Starlink Introduces New TOS With Fair Use Policy - Data Cap Coming for Residential Customers
Starlink Introduces New TOS With Fair Use Policy - Data Cap Coming for Residential Customers:
Key Points:
- Residential users are now limited to 1TB Priority Access data, while data over that amount is deprioritized
- RV and Best Effort plans are not affected since all usage on these plans is already deprioritized
- Starlink introduces off-peak times for some plans from 11pm-7am that doesn't count towards Priority Access data
- Business & Commercial plans will have a hard throttle to 1 Mbps after reaching their cap
- Additional Priority Access data can be purchased
Starlink has updated its Terms of Service (TOS) which now references a new Fair Use Policy that will go into effect next month.
Up until this point, all Starlink data has been unlimited - only differentiated between Priority Access and Best Effort, depending on the particular service plan and where it was being used.
Essentially, SpaceX is acknowledging that "Starlink is a finite resource" and that it is not possible to deliver truly unlimited data plans without performance dragging to a crawl in too many places. To improve things, SpaceX is moving towards network management practices similar to what is commonly seen in the cellular industry.
SpaceX Starlink Fair Use Policy for Canada and U.S. Delayed to 2023
SpaceX Starlink Fair Use Policy for Canada and U.S. Delayed to 2023:
SpaceX has delayed the implementation of a new Fair Use policy on Starlink connections in Canada and the U.S. to February 2023, according to an update on the company's website (via Tesla North).
The policy, which will institute data caps on Priority Access usage for all Starlink Residential customers in Canada and the U.S. and all Business/Maritime subscribers, was initially supposed to go into effect in December 2022.
"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 for Residential customers in the US and Canada and all Business/Maritime customers beginning February 2023," SpaceX said on its Starlink FAQ page.
Starting in February 2023, Starlink Residential customers in Canada and the U.S. on the Standard/Fixed plan will have their Priority Access data usage capped at 1 terabyte (TB) per month. Starlink Business subscribers will get up to 3 TB of Priority Access data (depending on their plan), while Starlink Mobility connections will get up to 5 TB.
Priority Access means your "data usage will be prioritized" during peak usage hours on the network. If a subscriber goes over their Priority Access limit, they will be downgraded to "Basic Access" with lower data rates for the rest of the billing cycle.
Any data used between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. won't count towards a user's Priority Access data cap.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday December 06, @03:23PM (3 children)
Starlink is a global constellation of satellites with a limited number of approved devices. Current ISP practices make Starlink an attractive option for many reasons. Starlink has a certain limit on what they can provide. Thus, some sort of data-cap seemed inevitable. It was certainly surprising for a Satellite ISP to not have one.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Tuesday December 06, @03:27PM (2 children)
How about not signing up more subscribers than you can actually service? If I sell a service I cannot provide, it's called fraud. If ISPs do it, it's legal for some reason.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Tuesday December 06, @06:57PM (1 child)
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, it was a dark time. AOL was deluging the peace loving citizens with mountains of AOL floppy disks in an effort to sink the North American continent into the oceans. These disks came with seductively enticing offers of the first hit being free, and exciting times online. Once seduced by the dark lord, people discovered to their horror the endless busy signals from their modems. While there weren't busy signals for signing up, there were once you were enslaved.
It was so bad, people complained to state attorneys general. Even the federal government. I quite distinctly remember some AG suggesting that it was definitely illegal if you sold 10,000 tickets to a theater that had only 3,000 seats. (Don't remember which one said that.)
Interesting that ISPs can oversell today, and have no consequences. Maybe the dark side finally won.
The age of men is over. The time of the Orc has come.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Tuesday December 06, @08:33PM
Ah, AOL The big catch was you had an online presence for $20 a month where otherwise you would be paying by the minute to download and upload. Even with the 96 k modem you could find huge data and phone bills.
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Tuesday December 06, @03:25PM
Fair use is not fair, and value edition has no value.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by datapharmer on Tuesday December 06, @04:22PM (3 children)
This is both misleading and old news. All Starlink customers were told about this more than a month ago and despite the headline there is no mention of a data cap for residential customers anywhere in the ToS or the article the "hard cap" only applies to commercial use. While I get the argument from both sides, I think it is reasonable to put a prioritization in place - they aren't even saying they will slow you intentionally to some ridiculous speed like the cellular providers do, they simply give your packets a class under the customers that haven't used all their data.
My biggest gripe with this change isn't that they are imposing prioritization, but that they are making it based only on peak hours and total usage and not based on DSCP or QoS marking. I'll gladly mark my traffic that is less important and let it be slower during peak hours. If my software downloads take 10 seconds or 10 minutes it really doesn't matter to me as long as my voip calls and video calls don't drop out or get jittery. It would be nice if best effort and background traffic was truly that and didn't count against priority access. I can see an argument of that not being practical from the end user's upload side if the uplinks are getting maxed out, but downloads to the the end user they could traffic shape while it is still in the terrestrial network.
(Score: 3, Touché) by janrinok on Tuesday December 06, @06:17PM
Er, did you read ALL of it?
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Wednesday December 07, @02:25AM (1 child)
Sadly, I think that is an artefact of a more gentle age. Businesses will find it impossible to categorise traffic. 99% of Internet traffic will be HTTPS: which lumps both large downloads and Zoom et al into one amorphous bucket.
Residential users who are hitting one terabyte a month can have a chat with their resident Tommy Teenager about their need to download the entire Internet and suffer through until next month. Businesses, not so much. Sure, they can work out what is causing the excessive usage and put mitigation strategies in place, but they still need to do business for the rest of the month (and I am certain that any "top up" product offered will have a miserly dollar-per-gig value).
A more useful cap could be applied on a daily basis. Reach your cap, your Internet access goes to pot, and your employees might as well go home for the afternoon. Let's face it, Internet is not optional any more.
Question: is it possible for a web application to apply QoS flags? I don't believe it is, at least not in the sense of the browser being in a position to say "I am doing a file download, FYI low priority" or "this is a teleconference, high priority please".
(Score: 2) by datapharmer on Wednesday December 07, @02:53AM
Yes dscp and qos can be declared outside of encryption- it cares not whether it is secure or plain text.