrier to this is it's 800 bucks for the 5G Gateway, and that is not inexpensive.
Peggy
Right. And. But if you are looking for a solution because you have to be connected, maybe I'm gonna venture to say the next kind of most universally available signal is Starlink.
Peggy
Right. And that is also an initial expense, and it also. Doesn't run on 12 volt. Well, no, the new ones do. Our version does not run on 12 volt.
Peggy
So we also have to have our inverter on if we're going to use Starlink.
Tony
And for ours, which is the old Gen 2, I believe, antenna, it's a pig with power. I mean, no doubt about it. It just. It loves power.
Tony
The newer ones, like, especially the smaller dish, doesn't have to move, so there's less complication. It can run on 12 volt power. It has definite advantages. Advantages. Apparently it's not as good as the larger dishes, which makes sense.
Tony
Again, back to the better the antenna. What we found is that if there are a lot of trees or that kind of thing, Starlink really goes to heck. So it depends on where you camp and what you need. Something we do, our Starlink dish is we don't mount it permanently to anything. So some people are like, oh, I'm gonna put it on the roof of my RV.
Tony
Well, if your RV is parked under trees, then you're kind of simply out of luck, right? So we put ours just, we have a long cable and ran a hole in the baggage door so I can take the dish and put it way out at the edge of the campsite or, or up on a flagpole. We have an article about how we did that. So I recommend not permanently mounting the Starlink dish. And I know people go, well, what if somebody steals it or what if somebody runs it over.
Tony
That's a legitimate concern.
Peggy
Yeah.
Tony
But the Starlink dish is tied to your account. So if somebody steals it, they've got nothing.
Peggy
Yeah, they've got a big plate that they can't do anything with.
Tony
Pretty much. So I don't. I mean, of course, people do all kinds of goofy stuff, and sure, I'm sure they steal them, but I don't think that's as big a concern as people think, and I'm sure there's a way to lock it up. I'm not too worried about it. We've had it for years.
Tony
As I said, now ours is parked because this 5G T-Mobile system on the roof of our trailer has been fantastic. Since we installed it, I have zero complaints about that system. And again, good antenna. It's always hot because it's running off the trailer's power. It does not seem to use very much power.
Tony
I can use it to monitor the temperature and the RV and water sensors and all these other sensors. From Winegard.
Peggy
Yeah, so that's the thing with who cares if it's always hot? Well, if we're going to use these Winegard sensors effectively, we want to be able to know, we don't want to be just sitting here knowing if a water sensor is going off or whatever. Like that's the whole point of the kind of security ones, right?
Peggy
There's like a, if a door opens, you get an alert. Well, if you're sitting in the camper, you're going to know that the door opened anyway. And so, Having the Wi-Fi always on is going to make those sensors always usable.
Tony
Yeah, yeah. So that's an advantage.
Tony
So you could use it to monitor the temperature in the RV, like if you have a pet. So that's an advantage of that Winegard system.
Peggy
Yeah, even if you don't use the Winegard sensors, right? Like right now we always have internet access in the camper no matter where the camper is. So if we had previously had a waggle or something, we'd have the Wi-Fi that the waggle needs to transmit alerts to our phone wherever we are.
Peggy
So, yeah, it's like having Wi-Fi always in the camper, even if we're not in it, is a good thing.
Tony
Yeah, absolutely. And. And I'm pleased with the performance. What I will say, I've seen more than a few bad reviews of that Wine Guard system, and I will say that it is fiddly to set up.
Tony
From the software, the sensors, the. The software of the router itself. It's not very intuitive. And I could see if you're not techie, that setting up the software, you know, like getting the account set up and all that for that 5G Gateway is not very intuitive.
Peggy
Right.
Tony
In fact, I actually had to call tech support, and I'm like, what the. What in the wide, wide world of sports is this? And so yeah, I could see some people are like, no, it doesn't work right. And it's just, it's fiddly. But once it's, I mean, once you get it dialed in, which only takes, you know, you do it one time and you're done.
Tony
It's great. And their tech support people are great. And the quality of the product, I think, is good as it should be for 800 stinking dollars.
Peggy
Did you mention how much it costs?
Tony
It's 800 stinking dollars.
Tony
But again, once you have it, you have it. Yeah, right? Yeah, you bought it. Well, and then there's the $100 a month. Well, there are various plans that they have.
Tony
So you pick based on what you need. Another thing that having that gateway router does is if you're in a campground, it can then take a Wi-Fi signal and broadcast it inside your RV and it has a measure of security built in as well. However, Campground Wi-Fi is generally horrible.
Peggy
Yeah.
Tony
But it is, you know, if you're in a campground with great Wi-Fi, you can now take advantage of that with some measure of security as well.
Tony
So there's that. Okay, let's talk about Starlink.
Peggy
Okay, let's.
