SpaceX Pushes Back Starlink Data Caps to February 2023
The unparalleled success of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has helped Elon Musk’s aerospace firm deploy a megaconstellation of Starlink satellites in just a few years. The service has been available to consumers for several years, and speeds were impressive at launch, but it’s slowing down as more users get on the network. SpaceX’s solution was to implement a 1TB data cap. They were supposed to go into effect this month, but customers have gotten a short reprieve.
According to an update on SpaceX’s website, the “Fair Use” policy will now go into effect in February 2023. Previously, Starlink said we could expect it to begin clamping down on excessive data use this month. SpaceX did not specifically announce the change — it simply added a new date to the notice about fair use.
At launch, Starlink boasted speeds approaching 100Mbps, which was previously unheard of for satellite internet. Traditional satellite internet services like ViatSat and HughesNet rely on a handful of satellites to deliver speeds in the 10-20Mbps range. SpaceX has deployed more than 3,000 small communication satellites in various orbits to provide much more robust coverage. However, customers have been reporting slowing speeds in recent months. SpaceX says it does not want a small number of users to negatively impact everyone on the network. Therefore, data caps.
When the data caps do go into effect in February, customers who exceed the 1TB cap will have to make some choices. They can accept being deprioritized during periods of high usage on the network, resulting in much lower speeds. Alternatively, they can pay for overages to continue receiving high-speed data, to the tune of $0.25 per gigabyte. An updated support page notes that those users can opt-in to automatically pay for overages, but that’s going to add up fast.
The key to freeing up more capacity could be the upcoming Starlink v2 satellites. The FCC recently granted SpaceX a license to launch 7,500 of the second-gen satellites, fewer than the 30,000 it sought. However, that’s still more than double the number of satellites it currently has in orbit. Before SpaceX can launch even a single v2 Starlink node, it has to get the next-gen Starship rocket off the ground. Musk previously said the company would conduct an orbital test of Starship this year, but it’s looking increasingly likely that the test will be pushed to 2023.
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