A SpaceX Starlink user is surprised by the service and takes a meal during a cruise vacation

• A SpaceX Starlink user attached his internet dish to his boat while on a cruise around the Greek Islands.
• Rebel Rome was testing Starlink at sea for his company, which provides Wi-Fi for public transport.
• He told Insider that Starlink’s connection has been “surprisingly good” despite some disruptions.

Starlink, the SpaceX satellite’s Internet service, is becoming so popular around the world — that some users are taking it on vacation.

One user told Insider that he strapped his Starlink device to a ship and sailed around the Greek islands for a week to test the service’s availability at sea.

Tarvo Topolev is the founder of Rebel Rome, an Estonian company that provides passenger WiFi on public transport such as buses, trains and cruise ships. He said he ordered the Starlink in July and received the kit, dish, WiFi router and tripod, a week later.

RebelRoam wanted to test the service in different locations, so Topolov opted for Starlink’s RV package, which costs about $600.

As part of a team event, nine employees, including Topolov himself, traveled to Athens with the Starlink kit.

They then hopped on a boat, attached a Starlink dish to a pole, and sailed between the islands of Kea, Mykonos, Syros and Kythnos to test the network for a week.

Combining Starlink’s service with a mobile connection, they compared the two using social media, Google Maps and video streaming. The result? According to Topolev, Starlink and Cellular complimented each other.

Starlink worked well at sea when surrounded by other boats or when the boat made a sharp turn, but cellular connectivity dropped when the boat was far from shore, Topolov said.

“It was surprisingly good,” he said. “There were some outages and sometimes we had to restart manually … but basically it worked … almost all the time.”

Topolv cruise ships use a combination of Wi-Fi and cellular to provide internet connectivity, meaning Starlink is a useful and much cheaper option.

“We see it as a very good solution because large ships are using geostationary satellites, which have a large delay and are very expensive for the speed they get,” said Topolev.

Their trial comes as Royal Caribbean plans to roll out Starlink on all of its cruise ships. The company will be the first in the industry to install Starlink on its entire fleet.

In the meantime, RebelRoam will continue to test Starlink to see how well it works for its customers, Topolov said.

“They have a good business case, so we’ve seen a lot of use, especially in areas where there are no communication routes,” he said.

Starlink has more than 2,500 satellites in low earth orbit with a user base of over 400,000 subscribers worldwide.