A planned antenna yard project in Halfmoon Township will give Centre County access to a growing satellite-based high-speed internet service.
Township supervisors on Thursday gave conditional approval to a land development plan for the antenna project that will support access to Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The project, which has Zayo LCC listed as the developer, includes 32 pre-constructed, ground-based antennas on an 88 feet by 153 feet gravel pad to be located on a leased property at 67 Sawmill Road, near the intersection with Halfmoon Valley Road.
“This particular project is an antenna yard of 32 antennas that support the Starlink internet program at your home,” said Rex Atkinson of project architect and engineer Five Nine Design Group. “So this yard makes those Starlink antennas faster and provides a faster internet to your home.”
The antennas will tap into a fiber optic facility on the opposite side of Sawmill Road.
“So they combine the over-air satellite internet with the speed of fiber optics,” Atkinson said.
Starlink, which began offering service to the public in 2021, uses a network of low orbit satellites launched by SpaceX to provide high speed, low latency internet around the world, particularly to rural and remote locations.
According to the company’s website, residential service is $110 a month, with a one-time hardware cost of $599 for the satellite dish and WiFi router.
“A lot of times it kind of fills a gap where high-speed internet might not be available and so you can get a satellite receiver for your house,” Atkinson said.
He did not immediately have details about the planned rollout of Starlink service locally but said it would be available “for the county and the surrounding area.” For Centre County addresses, Starlink’s website states that the company “expects to expand service in your area in 2023.”
Antenna yards are a newer development for Starlink as it looks to accelerate its expansion, Atkinson said.
“This new base station is a way to kind of speed it up, to try to compete with the fiber optics and the Comcasts, the cable internet companies,” he said.
The antennas will have a plastic protective dome and will constantly rotate to follow the satellites. The antennas are 10 feet tall and the chain-link fence around the pad is 6 feet. Conditions of approval include a landscape buffer between the facility and the road.
Supervisors also approved the developers request to pay a fee-in-lieu of $1,000 for the 10% parkland area required by township ordinance.
Atkinson said he couldn’t speak to the specific process Starlink used to choose the Halfmoon Township location, but that it was based on an analysis of service needs.
“I know they analyze that need through different databases as far as the technology is concerned to see where there theoretically would be the most use and probably population groups and areas that might be underserved by current internet providers,” he said.
