Starlink Installation on the French Riviera: High-Performance Satellite Internet

Starlink relies on a constellation of low-orbit satellites (around 550 km, versus 36,000 km for traditional geostationary satellite): that's what explains its low latency and high speeds. On the Riviera, four situations make it particularly relevant: areas without fibre (valleys, hinterland, some unconnected co-owned buildings), temporary sites (construction sites, events, sales offices), second homes you don't want to commit to a lengthy connection process, and a backup link for businesses that can't tolerate downtime. With the copper network being phased out by 2030, Starlink is also the natural alternative for households losing ADSL without fibre eligibility — a topic we cover in our article on the end of ADSL in 2026.

In real conditions in the Alpes-Maritimes, Starlink typically delivers 100 to 300 Mbps down, 10 to 30 Mbps up and 20 to 40 ms latency. That's ample for remote work, video conferencing, 4K streaming, cloud applications and IP video surveillance. The latency — comparable to good 4G and in a different league from geostationary satellite (600 ms and more) — makes video calls and VPNs perfectly usable.

Two factors condition this performance: a genuinely clear view of the sky (see the site survey below) and a local network that can keep up — a 250 Mbps dish behind a saturated router or ageing WiFi will never deliver 250 Mbps to your devices. For demanding usage, we add QoS rules to prioritise calls and telephony over downloads.

This is the step that separates stable Starlink from Starlink that micro-drops. The dish needs a clear viewing cone of roughly 100 degrees towards the sky, oriented mostly north at our latitudes. In practice we check:

• Obstructions: trees (including 2-3 years of growth), chimneys, upper floors, terrain. A stone pine 10 metres away can be enough to cause drops of a few seconds every minute.
• Tool-based measurement: on-site obstruction check with the verification app, at every candidate location (roof, mast, façade), before any drilling.
• Cable routing: available length, wall crossings, trunking, aesthetics — a sensitive point on villas.
• Wind and salt exposure: on the coast, mounts and fixings must be sized for the mistral and marine air.

At the end of the survey you know exactly where the dish will go, why, and what service level to expect. If the site doesn't allow a sufficient sky view, we say so before you buy the hardware — not after.

Depending on the building, mounting is done on the roof (tile-appropriate mount, waterproofing preserved), on a mast (to clear obstacles), on a façade or on a chimney stack. The cable is routed cleanly — discreet exterior trunking, waterproof wall crossing — to the network connection point. We take care of three points that improvised installs neglect: mechanical rigidity (a dish that moves in the wind loses signal), cable protection (UV, abrasion, rodents) and clean integration into the comms cabinet or network rack.

The installation ends with speed and stability tests at several points of the network, and a final obstruction check from the definitive location. You receive a report: measured speeds, latency, and any recommendations for the indoor network.

The router bundled with the Starlink kit is fine for simple use, but a business site or a well-equipped villa deserves better. In bridge mode, the Starlink router steps aside and hands over to your network equipment: firewall, VLANs, professional WiFi, VPN — your entire existing architecture is preserved, Starlink simply becomes the internet link.

For businesses, the most requested setup is dual WAN: fibre as the primary link, Starlink as backup (or the reverse in non-fibre areas). If the primary link fails, failover is automatic within seconds: telephony, payment terminals, video surveillance and cloud tools keep working. It's business-continuity insurance at a controlled cost, deployed together with the rest of the infrastructure — details on our Starlink installation page and our IT network services.

For yachts based in Antibes, Cannes or Monaco, Starlink has been a game changer: where traditional VSAT cost thousands of euros per month for modest speeds, Starlink maritime plans deliver usable broadband under way. Onboard installation has its own requirements: anti-vibration marine mounts, cable routing compliant with onboard constraints, integration with the vessel's network (often with 4G/5G aggregation for port areas) and the right plan for the cruising area.

We work dockside in the ports of the Alpes-Maritimes and Monaco for the survey, installation and integration, in coordination with the crew or the shipyard.

Figures vary by site, but here are the orders of magnitude we see on our projects (excluding operator price changes):

• Overall lead time: 2 to 5 working days from site survey to go-live for a home; 1 to 2 weeks for a business site with dual-WAN integration.
• Hardware: standard Starlink kit generally between €250 and €450; high-performance and maritime kits above that.
• Subscription: around €40-50/month residential, more for priority or maritime plans.
• Professional installation: typically €400 to €900 for a complete install (mount, routing, network integration, tests) depending on roof and cabling complexity; more for dual-WAN or maritime setups.

An exact quote follows the site survey — free and without obligation via our contact form. Beware of "installation included" packages with no prior survey: the survey is what guarantees the result.