Satellite Internet Where the Cable Never Came
Satellite internet surveyed, mounted, grounded and wired into the building. Not a dish propped up in a window.
Roof access and pitch, how tall a mast has to be to clear the tree line, cable run length, and grounding. Note that the satellite company itself offers a cheap basic install, and for a single storey with clear southern sky that is the right answer. This range is for the jobs it does not cover: a full obstruction survey, a mast, a sealed entry through finished wall, proper grounding, and integration into the rest of the network.
Typical range, not a quote. Your price comes from the free estimate.
The problem
The cable company will not run a line to the property, or they will and the quote comes back with a construction charge on it. Or the line does reach and it is not worth having: old copper that slows to nothing every evening, a fixed wireless signal that works when the weather is kind, a plan you pay a lot for and argue with constantly. So the satellite internet kit arrives in a box and ends up on the ground in the yard or on a tripod on the deck, with the cable coming in through a window that no longer closes. Nobody calls a Starlink installer, because the box makes it look like a twenty minute job, and on an open lot it genuinely is. It works, more or less, until the trees leaf out in the spring or a storm shifts it a few degrees and nobody notices for a week.
Why it matters
Almost nothing goes wrong with satellite internet hardware itself. What goes wrong is where it was put and how it was fastened. The dish does not aim at one satellite, it tracks a stream of them crossing the sky, so it needs a clear view of a whole patch of sky rather than a single line to the south. That is why a spot that tests clean at two in the afternoon can drop calls at eight in the evening, and why a corner that was perfect in February starts stuttering in May: bare branches hold almost no water, leaves hold a great deal, and water is what absorbs the signal. The survey has to cover the whole sky and the whole year, not the ten minutes we happen to be standing there. Around here that is nearly always the deciding factor: mature hardwood across Fairfax, Loudoun and Montgomery County shades far more sky in July than a February walk-through suggests, and reading that correctly is most of what a Starlink installer is actually for. Then the mounting has to be treated as building work rather than as a gadget install. A roof penetration sealed badly leaks for years before anyone traces it back to the dish. A mast too light for its height flexes in wind, and the connection breathes with it. Ungrounded metal on a roof, in a region with this many summer storms, is a poor trade for the money it saves. Last, the satellite internet connection has to become part of the building: fed into the same network everything else already uses, with real coverage indoors, rather than a separate network you have to remember to join. The same equipment also makes a good second line instead of a primary one. If you already have cable and you want something that fails for different reasons, that is the automatic failover work at Backup Internet.
Scope
What we actually do
- 01Cleaning, inspection and re-aim for a dish that used to work and has quietly got worse. Pollen and grime on the face, a wasp nest or bird mess in the arm, corrosion at the mount, or a bracket that has crept out of alignment over a couple of winters all cost you signal, and none of them announce themselves.
- 02A full sky obstruction survey before anything is bolted down, measured across the whole arc the dish has to see and judged against how the tree line will look in summer
- 03An honest answer about the trees, including how high the mount has to go to clear them and whether that height is worth what it costs
- 04Roof, ridge, wall, mast or ground mounting chosen for your building, installed so the roof stays watertight and the mount stays where we put it
- 05Grounding and surge protection at the point the cable enters, which is cheap now and expensive to have skipped
- 06A proper cable run, secured and weatherproofed, through a sealed entry instead of a window held open on the cable
- 07The connection wired into your existing network, so the whole building is on it through the access points you already have
- 08Speed and obstruction testing after the install, written down, so you know what you actually got
- 09The same equipment set up as a backup line rather than a primary one, where you already have cable and want it covered
Satellite internet that arrives from the sky and behaves like a wired line: mounted where it can genuinely see, sealed, grounded, and feeding the same network everything in the building already uses.
Questions
Questions people actually ask
Do satellite dishes need cleaning, and can I do it myself?
They do, and a light clean is fine to do yourself if you can reach it safely from the ground. Use water and a soft cloth, never a pressure washer, and never lean on the arm or the feed, because knocking the aim off costs you more than the dirt did. What is not a do it yourself job is anything on a roof, anything on a mast, or a dish that still underperforms once it is clean, because at that point the problem is alignment, water in a connector, or an obstruction that has grown, and those need measuring rather than wiping.
Can I not just install it myself?
Often you can, and we will tell you so. If there is an open yard with a clear view and somewhere sensible to put it, the Starlink kit is designed for exactly that. People call a Starlink installer when the only good spot is on the roof, when the tree line is marginal, when the cable has to cross the building, or when they want it grounded and sealed properly rather than run through a window.
Is a Starlink installation permanent?
The mount is, and that is the point: a dish that can be nudged is a dish that eventually drifts off aim and starts dropping calls nobody can explain. We bolt it, seal it and ground it like any other work on the outside of a building. None of it is irreversible. If you move, the dish and the router go with you, and the mount comes off and the roof gets sealed behind it.
Will the trees block it?
Sometimes, and it depends on the whole sky rather than one direction. We measure obstructions across the full arc the dish tracks, and allow for leaves that are not there yet in winter. Where trees are in the way the answer is usually height: a mast that clears the tree line, or a different corner of the property and a longer cable run.
Can it be my backup instead of my main line?
Yes, and it is a good one, because it fails for completely different reasons than a cable in the street. Setting it up to take over on its own, in seconds, without anyone touching anything, is covered under backup internet at Backup Internet.
Also under connectivity that works
Get a free estimate
We come out, look at the place, and give you a real number in writing.
Equipment we work with: Starlink standard and high performance hardware, non-penetrating and ridge mounts, pipe masts, grounded outdoor cable runs, and handoff into UniFi, Omada or Peplink gateways.