SpaceX's Starlink Quietly Mentions High-Speed Data Caps Are Coming for US Users

[rcjordan]

https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacexs-starlink-quietly-mentions-high-speed-data-caps-are-coming-for-us

[Brad]

That ole bait and switch.

[ergophobe]

If you read the fine print, don't most ISPs have caps at some point. I know my friends in Truckee got hit with the 250GB cap a few years ago when they had a ton of Dropbox updates.

250GB seems a bit small in the current world, but basically I'm all in favor of Starlink limitations that make it less attractive to people who could get cable/fiber but just have to have Starlink because, well, Elon Musk.

[rcjordan]

How much data does a gamerTeen burn through in a month?  A couple of years ago, an NFL game was 5gb on Verizon.

[ergophobe]

250GB is modest in the modern world - we were going through 150-200GB on geosynch satellite

[ergophobe]

Here we go...
https://www.highspeedinternet.com/resources/which-internet-service-providers-have-data-caps

Honestly, I think as a general rule unlimited services are bad for consumers globally. It means that a lot of high-usage free-riders get subsidized by everyone else.

In many places in the West, it was illegal to meter water. In Fresno, there were NO meters. Some years back, the Feds said they would stop providing federal funds to any unmetered water district. Fresno rolled out water metering sector by sector and, in general, usage fell about 50% when meters were installed.

We were in Ireland when they rolled out metering. Some homes were using over 1,000,000 liters per month. Big estates? Nope, just old houses with massive leaks that weren't worth fixing.

So maybe 250GB is low for people in the modern world, especially if they want to stream 4K sports and have teen gamers in the house. But, frankly, I like what Xfinity does - 1.2TB with an extra cost for more.

I'd be happy to see Starlink have tiers.

I get that people say they were promised unlimited, but now it's limited. But actually, we weren't promised unlimited forever. When we signed up, it seemed pretty clear that it was a new service and we were told that could change at any time.

[ergophobe]

Letter today from Starlink

To ensure our customer base is not negatively impacted by a small number of users consuming unusually high amounts of data, the Starlink team is implementing a Fair Use policy in the US and Canada in December 2022.

Based on your data usage over the last six months, this policy will have no impact on your service if your usage patterns stay the same.

Under the Fair Use policy, all Residential customers will receive unlimited data, and will start each month with Priority Access, which means their data usage will be prioritized during times of network congestion.
 
Customers who exceed 1 TB of data use on a monthly basis (currently < 10% of users) will automatically be switched to Basic Access for the remainder of the billing cycle, which means their data usage will be deprioritized during times of network congestion, resulting in slower speeds.

Data used between 11pm - 7am will not count towards your Priority Access.

Starting today, you can now monitor your data usage on your account page. Read more in Starlink's Fair Use policy and in the Terms of Service.

Thank you for being an early customer and for your continued support of Starlink!

Starlink Team

This seems quite reasonable to maintain decent service for the 90+ percent who do not burn through a TB a month.