Last summer, Starlinnk made several changes to the systems that can be used on cruising boats out sailing about the world. One of the most significant was tripling the data use charges from $2 to $6 per gigabyte. This will create a dramatic increase in normal monthly charges which will hit cruisers particularly.
Data use on a cruising boat will vary but if you are regularly updating a blog or website with photos, if your phones regularly update their siftware and if you are downloading weather grib files daily, you are gobbling up a lot of data. One phone update offshore can cost you $40 or more.
The New Zealand based firm PredictWind has a solution. Their existing data hubs, which allow devices to share a single internet source, i.e the Starlink, have been upgraded to allow for batter data management.
With the new Data Hubs and Datta Hub Pro system, you can now toggle between PredictWind Mode and Total Data Usage. The first aallows you to get all of your Predictwind products and firewalls all other data. In the second mode, you can monitor every device on the boat and log hoiw much data you and your crew are using. Brilliant.
