New “Deprioritized Standard” Plan Is 50% Cheaper In Exchange For Slower Speeds

In many areas of the world, the demand for Starlink service is low, relative to places like the US and Canada. In response, Starlink offers unique incentives and discounts for select markets. These price adjustments are applied to the hardware, the monthly service fee, and sometimes even both.

Usually, the incentives are only offered for a limited amount of time. Starlink is trying something different in New Zealand. They’ve created a new service plan, called Deprioritized Standard, which offers customers a steep discount in exchange for slower speeds.

Plan details

In New Zealand, normal Standard service costs $159/month. Opting instead for Deprioritized Standard can save you 50%, with the plan costing just $79/month.

Like the name implies, customers on the deprioritized plan will be placed below Standard users on the Starlink data hierarchy. This will result in slower speeds, especially during peak usage hours, from about 5pm-11pm:

Standard: 150-250 Mbps

Deprioritized Standard: 50-100 Mbps

Although the performance will typically be lower during peak hours, the plan does not have a speed cap or throttling. Instead, performance depends on network conditions. During peak hours, when a lot of users are online, lower priority customers will see their speeds drop to give preference to higher priority users. But when the network isn’t congested, deprioritized users could experience normal Standard speeds.

Just like with the Standard plan, Deprioritized Standard customers will still get unlimited data.

Availability

Right now, only customers in New Zealand have access to the new service plan. Starlink gave us no information on whether the plan will eventually expand to other markets. It’s possible that this is a pilot program, with the first test being New Zealand. If successful, Starlink could offer similar incentives to other markets.

New customers can select the deprioritized plan on the order page for Residential. Existing Standard customers can switch by changing the service plan from the account dashboard.

Supply and demand

My readers in the US often ask why prices are so much lower in other parts of the world. In the US, we’ve seen Residential plan prices do nothing but increase, from the original $99/month, to the current $120/month. Since launching in late 2020, Starlink has never offered a discount for US customers.

The answer comes down to supply and demand. Starlink is a business, after all, so the rules of economics apply. The population of the US is spread out over a large area. There are dense population centers scattered throughout the lower 48 states in the major urban areas, but a majority of the land area in the US is rural. Little has been done in terms of broadband infrastructure in these rural areas. When Starlink arrived, it finally allowed millions of rural US residents to get high speed, low latency internet.

Because the demand is so high, Starlink has no reason to offer incentives in the US. They have a lot of demand and a limited supply of network bandwidth. According to basic economics, prices will be higher as a result of the market conditions.

High demand isn’t the case in many countries around the world. Countries in Europe, for example, often have incentives for 50% off the monthly service fee. There are also deals for refurbished hardware, and an option to rent instead of buy. Countries with lower demand are usually older, more dense, with better broadband infrastructure compared to the US. When demand is low, Starlink has to lower prices in order to compete.

Final thoughts

In my opinion, this new deprioritized home internet plan is a great idea from Starlink. I hope it expands to other markets. I think many people would exchange performance for a monthly service discount. Customers who don’t do a lot of data intensive activities aren’t likely to notice any difference between 50 Mbps and 150 Mbps. But they will notice a 50% savings on their monthly bill.

Would you sign up for a lower priority plan for a price decrease? Do you think Starlink will expand availability of the Deprioritized Standard plan in the future? Let me know in the comments below!

See also: Starlink Discounts and Offers