5 ms·
Note that this is for the "aviation plan" which already requires six-digits equipment.
by BoppreH 2mo ago
Note that this is for the "aviation plan" which already requires six-digits equipment.
- vel0city 2mo agoYeah, for regular people they're just starting to suddenly charge $1,500 fees. https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1uklz4q/starlink_1500_dollar_demand_surcharge/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1uklz4q/starlink_...
- r3trohack3r 2mo ago> He then reviewed my billing history and account details, confirmed that my service address had never actually changed, and determined that nothing had been moved. As a result, he issued a full refund.
- BoorishBears 2mo agoYeah but it still sounds like $1,500 demand fee was not a mistake, charging OP was the mistake. People first mentioned these fees at like $100... now you can go to Costco, grab a Starlink, and they'll randomly ask for $1,500 to actually start service. Congestion is a thing when each node needs to go to space, but it also feels like they're cashing in on years of "just move to a cabin in the woods and work off Starlink"... once you've done that they have you by the balls even worse than a typical ISP.
- wat10000 2mo agoIsn't this fee specifically before they have you by the balls?
- BoorishBears 2mo agoNot unless you had a potential $1500 fee top of mind before you moved... Wanna guess if Starlink is advertising how insane these fees have gotten?
- wat10000 2mo agoLet me guess... if you put the address into their handy text box, they tell you exactly what the demand surcharge is going to be for that location? I tried it, and would you look at that, I was right. I guess if you buy an entire house without checking to see what it costs to get internet service at that location, then you might be in a tough spot. Hard to blame it on anyone else though.
- bigbadfeline 2mo ago> I guess if you buy an entire house without checking We aren't talking about people buying hoses now, these fees weren't there before, so it becomes a typical bait and switch. "Congestion charge" means the starlink network lacks sufficient capacity to accommodate the areas that need it the most and where it was advertised the most. https://tech.yahoo.com/transportation/articles/elon-musk-charging-starlink-customers-170100747.html https://tech.yahoo.com/transportation/articles/elon-musk-cha... Jul 5, 2026The congestion charge was quietly added back in 2024, starting out as a one-time $100 fee, depending on location. By June 2025, that number grew to up to $1,000 in parts of the country, as PCMag reported at the time. As of last month, surcharges can hit $1,500.
- wat10000 2mo agoThey're not applying these retroactively. (They did so in the reddit link above, but that was a mistake that they fixed.) The only way you'd have this problem is if you check before you buy, see that it's not there, buy the place, then move in and find out that a surcharge was added in the meantime. That would suck, but I suppose it's a risk you run if you don't lock in your deal ahead of time, and you choose to move somewhere with only one good provider.
- r3trohack3r 2mo ago> Under Carr's leadership, Musk's rocket company has effectively been given carte blanche in its efforts to roll out its orbital Starlink broadband service to more Americans This article is profoundly disturbing. The audacity to think the government has _allowed_ people to voluntarily purchase Internet service from a provider capable of servicing their geography. As if this is an assumption to be broken! I’m sure glad my government has given me permission to purchase goods and services!
- naturalmovement 2mo agoIf you're privileged enough to work a six-figure tech job while engaging in a homesteader larp in a "cabin in the woods", you can probably afford the fee. So can "off-grid" YouTuber grifters. It's like everyone feels entitled to something they didn't know existed a few years ago.
- Cyberdogs7 2mo agoSo we should let companies do what ever anti-consumer practices they want, because you don't like the group they are doing it to? Should a car company be allowed to charge you an extra fee every time you have a passenger?
- naturalmovement 2mo agoIf you need a specialized amphibious vehicle to get to your shack in the woods, it's not anti-consumer if it costs you more than a Mitsubishi Mirage.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2mo agoThe world is more than rich tech bros living in the woods. Normal income people also wanted to use this service without being bankrupted. Rural homes do have roads that can be reached on a rusty pickup.
- ben_w 2mo agoA few days ago people were telling me the Starlink was brilliant because it gave small African villages with no mains electricity an internet connection to share. This kind of behaviour does rather dampen the value proposition for such people.
- naturalmovement 2mo agoDo you think tech bros who voluntarily choose to live in the woods should pay the same subsidized price as a rural African schoolhouse? Equity and all that.
