ASA Bans UK Starlink Satellite Broadband Ad for Misleading Pricing

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned an online banner advert for SpaceX’s ultrafast broadband satellite service, Starlink, after it was found to be “misleading” because the offer of free terminal hardware (normally £299) omitted several key bits of material information.

The Starlink promotion in question will probably be familiar to some of ISPreview’s readers, as we’ve written about it before. In this case, the ad contained the following text alongside an image of Starlink’s hardware kit: “£0 £299 for the Standard Kit with 12-Month Residential Service Plan commitment“. Below the image, small text stated: “Availability and price may vary based on location […] Terms apply. Review the FAQs on starlink.com to learn more”.

However, readers may recall that this promotion wasn’t available to every location, and in some areas those who tried to sign up also found that they had to pay a demand surcharge in addition to the £299 hardware fee (at the time this was an issue across a big part of South East England); this appears to have been what prompted the complaint. The ASA also found some other issues in their ruling.

ASA Ruling REF: A25-1298384

The map provided by Starlink showed that the offer was not available to consumers living across the south-east of England; in Greater London, Kent, Essex, the southern part of Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, most of Hampshire, Surrey, West Sussex and East Sussex. We understood those areas amounted to approximately a third of the UK population. We considered that because the offer was not available to consumers in a specifically defined geographical region, covering a significant proportion of the UK population, that was a significant limitation and qualification to the offer which should have been made clear in the ad. We concluded the ad was misleading because it omitted that material information.

Furthermore, as referenced above, we considered consumers would understand that if they were not eligible for the offer, they would pay £299 for the Standard Kit plus the cost of the 12-month plan. While that was the case for some customers, others were charged an additional upfront ‘demand surcharge’, which we noted for the complainant amounted to £195. Because the ad implied that consumers would not pay more than £299 plus the monthly cost of the 12-month plan, when that was not the case, we considered that the ad was also misleading in this regard.

We concluded the ad was misleading because it omitted material information, including the cost of the 12-month service plan, the geographical limitation on the availability of the promotional price offer, and that consumers who were not eligible for the promotional price may be charged an additional fee.

As usual, the ASA banned the advert in its current form and told Starlink to ensure that their future ads for the promotional price offer did not omit material information. The company has since tweaked the language of their promotion.