If you live in an area that Starlink considers ‘limited capacity’, your monthly service price will soon be going up. Starlink is increasing prices for both Residential and RV service plans for US customers in limited capacity areas. The new change was announced via emails sent out from Starlink to customers in affected areas. If you woke up to an email from Starlink, your price will be going up. If you haven’t received anything, you might be in an ‘excess capacity’ area.
For Residential customers in limited capacity areas, the price will increase to $120/month, a $10 change. Residential customers that live in areas with excess capacity will see their price drop by $20, to $90/month. RV customers will see a $15 price increase, to $150/month.
The new monthly service prices will start on April 24, 2023.
Checking Starlink Capacity
While the email is pretty vague about limited capacity vs excess capacity, it is actually pretty easy to determine the Starlink capacity in your area. You can browse the Starlink availability map, find your location, and hover over it with the cursor to check capacity. The map is also color coded. As you can see from the screenshot above, most of the populated areas in the United States are low/limited capacity. The vast majority of Residential and RV customers in the US will see a price increase.
Portability Add-On Is Gone
Another change that wasn’t announced in the email is the elimination of the Portability add-on for Residential and Business service plans. Portability was a feature that allowed Residential customers to travel with their dish, away from the registered service address, for short periods of time. For an extra $25/month, Portability was similar to RV. The add-on could be turned on and off as needed. Portability is no longer an option in the Starlink Account Portal for Residential and Business customers in the US.
Why The Change?
It seems this change is an attempt by Starlink to ‘right the ship’ in some way. Previously, with services like RV, Best Effort, and Portability, they allowed far too many customers to sign up to the service. The network became overloaded, performance suffered. Average speeds continue to fall quarter to quarter. This change, I believe, is their strategy to alleviate some of those past strategy issues.
The range of reaction on the Starlink subreddit on Reddit is mostly disappointment and frustration. There is also a lot of confusion on the strategy of targeting limited capacity areas. After all, it was Starlink who oversold those areas in the first place, so why punish the customers? In the end I think most Starlink customers will not have much of a choice but to pay the increased prices. If we had other viable alternatives, we would have probably switched by now. But for most of us, Starlink is the only low latency, high speed option. Whether that is worth an extra $10 or $15 per month is up to each individual.
What are your thoughts? Is your price going up or down? Do you support this change for limited capacity areas, or are you considering dropping Starlink because of the price? Let me know in the comments below.
I’m confused..So is the cheaper price in high capacity areas to drum up new business in the area because they have less subscribers and available bandwidth? Is the service faster and more dependable in high capacity areas?
Yes that is correct, they want to use the available bandwidth they have in the area, so they lower prices to attract more business. The service will generally be faster because of more available bandwidth, but not necessarily more reliable.