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Remember last month’s big price hikes (here)? Well bad news if you’re a new customer because the ever changeable packages of Starlink’s (SpaceX) satellite broadband service have just added a new “Monthly Kit Fee” of £10 to the package price for hardware rental, which will be applied on top of the existing rental.
Starlink currently has nearly 10,600 satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – mostly at altitudes of between c.340-550km. Residential customers in the UK currently pay from £40 a month for the Residential 100Mbps unlimited data plan (kit price may vary due to different offers), which also promises uploads of c.15-35Mbps and low latency connectivity. Faster packages exist at greater cost, while more restrictive (data capped) options also exist for roaming users (e.g. £55 per month for 100GB of data).
However, until now, Starlink had been rather generously offering their Standard dish (terminal) hardware as part of a “free” rental agreement for their residential subscribers. But since the start of this week that’s changed to adopt a £10 monthly charge for new customers, which some may perceive as being a second big price hike in the space of less than a month. We can’t help but feel that Starlink should be expressing this as a single rental price, rather than trying to mask the change by separating it out (i.e. Residential 100Mbps is now £50pm rather than the £40 they promote on the front page).
On top of that, PC Mag are reporting that Starlink’s fastest Residential Max plan is losing two key perks. In short, existing customers no longer get access to a free Mini dish as a rental, or the 50% discount to the Roam tier plans like before. “The Optional Mini Kit for Travel was available only to customers in select countries with an active Residential Max plan. It is not available to new customers at this time,” Starlink says.
A bit of product and pricing stability would be nice to see. At present Starlink is rapidly becoming far too much of a variable and unpredictably priced service.