Starlink Expands UK Coverage to Include All of Remote Shetland
Good news. After very recently remarking on another story that Starlink’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based mega constellation of ultrafast broadband satellites still didn’t cover the whole of Shetland in North Scotland, the network coverage has now grown to cover the whole island.
Customers in the UK typically pay from £75 per month, plus £449 for the regular home kit (standard dish, router etc.) and £20 for shipping on the ‘Standard’ Starlink package, which gets you unlimited usage, a monthly contract term, fast latency times of 25-50ms, advertised downloads of c. 25-100Mbps and uploads of c. 5-10Mbps (speeds may change as the network grows).
However, previously Starlink’s coverage of Shetland only went about halfway up the remote island community, but at some point, seemingly within the past couple of weeks, they’ve extended this to include the whole area (credits to Charles for spotting). This will come as welcome news for those living in the northern half of Shetland, which includes many poorly served locations by fixed line solutions. Provided they’re willing or able to pay the price for it.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Crikey, at the convenient price of £75 a month.
Any concessions for those on Social Security or are all the islanders to a man fiercely independent and self-supporting Nordic hunters who are swimming in dosh ?
Im not sure Elon gives a damn about the poor
Many people are paying 75 for their broadband which has a much lower opex than satellites, not only that they are increasing every year for no reason other than greed
John – if you’re paying £75 a month for wired broadband, you’re either being ripped off, or you’re choosing to pay for a service that beats starlink in every single way (ie gigabit FTTP)
While BT, Virgin and others might see there’s a social responsibility in offering cheaper tariffs (and the government’s threat to regulate also helps), Musk won’t lift a finger unless literally forced to. This is the Silicon Valley way.
This idea that businesses should provide products at a loss is ridiculous. It is up to the government to ensure that vulnerable people have adequate incomes. Taxation is at record levels but huge amounts are wasted. C. Northcote Parkinson wrote about this in the 1950s.
You missed the word opex. I did not argue that broadband was inferior, just that it is cheaper to operate therefore there is no need to charge 75 yet companies will still do it
If the govt wants cheaper bills then it should cut taxes, not punish companies
The Capex to build the network to begin with isn’t free. The ISPs are either repaying their investors and lenders or are paying their network provider to repay their investors and lenders for the build.
So Starlink does not have capex? You think launching satellites is free? They have a money printer and have no debt?
The price of a service is determined by the market plus taxes. However if something costs a lot more to run then the price needs to match it otherwise it is not sustainable (actual meaning of the word in business, not ecozealotry). The capex has already been spent