No Waitlist: SpaceX's Starlink Frees Up Capacity on US West Coast

pcmag.com:

Still waiting to try Starlink? It looks like SpaceX is lifting the waitlist for Starlink’s residential tier across most of the US West Coast. 

For months, SpaceX has imposed a waitlist for Starlink’s residential tier across large swathes of the US. But on Tuesday, the waitlist disappeared for many areas in Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, and Colorado, which was first noticed by(Opens in a new window) Nathan Owens, a Starlink watcher. 

Customers living in these areas can now subscribe to Starlink’s residential service, and expect to receive their units within one or two weeks, after paying $599 for the dish hardware. (Go to Starlink.com(Opens in a new window) to subscribe or Starlink.com/map(Opens in a new window) to view the availability.)

Residential Starlink service is the most affordable plan for consumers while offering the highest speeds. Users can bypass the waitlist by subscribing to Starlink Roam or the business-focused tiers, but they have to pay more. 

SpaceX has been imposing the waitlist system to prevent new subscribers from further stretching the satellite internet system’s capacity. Last year, many users saw their speeds fall as customer interest in Starlink surged. 

To cut down on the congestion, SpaceX plans on imposing a high-speed data cap potentially as soon as next month. So both new and existing subscribers will only be guaranteed 1TB of high-speed data access per month. To keep the high speeds, customers will need to pay an additional $0.25 per GB used, otherwise they might be relegated to slower broadband access. 

Last month, the company also introduced a price hike for subscribers living in areas with limited capacity. So new customers joining Starlink from the West Coast will likely