Tony
Starlink is probably the best is Starlink is, was the most game-changing way for mobile people like internet, like RVers to get on the internet, right? It doesn't care where it is.
Tony
You just take the satellite dish that you get that they call dishy, point it to the sky, fire it up, and it finds connectivity. And I know so many people who are in these remote weird places where they're like, I can get great connectivity here. And that has been literally game changing. Starlink, you know, you have to buy the dish, and there's dishes, they have sales on these. You can buy used dishes, all of that.
Tony
So you have to buy the, the device, then you have to buy the service, and the service. Right now. This is something that's frustrating about starlink. They like to change their minds, I think, based on how good the bananas were in the coffee shop that morning. I don't know what it is.
Peggy
No, no logical reasons.
Tony
It's like we're gonna change our minds. The unlimited plan is 165 bucks a month at this very moment. That will probably change.
Peggy
They.
Peggy
By the time you hear this, right?
Tony
They have Now, it used to be you could turn off your account on Starlink and just pay nothing until you needed to turn it back on again, which I thought was neat. Now, it's depending on who you are and where you are and the bananas in the coffee shop, there are where it's $5 a month to have your account off, zero and $10. How, what are you gonna get?
Peggy
Who knows?
Peggy
Who knows?
Tony
It's Starlink. They're, yeah, I wouldn't want them to be planning my financial future because it's like, Ooh, we changed our, it's, they have squirrel syndrome, right? Squirrel. So right now, for the most people, I think it's 10 bucks a month to have your Starlink dish turned off to maintain your account.
Tony
Apparently, Chris and Cherie from the Mobile Internet Resource Center have said that ten dollars a month, you do get slow data speeds and you can buy more fast data speed should you need it. And they have a great video will link on what you can accomplish at that slow data speed. And it's really not bad.
Peggy
Oh, so if you just want to check your email and you're paying five, ten dollars a month to start a link, it might be okay.
Tony
Might be all you need.
Peggy
Okay.
Tony
Of course the challenge with Starlink is that if there are obstructions like trees, it can be reduced performance or zero performance.
Peggy
And also clouds, is that right?
Tony
Yes, on a really lousy day we've had where it was like, yeah, no, you're not getting any internet buddy. That's the challenge of those line of sight And the way Starlink works is kind of neat.
Tony
They have those constellations of satellites that fly over and so it's a pretty neat system. It is not an inexpensive system. Now one way that a lot of people are saving money with Starlink is they have the mobile plan which is right now 165 bucks or there's the residential plan. You can use the residential plan if you tolerate changing your address every time you move your RV.
Peggy
And that's less expensive?
Tony
Oh yeah, it's, I forgot how much it will put it in the show notes.
Peggy
So real quick aside, but you might already have it again, I don't know what's in your notes. When we first moved to this house, our internet access to the house was a mobile based system that was terrible. We couldn't get internet at our own house and so we'd come home and put the Starlink up So if you're in a place where you can't get any kind of other option at home, Starlink just being at home and being that kind of non-mobile version might be for all of you out there who aren't RVers, I don't know why you're watching, but if that's your, if that's you, there's still that answer.
Tony
Yeah.
Tony
Oh, and then there's the 50 gigabyte plan, which is 50 bucks a month, and you can add more data as needed. And that might be you know, again, knowing what you need and that might be the way to find out, right? You sign up for the 50 gig a month plan and if you're like, oh, I spent all of it.
Peggy
-You run out in a week?
Tony
-Yeah.
Tony
Which would be us.
Peggy
-Yeah.
Tony
-Then you know and the good one of the really good things about Starlink is you can move things around, you can change plans. You know, if the breeze blows, you can change your plan. And you can game it such that.
Peggy
Or they can change your plan.
Tony
But you can game it like, okay, I know at the I'm gonna this month need a whole lot of data. So you wait till like a week before the end of the month and then you sign up for the unlimited data plan. Well, then you only pay that prorated amount for the end of the month. And now you've saved a bunch of money and still gotten all the internet you want.
Tony
So there are ways of gaming Starlink too.
Peggy
So you. But it's a full-time job.
Tony
Well, no, I mean, there's some people, they put value in this kind of.
Peggy
Yeah.
Tony
Having fun with stuff. So, anyway, so that's the deal. Like I say, at the moment, we're using our wine guard system, and the starlink is parked and in the baggage compartment.
Peggy
But it never leaves a camper just in case. Well, it might leave the camper if our internet goes down in the house, but it.
Peggy
We travel with it, even though. We feel like we don't need it anymore. It's only been about a month, right? So I think it'll take us another fair amount of time longer before we decide we really don't ever need Starlink anymore and stop carrying it with us. It's a security blanket that's worth having in the cabinet.
Tony
You know, for us, because we kind of have to be on the internet, because that's the way we've chosen. I think it'll just stay in the baggage compartment.
