SpaceX subsidiary Starlink updated its policies and established new data usage limits for its subscribers. Although the company still claims to offer “unlimited” data, it said that it will slow speeds for customers that use 1 terabyte of data per month unless those customers pay extra. The company said that the policy change was necessary because of a “small number of users consuming unusually high amounts of data.”
Details of the change appear in the company’s Fair Use policy for residential customers in the U.S. and Canada and all Business/Maritime customers, and it will start in December. Starlink will now cap monthly usage at one terabyte of data. If a subscriber exceeds that amount, they will have their connection throttled for the rest of the billing cycle. However, heavy residential users can get around the throttling by paying $0.25 for each additional GB of priority data. Business users will be charged $1 per additional GB of data.
Starlink said that the new data policy will impact customers that use one terabyte of data during peak hours, which it defines as between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. Usage between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. will not count toward the company’s data limits.
The company recommends that Starlink users track their monthly data usage through the Starlink App or the Starlink Customer Portal, and if they want to keep their data from being throttled, it suggests subscribers opt-in for automatic billing of the additional GB of priority data that they use.
Starlink charges U.S. residential subscribers $110 per month for service. The company told CNBC that fewer than 10% of Starlink’s customer base uses more than one terabyte of data per month.
Network speed test measurement firm Ookla reported in September that Starlink’s download speeds in Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. had dropped between 9% and 54% from Q2 2021 to Q2 2022 as more users signed up for the service.
Ookla said that Starlink was still able to achieve a median download speed of at least 60 Mbps in North America during Q2 2022. Ookla also reported that Starlink’s upload speeds had slowed over the past year but latency remained relatively flat in most countries.
Maintaining a minimum download speed of at least 100 Mbps and upload speed of 20 Mbps is critical to Starlink as it currently is appealing a decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deny it $885.5 million in funding from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) because it doesn’t meet the minimum requirement for broadband speeds.
Starlink needs to provide a minimum of 100/20 Mbps in speed to meet the FCC's RDOF requirements, and the company is asking the agency to reconsider its decision because it said the FCC’s ruling “rests on unsupported conjecture and outside-the-record information apparently cherry-picked from somewhere on the internet.” It also accused the FCC of having a bias toward fiber.