Starlink plans to limit Internet subscribers in the United States who consume more than 1 TB of data per month from December 2022.
Those affected will have their speed curtailed during peak hours from 7am to 11pm. In order to encourage subscribers to move their heavy downloads during the night, use between 11pm and 7am is not included in the allocation.
The new policy, known as the Fair Usage Policy, was introduced for American Starlink subscribers and states that excessive users will have the option of restoring Priority Access for 25 cents per gigabyte, or remain without access to basic access until the end of the month.
In times of network congestion, users with basic access will experience slower speeds and lower performance compared to previous access, which can lead to damage or loss of certain services and applications to third parties. Subscribers who have already used their 1 TB data quota to watch 4K movies or play cloud gaming will find it more difficult to switch to basic access.
Starlink will offer a premium, but with a supplement for subscribers who have reached the data milestone. In summary, it costs $0.25 per GB of data, or $250 for an additional 1TB of storage. Nevertheless, SpaceX is optimistic, claiming that more than 10 per cent of its users exceed the average monthly data rate of 10,000 metric tons.
According to Starlink, standard customers can expect speeds of 20-100 Mbps for their fixed-line Internet plans, while business customers can expect speeds of 40-220 Mbps.
The sources for this piece include an article in Notebookcheck.