Starlink Toys with Cheaper Residential 100Mbps Broadband Satellite Plan
The Starlink (SpaceX) internet service, which reflects a mega constellation of ultrafast broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), recently introduced a new residential package for consumers – currently only available in the USA (but it may yet come to the UK) – that caps download speeds at 100Mbps, but drops the monthly price to just $50 (c.£30).
Starlink currently has around 8,940 satellites in orbit (c.5,400 are v2 / V2 Mini) – mostly at altitudes of c.500-600km. Residential customers in the UK usually pay from £75 a month, plus £299 for hardware (currently free for many areas) on the ‘Standard’ unlimited data plan (kit price may vary due to different offers) directly from Starlink, which promises UK latency times of 26-33ms, downloads of 116-277Mbps and uploads of 17-32Mbps. Cheaper, albeit more restrictive (data capped), options also exist for roaming users (e.g. £50 per month for 50 GigaBytes of data).
Suffice to say that one of the obstacles to Starlink’s wider adoption by home users in the UK has been the relatively high price point of their unlimited data service. As above, you can get cheaper roaming options, but these aren’t really intended for homes and would only really work well as a backup solution or for those with low usage requirements. Ofcom states that the average monthly data usage per UK broadband connection is now 531GB (GigaBytes) across “all technologies“ or 766GB for full-fibre lines.
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The difficulty with expensive-to-run satellite broadband networks is that it’s hard for them to offer truly mass-market affordable packages and deliver unlimited usage with fast speeds at the same time. But this seems to now have become more viable for Starlink as they expand the capacity of their ground stations, spectrum use and launch more capable satellites into orbit.
The new “Residential 100Mbps” package in the USA is a good example of that, since it offers unlimited data but does obviously cap download speeds at 100Mbps (this is still a good level of performance for most people) in order to hit that attractive $50 (c.£30) per month price point. Upload speeds aren’t throttled, but then they rarely go much above 20Mbps anyway. The other catch is that availability of this plan remains limited to certain parts of the USA (most likely states where capacity is in abundance).
Customers in the USA can alternatively pay $80 (c.£61) per month for “Residential Lite” and speeds up to 250Mbps (this is closest to the UK’s Standard plan) or take “Residential” for $120 (c.£91) and speeds up to 400Mbps. Normally we wouldn’t cover Starlink package changes in other countries as they have different approaches right across the world (reflecting differences in capacity, ground stations, spectrum availability etc.), but we do think there’s a good chance of something similar coming to the UK in 2026.
The reason for thinking this is four-fold. Firstly, Ofcom has recently been granting Starlink access to more spectrum capacity, and on top of that they’ll shortly start launching their first high-capacity GEN3 satellites into orbit. In addition, the recent agreement with BT and EE to launch a rural broadband solution would mark a perfect opportunity to launch such a package (here). Finally, Starlink is about to face more competition from Amazon’s Leo service, so what better way to respond to that than by leveraging the advantages of a more mature network via competitive pricing. Time will tell.
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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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Good plan. 100Mbps is still enough for most people, even if they don’t think it is! All lot of us have been ‘oversold’ these crazy gigabit plans, forgetting that we actually managed with just 8-12Mbps ADSL not so very long ago. Sure, in another 5 years 0.1Gbps might seem a little tight, but there’s no point in paying for bandwidth today that you can’t meaningfully use.
“forgetting that we actually managed with just 8-12Mbps”
By “we” I presume you mean “you”?
Because I remember back in the day struggling with 4-16mbps ADSL speeds, in fact the reason why back when I lived with my parents we got FTTC when it was a ‘premium’ product was because me just trying to download something whilst they watched Netflix caused problems.
I also had to deal with a family member who was stuck with 10mbps constantly complaining because it caused issues. If it weren’t for them moving to somewhere with faster available speeds, I would have told him he probably would have to get Starlink as it was the only viable alternative at the time.
I’d quite like them tailor the product more towards it being used as a backup than things are currently. I think you can subscribe and pause service but it would be nice to have a £5/month tier that runs at a megabit or so – enough to keep WAN health checks happy – and then you get the option to activate it at £20/week if your primary service goes down.
Standby mode is already available… £5/month for 0.5Mbps.
I’d love it if it could automatically switch from standby mode if you start using it, then automatically drops back once the month you’ve paid for ends.
I rather rely on mobile than put money into his pocket, or even go without broadband.
Green eyed monster syndrome!
I already have a Tesla and a yearly X premium subscription. Comments like this make me want to get premium+ subscription and go to the US just so I can rent a Cybertruck
Plenty of us rural folk in the UK who don’t have much option but to support him – no mobile signal on any network, no fibre coming to us for years if at all, but work from home…. It’s not such a simple decision for lots of people. We ‘caved’ and got Starlink a few months ago and it’s been a saviour compared to the very unreliable fixed wirelesss broadband. A reduction in price would be amazing till Project Gigabit finally gets to us
@Gary Please do that. The poor billionaire needs all the help he can get!
@Gary, good for you, if you want to support him then that is up to you, I suggest you stay in the U.S, if you love him that much.
I did laugh when someone drew a swastika on a Tesla down the road, the owner was not happy, I said to him, that is what you get when you buy a Tesla, thankfully it was only in lipstick.
@K Cox, i realise that there are people who can’t get broadband of any sort, but I would still rather go without than support him.
can’t stand Musk. but what do you do when you have no other option? it’s nice to be able to stick to principles about horrid people, but right now if you can’t get mobile or wired broadband or it’s horribly slow what do you do? suffer without because of your principles? I really doubt most people would do that.
They gave me a £52,99 car charger just for re activing my mini – I did it on the last day of the billing cycle so it cost me 95p. This 100mbps plan would sit well between residential and standby