A fair, no-spin look at local fixed wireless and Starlink for rural Sonoma County — latency, weather, cost, support, and who each one actually fits.
If you live down a long drive in Dry Creek Valley or up a Geyserville hillside, you’ve probably weighed Starlink against us at least once. That’s fair. Both get you online where cable never came. But they work in very different ways, and the right answer depends on your property and how you use the internet.
We’re not here to bash satellite. Starlink is genuinely good, and for some addresses it’s the best option on the table. We’d rather give you the honest trade-offs than pretend we win every time.
How each one actually works
Fixed wireless puts a small radio on your roof or a pole. That radio gets a clear, line-of-sight shot to one of our towers on a nearby high point, and that link carries your internet. The signal travels a few miles at most, over ground we know well.
Starlink talks to satellites in low orbit overhead. Your dish finds whatever satellites are passing and hands you off as they move. The signal goes up hundreds of miles and back down — impressive engineering, and a longer round trip than a few miles to a local tower.
Latency: the difference you feel
Latency is the delay before your click does something. Fixed wireless usually lands in the low tens of milliseconds, similar to cable. Starlink has gotten much better and is fine for most things, but the trip to orbit adds delay and the satellite handoffs can cause brief, occasional jitter.
For streaming Netflix or scrolling, you won’t notice either one. Where it shows up is the stuff that punishes delay: a Zoom call where people start talking over each other, a VPN into work, online gaming, or a tasting-room card reader that needs to respond right now. Lower, steadier latency is where local fixed wireless tends to feel smoother.
Weather and the sky above you
Both technologies care about what’s between your equipment and the signal.
Fixed wireless needs line of sight to our tower. Trees and ridgelines are real, and that’s the honest limit — if a stand of oaks sits dead in the path, we have to work around it.
Starlink needs a clear view of the open sky, not a tower. Heavy rain or thick smoke can cause brief slowdowns, and obstructions like a tall tree on the south side of the house can nag at the connection. During heavy fire-season smoke, neither one is magic, but a short ground link generally has less sky to fight through than a path to orbit.
What it costs over a year
Look past the first month. Starlink’s hardware is a real up-front cost, and the monthly residential price is higher than most of our plans. We provide and maintain the radio as part of service, so there’s no dish to buy and own.
The other cost is your time. When satellite gear acts up, you’re often on your own with a chat window. With us, a local tech who knows your install comes out. That’s not a line item, but it’s real money the first time a problem gets solved in an afternoon instead of a week.
Support when something breaks
This is the part we feel strongest about. We live here. We see the same PSPS shutoffs and the same fire risk you do. When you call, you reach someone in Sonoma County who can often be at your place the same day, climb the same ladder, and re-aim the same radio they installed.
Satellite support is competent, but it’s a national queue. For a remote worker who can’t have a dead connection during a Tuesday all-hands, or a winery that can’t drop card payments on a busy Saturday, knowing a human will show up matters.
So who fits which?
Starlink is the better call when your address simply has no line of sight to any of our towers — deep in a canyon, behind a hard ridgeline, or far outside our coverage. It’s also worth it if you move a lot or need internet somewhere truly off our map.
Fixed wireless from us is the better call when you have a workable sightline, you want lower and steadier latency for calls and work, you’d rather not buy and babysit hardware, and you value a local crew you can actually reach. For most homes and businesses in our service area, that’s the combination that wins.
The honest bottom line
There’s no universally “best” rural internet — there’s the best one for your parcel. The only way to know if we can serve you well is to look at your specific sightlines.
Run our Check My Address tool for an instant read, and a real person will confirm it before anyone commits to anything. If we can’t serve you well, we’ll tell you straight and point you toward what will. We live here too.
