Starlink has given up on its attempts to impose data overage fees on regular residential users who use more than 1TB per month.
Residential customers would receive 1TB of “priority access data” each month, according to the initial data cap announcement made by SpaceX’s Starlink division in November 2022. Customers may continue using the Internet after utilizing 1TB at reduced (but unknown) speeds, or they could pay $0.25 per gigabyte for “extra priority access.”
Starlink postponed the adjustment from December, when it was first meant to go into effect, to February and then April. The home data cap is no longer mentioned in the Starlink support FAQs, and the most recent fair usage policy states that customers with regular service plans are entitled to unlimited data. The 1TB residential cap and optional $0.25 per gigabyte overage costs were included in the previous iteration of the Starlink fair usage policy.
Users received an email from Starlink that read, “happy news After using 1TB of data, your Starlink subscription will no longer be limited and will no longer lose priority.” Starlink enthusiast Nathan Owens, a Netflix engineer, shared a screenshot of the email yesterday.
Starlink speeds have decreased
While the removal of data overage fees is a significant improvement, residential users will still experience slower service than that provided by Starlink’s more expensive plans for businesses and “high-demand” users. Residential and business plans, as Starlink once referred to them, are now referred to as “standard” and “priority.”
What precisely separates regular and priority data speeds then? According to a Starlink spec sheet, average customers can anticipate internet rates ranging from 25Mbps to 100Mbps during times of high usage. Priority users can anticipate download rates of 40Mbps to 220Mbps.
During times of high usage, standard users can anticipate an upload speed of 5Mbps to 10Mbps. Priority consumers would get upload speeds of 8 Mbps to 25 Mbps. The anticipated latency for both standard and priority users is 25ms to 50ms.
As more people use Starlink, speeds have decreased. Residential users should anticipate download speeds of 50Mbps to 200Mbps, upload rates of 10Mbps to 20Mbps, and latency of 20 to 40 ms, according to information provided by Starlink as recently as late September. At the time, it was claimed that business service offered download speeds of 100 to 350 Mbps and upload speeds of 10 to 40 Mbps. By early November, the anticipated speeds had decreased, according to Internet Archive captures.
According to a Reddit member who used Starlink, “Not really a victory. Only 25-100Mbps are currently being promised for residential. Recently, I’ve experienced some very serious speed issues, so I believe this was already in place before it was made public.”
The now-cancelled 1TB cap plan included a carveout for consumers from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., allowing them to use unlimited data during that time while still calculating all other usage against the monthly maximum.
Priority has a $2,500 up-front fee and monthly minimum of $250.
The regular Starlink plans cost $120 per month in “limited-capacity” areas and $90 per month in “excess-capacity” areas, plus a one-time $599 hardware fee.
Priority plans with 1TB of the fastest data start at $250 per month for corporations and other high-demand consumers. For 2TB and 6TB respectively, the monthly costs are $500 and $1,500. The $2,500 recommended hardware for priority users.
Customers of priority plans who go over their monthly cap without purchasing additional priority data would receive the same speeds (“standard data”) reserved for residential users for the remainder of the month. Here you can find country-specific pricing for additional priority data. In the US, a gigabyte costs $0.50.
Some users might desire to upgrade
According to Starlink’s fair use policy, priority plans “are created for users who have high demand, such as those who have institutional, governmental, or business needs. Network priorities are given to Priority data above Standard and Mobile data, so consumers will benefit from quicker and more reliable download and upload rates.”
Customers of standard plans, the majority of whom are residential Internet users, should upgrade to priority plans under particular circumstances, according to SpaceX. Like many ISPs, Starlink has a policy that states that excessive but unclear data usage may result in slower speeds for residential customers:
Starlink strives to equally and fairly spread Standard data among all of its users. In order to prevent or lessen congestion of the Services, Starlink may implement network management measures, such as temporarily limiting a customer’s speeds, if bandwidth patterns continually exceed what is allotted to a typical residential user. The most likely targets of such acts are bandwidth-intensive apps, such streaming videos, gaming, or downloading large files. Customers of Standard Service Plans who require a lot of bandwidth may think about upgrading to a Priority Service Plan.
In addition to normal and priority plans, Starlink now provides a mobile plan for use on the go, such as in RVs, and a “mobile priority” plan for high-demand mobile use cases like marine and in motion.