- vel0city 2mo agoSo not his service address, but a slightly different latitude/longitude would have received that.
- wat10000 2mo agoHis address would have received it too, if he was starting new service. It's only for new customers, they're not hitting existing customers with the charge. The error was that putting in the address made it look like he had moved, which counts as new service.
- cortesoft 2mo agoIt sounds like this was a bug where slight updates to geolocation data (his address updated its physical location, probably to be more accurate) triggered a "location moved" process. Annoying, but not indicative of a new policy.
- engineer_22 2mo agoFurnishing low-latency, broadband connectivity to private aircraft. The Challenger 350 noted in the article stickers north of $10M
- engineer_22 2mo agoFor comparison, If you live in a $300,000 home and pay $100/month for internet you’re paying 0.4% per year for the service. If you own a $15,000,000 jet and pay $20,000/month for internet you’re paying 1.6% per year for the service. By this comparison, we might say private jet owners are paying 4x more for their internet on their plane.
- toomuchtodo 2mo agoThey are attempting to juice revenue across all product cohorts, this is simply another datapoint. Customers are captive until there are more connectivity options.
- nelsonic 2mo ago“Juice?” As in they have the best product by a wide margin and are charging a totally fair price for it that reflects demand. Nobody flying private cares about the price of Starlink. It’s worse if they are squeezing people in underserved rural areas… our monthly has gone down from €35 to €29 and still getting the same speed. The second SpaceX offers direct-to-cell in our area we will switch to their service as we’ve never had any issues with it whereas the incumbent mobile/broadband providers regularly throttle even when we’re paying top tier prices. Totally agree there needs to be more competition and preferably not from other billionaires … but until then, Starlink is great!
- toomuchtodo 2mo agoSpaceX has a monopoly on high speed satellite internet. They will extract as much as they can from customers with said monopoly until there is a competitor. Doesn't sound like we're talking past each other except perhaps you might be a fan and I am not (specifically, extractionist monopolist behavior).
- nelsonic 2mo agoDon’t think anyone except Peter Thiel and Hasbro will argue that Monopoly is a good thing. ;-) SpaceX has made the investments/innovation to better-serve the satellite internet market that already had players in it; HughesNet, Viasat, Iridium / Globalstar. Those were the price-gouging Oligopolist incumbents who Starlink is disrupting with a 10x better service for considerably cheaper. Totally agree that SpaceX doubling the price from $10k/month to $20k looks really bad especially if they’re doing it to existing customers. But the way I see this (as a non-private-jet-traveler) is: Starlink is doing a “Robin Hood” and making the Rich (who can all easily afford it) pay for the expansion of the service which will benefit all the rest of customers. And if the 0.01% decide to switch to an alternative supplier, that’s good for competition. So in a way it’s anti-monopolist. ;-)
- Rebelgecko 2mo agoThey also recently doubled the price of the standby plan
- napierzaza 2mo ago[dead]
- throwitaway222 2mo agoStarlink should probably reverse course on this however, it's one thing to pay 10k for up to 20 guests on a small private jet vs a company like Delta with a fleet of 747s. Charge Delta 20k, charge this guy 10k.
- theturtletalks 2mo agoWhy would they not charge as much as possible? Who else is launching satellites? He’s got one of the biggest moats I’ve ever seen.
- 7e 2mo agoAmazon Leo has about 350 in orbit now, on their way to 7,500.
- verzali 2mo agoThere are quite a few providers of inflight wifi via satellite (or even cellular towers). Speeds are not usually as high as Starlink but it is ridiculous to say they have zero competition. You also have Amazon building a constellation, OneWeb with one already in place (though not available for retail customers), and a Chinese one under construction.
- fallingbananna 2mo agoI don't know who else is launching satellites, but many airlines do offer wifi, often via partnerships with telco companies. It's just expensive and slow. So the only moat I see (as a layman) is the speed and capacity. The one flight that I was on that had Starlink, had better internet during the flight, than most airports have on the ground.
- matwood 2mo ago> The one flight that I was on that had Starlink, had better internet during the flight, than most airports have on the ground. When it comes to internet, this IS the moat.
- 2mo ago