The previous month, Starlink made the announcement that beginning in December, it would begin enforcing data caps for its customers, restricting them to just 1 TB of data per month. Now that December has arrived, it appears that Starlink has had a small change of mind and the launch date has been pushed back into the new year. The support page for Starlink indicates that the data cap will become active in February of 2023 at the earliest.
Customers will continue to begin each new billing cycle with a 1 terabyte (TB) bucket of data available to them, as nothing has changed in this regard. This data will be labeled as having “Priority Access,” and if it is used between the hours of seven in the morning and eleven at night, it will be counted toward the one terabyte allowance. After all of this data has been used, users will still have access to the internet, but their connection speed will be significantly slowed.
If users go over the 1 terabyte limit, they have the option to buy additional Priority Access data at a cost of 25 cents per gigabyte. It is expected that the vast majority of customers will not be negatively impacted by this. According to Starlink, less than 10 percent of its subscribers were able to reach the 1TB threshold on a monthly basis.
Recently, Starlink has undergone a considerable amount of expansion, broadening its reach to include additional locations and introducing new means of connection. Ookla recently revealed that Starlink speeds had decreased, and one possible explanation for this is that an increased number of customers are signing up for the service. However, despite the fact that there was a slight decrease, it was also disclosed that the average download speed of the system in North America was still at least 60 Mbps. This is a speed that is still considered to be quite good if you live in a region that does not provide any other options.
