SpaceX issued a Starlink high-speed internet data cap at 1TB (terabyte) per month as service coverage expands across Polar Regions. The company announced on November 4th that "Starlink is now able to serve additional communities across Alaska, Canada, and the polar region that previously didn't have access to reliable, high-speed, low-latency internet."
The announcement comes after multiple Starlink customers shared via social media they received an email from SpaceX this week stating that the company updated its 'Fair Use Policy.' "To ensure our customer base is not negatively impacted by a small number of users consuming unusually high amounts of data, the Starlink team is implementing a Fair Use policy, in the US and Canada in December 2022," wrote the company, stating that the "policy will have no impact on your service if your usage patterns stay the same" without surpassing the 1 TB limit of "Priority Access."
"Under the Fair Use policy, all Residential customers will receive unlimited data, and will start each month with Priority Access, which means their data usage will be prioritized during times of network congestion. Customers who exceed 1 TB of data use on a monthly basis (currently < 10% of users) will automatically be switched to Basic Access for the remainder of the billing cycle, which means their data usage will be deprioritized during times of network congestion, resulting in slower speeds," explained SpaceX in the email. "Data used between 11pm - 7am will not count towards your Priority Access starting today, you can now monitor your data usage on your account page. [...] Thank you for being an early customer and for your continued support of Starlink!"
SpaceX says that the 1 TB data cap will help maintain broadband quality to Starlink during peak congestion hours. “Starlink is a finite resource that will continue to grow as we launch additional satellites. To serve the greatest number of people with high speed internet, we must manage the network to balance Starlink supply with user demand," the policy states. To date, SpaceX has launched approximately 3,500 internet-beaming Starlink satellites to Low Earth Orbit that provide high-speed internet access to over 40 countries. Visit Starlink.com for more information.
E-mail Source: Starlink Customer
Starlink is now able to serve additional communities across Alaska, Canada, and the polar region that previously didn't have access to reliable, high-speed, low-latency internet → https://t.co/slZbTmZmAt
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 5, 2022
Featured Image Source: SpaceX
About the Author
Evelyn Janeidy Arevalo
Evelyn J. Arevalo joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover news as a Space Journalist and SpaceX Starbase Texas Correspondent. Evelyn is specialized in rocketry and space exploration. The main topics she covers are SpaceX and NASA.