Peggy
Yeah.
Tony
There's no reason to take it out. So that leads us to our question of the week.
Tony
And our question of the week is, what do you do to get on the internet? And it, do you do stuff? Like, are you like, oh, yeah, I gotta be on. And this is what I use. Or are you like, and I go camping.
Tony
I'm not going to be on the internet.
Peggy
I leave my phone at home.
Tony
Yeah, I leave my phone at home. So let us know we have. Of fun and friendly stressless campers Facebook group.
Tony
And that's where you can ask your own questions, answer the question of the week, all that kind of stuff. So that's our question for this week. What was our question last week?
Peggy
You confused me. I was like, hey, you forgot last week's question.
Peggy
Last week, I believe it was for you to relay kind of the funny now story. Yeah. Your funniest kind of getting into a campground. Story. And I'm going to tell you something, guys.
Peggy
I have hardly been on Facebook, which is weird.
Tony
Well, we've been at the balloon festival.
Peggy
We've been at the Balloon Fiesta, and we've been really, really busy trying to catch up with work. I'm not sure how many of you have answered.
Tony
Oh, dear.
Peggy
I hope that a lot of you have, but all I'm gonna say right now is go check out Stressless Campers Facebook group and read however many funny stories. I know I wrote a funny story. So there's at least one story there for you to read. And I think I saw some others, and I, I just can't tell you if there are more or not because I don't know. You know, another way to keep in touch with this, of course, is to make sure that you are signed up to receive our oncE-A-Week fun and friendly, fun and friendly group and fun and friendly newsletter.
Peggy
Right. That comes from our website and links to our website. It reminds you every Thursday morning that there's a podcast out. It tells you about other things that have been going on in the world, in the RV world, camping world, not camping world, but you know, in the life of camping. And also ask the question of the week to give you a reminder of what else.
Peggy
And also, we've told you this before, there are some things that show up in the newsletter that we don't talk about. Like if we are having a contest for things, that's only in our newsletter. Free things. And if you want to know where exactly we're camping at any given time, that calendar is only available by a link that we send you in the newsletter. It's not something that we really, really want public, but we want you all to know because if you want to join us somewhere camping, we don't want to forget to tell you that we're camping until we're gone and then you're like, Well, I was right next door and you didn't tell me.
Tony
Yeah, that's the fact check.
Peggy
Sign up, all that to say, sign up for the newsletter. You can do that on any page of the website. And we don't send anything but once a week and we don't sell your address to anybody else. Yeah.
Tony
Also, we have a list of our favorite RV products, including the kind of stuff you want to get when you're first camping. And our favorite things that we use or that we really like and there's a list of that.
Peggy
We've also mentioned... We've also mentioned a bunch of times that there are things in the show notes and if you don't know how to do the show notes, go to stresslesscamping.com, look for the picture of a Winnebago talking on a microphone. That is our podcast page and each podcast, each episode has its own page and all the notes, links, all that stuff is in that page.
Tony
Yes it is. Anyway on our favorite products there's a lot of stuff where there's discounts and deals too.
Peggy
Oh right.
Tony
So that's okay.
Peggy
Also when you've seen all those things that I keep interrupting about on thestresslesscamping.com you can go to all those social places where you can find us and there's all different kinds of things there.
Peggy
So check us out and you know, if you're not sure where we might be look at the links on the top right of our website and that'll tell you all the social places we are which is pretty much all the social places that we've ever heard of.
Tony
Pretty much, yeah.
Peggy
We are really happy that you are either listening or watching. If you're listening and you want to make sure that you don't miss any of the episodes be sure whatever podcast app you're using to hit subscribe so that it will remind you every week to listen. If you're watching on YouTube, thanks again.
Peggy
We really appreciate the subscribes and the likes and the shares especially the shares because that gets that makes our family bigger. And that's what we want a big happy family.
Tony
Absolutely.
Peggy
And of course you can also share onto your social pages the anything that you find on our website you just copy the link and post it in the socials that is really, really helpful for us as well.
Tony
Very much so.
Peggy
So again, thank you very, very much for being here. We are home for a minute, which is kind of exciting. We're gonna have a new shower in a day or two.
Tony
Yeah, that's what they're. Yeah, they're gutting the bathroom.
Tony
So if. If we stink the next time you see us, then know that that shower repair did not go well.
Peggy
But that's why we have the one in here.
Tony
Oh yeah. Oh sure we have a backup plan.
Peggy
Have a really terrific week and we will see you next Thursday and in the meantime, stressless camping.
Tony
We hope you learned a lot and had some fun and got some tips for your next stressless camping adventure. We're honored by your reviews on Apple Podcasts which helps others find us too. Don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss out on the adventure and we look forward to your joining us next week. Until then, happy camping.
Tony
Because again, optimized, optimum, optimum, oh my gosh.
