Starlink drops plans for 1TB cap and overuse fees
Starlink has cancelled plans to charge standard residential customers per gigabyte once they exceed 1TB of monthly usage, an update to the company’s fair use policy (FUP) has revealed.
Starlink’s support FAQ page no longer mentions a data cap, while the latest FUP now says that standard users have unlimited data.
Before now, the FUP mentioned a 1TB residential cap and an optional $0.25 (R4.50) per GB fee to keep using the service once the cap was reached.
Existing Starlink customers received an email from the company detailing the policy changes. Netflix engineer Nathan Owens shared a screenshot of the email he received.
“Good news! Your Starlink subscription will remain unlimited and will no longer be deprioritised after 1TB of data use,” the email reads.
Despite Starlink’s promise to no longer deprioritise a customer’s service once they reach the 1TB threshold, its customers could still see slower speeds.
According to Ars Technica, speeds on the satellite Internet service have begun to drop as more users sign up.
Starlink has also changed the names of its plans from residential and business to “standard” and “priority”.
A recent specification sheet for Starlink says standard users can expect download speeds of between 25Mbps and 100Mbps during peak usage hours, while priority users can expect speeds of between 40Mbps and 220Mbps.
Regarding upload speeds, Starlink says standard users can expect 5Mbps to 10Mbps during peak hours, while those on its priority package will get 8Mbps to 25Mbps.
However, these average speeds are noticeably lower than previously specified.
In September 2022, Starlink said residential users would see download speeds ranging from 50Mbps to 200Mbps, with upload speeds of between 10Mbps and 20Mbps.
Then-business customers could expect download speeds between 100Mbps and 350Mbps, with upload ranging from 10Mbps to 40Mbps.
It seems as if Starlink lowered the expected speeds sometime in early November 2022.
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