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Starlink introduces 'data cap' of 1TB per month

yolosnail

Summary

Elon Musk's Starlink has introduced a “Priority Access” cap of 1TB (1000GB) per month on data usage on their standard packages in the US and Canada, this is usage that occurs between the “peak” hours of 7am to 11pm. Outside this period, usage will not count toward the Priority Access data limit.

 

It's not a data cap as such, as you will be able to continue to have access albeit at a reduced speed depending on the capacity of the network.

 

Customers will be able to buy more Priority Access data at $0.25 per GB and consume that at full speed during the same period.

 

Quotes

Quote

Each Service Plan is allocated a certain amount data for “Priority Access” each month. Priority Access data is given precedent over the “Basic Access” data in the Starlink network. See Starlink Specifications for details on Starlink expected performance per Service Plan. After your Priority Access is exhausted, you will continue to have an unlimited amount of Basic Access for the remainder of your billing cycle.

 

In times of network congestion, users with Basic Access may experience slower speeds and reduced performance compared to Priority Access, which may result in degradation or unavailability of certain third-party services or applications. Bandwidth intensive applications, such as streaming videos, are most likely to be impacted. Importantly, in areas that are uncongested or at times of low usage, users should not notice any difference in performance between Priority and Basic Access during normal use.

 

My thoughts

I'm honestly surprised it took this long for them to implement a 'limit', but what's more surprising is it's 1000gb! Given the state of ISPs in the US, I was fully expecting it to be much lower than that.

 

Sources

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/11/starlink-broadband-introduce-1000gb-fair-usage-policy-in-some-markets.html

https://www.starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1134-82708-70?regionCode=US

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I can't imagine living with a 1TB limit, but I guess for "mobile" internet it's pretty good. Personally I go over 2TB every month. 

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10 minutes ago, ZetZet said:

I can't imagine living with a 1TB limit, but I guess for "mobile" internet it's pretty good. Personally I go over 2TB every month. 

You're in the extreme fringe.  1TB limit is actually fairly common, and even though Cox has that on my service, I rarely exceed 350GB.

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11 minutes ago, ZetZet said:

I can't imagine living with a 1TB limit, but I guess for "mobile" internet it's pretty good. Personally I go over 2TB every month. 

When data caps first came out it was a couple hundred GB per month, and my ISP carged a flat fee for exceeding that, so I made sure to exceed it as much as possible.  seed those linux ISOs to F the ISP man.

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5 minutes ago, IPD said:

You're in the extreme fringe.  1TB limit is actually fairly common, and even though Cox has that on my service, I rarely exceed 350GB.

Interesting, over here data caps are only for mobile data. 

 

But then also the caps don't make sense, if the average user doesn't exceed the cap then why implement the cap to hurt a minority of users, it's not like it's going to help you much. 😂

3 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

When data caps first came out it was a couple hundred GB per month, and my ISP carged a flat fee for exceeding that, so I made sure to exceed it as much as possible.  seed those linux ISOs to F the ISP man.

You paid money to F the ISP man?  oh nvm you mean one payment for exceeding.

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6 minutes ago, ZetZet said:

 

 

But then also the caps don't make sense,

 

You paid money to F the ISP man?  oh nvm you mean one payment for exceeding.

Data caps make sense, just from an investor/ISP owner not a consumer.

Yes, I think the cap was 250GB and if you exceeded that it was an extra $50.  So if I had to pay an extra $50 bucks for internet, I am going to use as much as that valuable but suddenly unlimited internet to the MAX.

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23 minutes ago, ZetZet said:

I can't imagine living with a 1TB limit, but I guess for "mobile" internet it's pretty good. Personally I go over 2TB every month. 

In the UK, the average household uses 453GB a month.

 

I'm not sure how much I use as if I need to download large files I'll sometimes just get the bus into town and take advantage of 5G as it's faster (and cheaper) than I pay for my home broadband.

 

Last Christmas when I set up my brother's gaming computer, I had the choice of either using my mother's 35mbps internet, or my 5G which was about 350mbps. Fair to say I just tethered my phone and blasted through over 100gb of data in an hour!

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1 minute ago, ToboRobot said:

Data caps make sense, just from an investor/ISP owner not a consumer.

Yes, I think the cap was 250GB and if you exceeded that it was an extra $50.  So if I had to pay an extra $50 bucks for internet, I am going to use as much as that valuable but suddenly unlimited internet to the MAX.

Wait, $50 just for going over the cap? How much were you paying for just the 250GB?

I know prices over the pond are ridiculous, but that seems a bit excessive

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4 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

Yes, I think the cap was 250GB and if you exceeded that it was an extra $50.  So if I had to pay an extra $50 bucks for internet, I am going to use as much as that valuable but suddenly unlimited internet to the MAX.

That alone is more than I pay for gigabit fiber, tv and my mobile plan with unlimited data. In 2022. 😂

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2 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

Wait, $50 just for going over the cap? How much were you paying for just the 250GB?

I know prices over the pond are ridiculous, but that seems a bit excessive

I think about $50-60 dollars.  This was over a decade ago, so the details are fuzzy but it was definitely an extra $50 (f you Cogeco).

Hurray for Canadian ISP Cartels!

I currently pay $60ish/month for 40 down 10 Up and no cap. 

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Just now, ToboRobot said:

I think about $50-60 dollars.  This was over a decade ago, so the details are fuzzy but it was definitely an extra $50 (f you Cogeco).

