Starlink Cancels High-Speed Data Caps, Offers 'Priority' Plan for Best Speeds
In a win for Starlink users, SpaceX appears to be backtracking on a plan to impose a monthly high-speed data cap on subscribers and potentially force them to pay more.
The company today updated the official Starlink domain to delete mention of the high-speed data caps, which were previously a top listed topic in the FAQ(Opens in a new window)/support section of the site. Prior to the deletion, the caps were supposed to arrive "no earlier than April," according to FAQ.
SpaceX also revised the “Fair Use Policy,” which previously said users would have to pay $0.25 per GB after exceeding the 1TB cap on their high-speed data consumption. If users refused to pay, their Starlink speeds would be slowed to “basic access” during times of network congestion.
Instead, the new Fair Use Policy now states(Opens in a new window) Starlink subscribers on the residential and roam tier will receive an “unlimited amount of ‘Standard’ data each month.”
Download speeds for the Standard data plan can range from 25Mbps to 100Mbps for residential users and 5Mbps to 50Mbps for subscribers on the roam plan. That’s about the same speeds SpaceX has been advertising for its services prior to today's change.
But despite the apparent removal of the data cap language, SpaceX can still throttle a subscriber’s connection. “If bandwidth patterns consistently exceed what is allocated to a typical residential user, Starlink may take network management measures, such as temporarily reducing a customer’s speeds, to prevent or mitigate congestion of the Services,” the company writes in the policy. “Bandwidth-intensive applications, such as streaming videos, gaming, or downloading large files are most likely to be impacted by such action.”
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