Starlink Allows UK Customers to Rent Satellite Broadband Kit

SpaceX’s Starlink ISP, which uses thousands of compact satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to deliver low latency ultrafast broadband speeds to homes, has launched a new option for UK customers that enables you to avoid paying one big setup fee for the hardware (dish, router etc.) via an additional monthly rental.

Customers in the UK would normally pay from £75 per month, plus £460 for the regular home kit (standard dish, router etc.) and £40 for shipping on the Standard Starlink package, which gets you unlimited usage, fast latency times of 25-50ms, advertised downloads of c. 50-200Mbps and uploads of c.5-15Mbps (speeds may change as the network grows).

However, Starlink put out a new email yesterday and updated their website to introduce a new rental option, which means that new customers now have the option of skipping the £460 hardware price and instead paying an additional rental fee of £15 per month. But this does come attached to a new one-time activation charge of £99, which somewhat reduces the benefit of this approach.

Customers that opt for this approach are still able to cancel at any time and return the kit within 30 days (Starlink will issue a return shipping label for this).

Starlink’s Email

Starlink is now offering the option to rent hardware with the Residential service plan throughout the United Kingdom. 

 

Hardware can be rented for £15/mo (versus the full purchase price of £460) with a one-time activation of £99. Monthly service is £75/mo.

 

There are no long term contracts, both hardware rental and service are charged month-to-month. Try Starlink for 30 days and if not satisfied, return the hardware for a full refund of your £99 activation, or your £460 if purchased. 

 

To learn more about Starlink rentals, read our FAQ page or our updated Terms of Service.

In practical terms, this means that those who choose to rent rather than buy outright would be spreading the initial hardware cost (usually £460) over a 24-month period. But the catch is that people who rent will need to continue paying that charge after the first 24 months, which makes the overall service significantly more expensive for long-term customers.

We should point out that the practice of offering hardware rental is already fairly common among other satellite based broadband ISPs.