Hurray for Canadian ISP Cartels!

 

The last 'data cap' we had was a whopping 40gb, and that must have been around 2009-2010. I remember we regularly exceeded it and we just got upgraded to the unlimited plan for free

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6 minutes ago, ZetZet said:

That alone is more than I pay for gigabit fiber, tv and my mobile plan with unlimited data. In 2022. 😂

Let's play spot the European! 🤣

 

I decided not to pay extra for the Gigabit as it's frankly pointless, most services that I use literally can't take advantage of the faster speeds!

 

I currently pay £50 a month in total for my internet related things, that gets me a 275/25 fibre connection, unlimited 5G home broadband that I have just to play around with, and my unlimited mobile plan.

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Laughs in 300GB cap... 🤣😅😐😢

 

Small town internet sucks horribly. At least the speeds are okay, 100 down and 15 up.

 

And then there's my mobile service. I don't get 5G because small town, and the cap is (while technically unlimited) is about 10GB, at which it gets slowed tf down to basically 2G speeds.

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17 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

In the UK, the average household uses 453GB a month.

I've already reached that this month. 😛

image.png.c69bb8b9d44cfd223dbcc63e728c9763.png

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1 minute ago, yolosnail said:

I decided not to pay extra for the Gigabit as it's frankly pointless, most services that I use literally can't take advantage of the faster speeds!

Yeah I have a small ISP, so it's not real gigabit. I share gigabit with 9 apartments in my building and we all get guaranteed 100Mbit, but it never actually goes that low for one individual user. Like in peak use times I've seen it go as low as 300. Normally get around 500-900. And obviously the upload is basically always near gigabit, because no one uploads anything. 

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Looks like i'm safe in Australia.

 

I don't even think i would even be able to hit 1TB a month even if they did unless i really tried..

🌲🌲🌲

 

 

 

◒ ◒ 

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5 minutes ago, ZetZet said:

Yeah I have a small ISP, so it's not real gigabit. I share gigabit with 9 apartments in my building and we all get guaranteed 100Mbit, but it never actually goes that low for one individual user. Like in peak use times I've seen it go as low as 300. Normally get around 500-900. And obviously the upload is basically always near gigabit, because no one uploads anything. 

That actually pretty good.  Gigabit FTTP is often a 2.4Gbit service shared with 64 properties, though in the UK its typically 30 properties max and its shared with people on different speed packages so if you're the only Gigabit customer you're unlikely to notice much contention.

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4 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I've already reached that this month. 😛

That's just from downloading the new COD I assume? 🤣

 

4 minutes ago, ZetZet said:

Yeah I have a small ISP, so it's not real gigabit. I share gigabit with 9 apartments in my building and we all get guaranteed 100Mbit, but it never actually goes that low for one individual user. Like in peak use times I've seen it go as low as 300. Normally get around 500-900. And obviously the upload is basically always near gigabit, because no one uploads anything. 

I've just had a free speed boost from 225/20 to 275/25 and honestly I wouldn't even notice.

For work I have to download files from the likes of IONOS cloud and Microsoft, and they usually cap out at around 20mbps anyway!

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4 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

That's just from downloading the new COD I assume? 🤣

 

I've just had a free speed boost from 225/20 to 275/25 and honestly I wouldn't even notice.

For work I have to download files from the likes of IONOS cloud and Microsoft, and they usually cap out at around 20mbps anyway!

Our largest ISP just bumped all speeds for no extra cost. 100 > 250, 300 > 500, and they made the gigabit plan cheaper (I guess for existing customers, it will only apply after their contract expires) and then introduced 2 gigabit plan on top of that. And obviously they are all symmetrical. https://www.telia.lt/privatiems/internetas?24-men-sutartis

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Just now, ZetZet said:

Our largest ISP just bumped all speeds for no extra cost. 100 > 200, 300 > 500, and they made the gigabit plan cheaper (I guess for existing customers, it will only apply after their contract expires) and then introduced 2 gigabit plan on top of that. And obviously they are all symmetrical. 

 

The real issue we have here is the upload, unless you go with an altnet, as it's limited to 100mbps (or 200mbps if you're a business) on gigabit plans despite being FTTP.

 

Or, if you're unfortunate enough to be with Virgin Media (like me), then even if you go for their gigabit plan, the upload is 50mbps!

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54 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

It's not a data cap as such, as you will be able to continue to have access albeit at a reduced speed depending on the capacity of the network.

That's how most data caps work

Don't ask to ask, just ask... please 🤨

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1 minute ago, yolosnail said:

 

The real issue we have here is the upload, unless you go with an altnet, as it's limited to 100mbps (or 200mbps if you're a business) on gigabit plans despite being FTTP.

 

Or, if you're unfortunate enough to be with Virgin Media (like me), then even if you go for their gigabit plan, the upload is 50mbps!

Weird. It's like they're not actually using the capabilities fiber. 😂

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Just now, Sauron said:

That's how most data caps work

I only put that in because there'd be some pedantic sod that would comment about it not being a 'cap'!

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1 minute ago, ZetZet said:

Weird. It's like they're not actually using the capabilities fiber. 😂

What's even weirder is with Virgin Media, because they're a 'cable' provider, in new areas like mine that have FTTP they convert it from fibre to coax at the wall then run it into the router!

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