Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to cap its Starlink‘s residential customers to 1TB per month in an attempt to reduce network congestion.
The change was unveiled through the “Fair Use Policy” page of Starlink. According to the company, its US and Canadian subscribers will only get 1TB of “Priority Access” every month. The satellite internet provider didn’t have any data capping when it first rolled out.
When the cap is reached, users won’t be cut off access to their internet. Instead, subscribers will be automatically moved to “Basic Access” after the 1TB has been consumed. This means that Starlink could throttle and lower the speed of your connection, in order to lessen congestion on its network.
But unlike other internet service providers that track data consumption based on overall usage, Starlink notes that Residential Service Plans’ 1TB will only get used up on peak hours, 7AM to 11PM. Connectivity outside the time period will not count towards the 1TB monthly limit.
To get more “Priority Access” allocation, Starlink customers can pay an additional $0.25 per GB. A dashboard will be provided in the Starlink app, so subscribers can easily track their data usage.
As of the moment, Starlink says no more than 10% of its customers use more than 1TB per month.
In addition to the new data cap, the company also lowered its advertised internet speeds. From the original 50Mbps to 200Mbps estimate, it has been reduced to 20Mbps to 100Mbps.
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Starlink’s new data capping will be implemented by December 2022.