Starlink’s UK Satellite Broadband Service Hit by High Court Writ of Control
Remember when Nik Fox, a UK broadcast technology expert, accused Elon Musk’s popular space-based broadband ISP, Starlink (SpaceX), of hitting consumers with a “predatory … hardware trap” a couple of months ago (here)? The satellite provider has since failed to respond to a related legal claim and is now facing a High Court Writ of Control, which could result in direct asset seizure.
Just to recap. It’s fair to say that Starlink’s UK service and pricing options have been through quite a few changes over the past few months, which hasn’t always gone down well with customers (here). As Nik’s legal action portal – Starlink Sucks – claims: “Recently, Starlink has begun unilaterally downgrading users to severely capped alternative options like the “Standby” plan without consent—only to issue automated notices weeks later inflating the price of those unwanted plans while setting their incoming support emails to bounce.” Indeed, Standby Mode did recently double in price from £4.50 per month to £9.
The latest legal action is said to follow a dispute, related to the above complaint, in which Starlink’s automated customer care and internal escalation loops are alleged by Nik to have “completely failed“. During prior arbitration proceedings with the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) – an industry ombudsman, Starlink submitted documentation acknowledging that it had ignored direct emails sent to high-level executive escalation addresses regarding the complaint. But despite this, the CEDR declined to progress the complaint on a technicality and allegedly refused to accept that Starlink had “received” a formal complaint.
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In response Nik Fox said he escalated the dispute to the County Court, but Starlink (specifically ‘Starlink Internet Services UK Limited‘) is then said to have ignored the formal court documentation served under Civil Procedure Rules. However, by allowing the claim to pass its statutory deadlines undefended, Starlink ended up inviting a Default Judgment.
Nik Fox told ISPreview:
“It’s yet more tactical ignorance from Starlink. They knew if they ignored it then it wouldn’t go to court and the worst-case outcome was it costing them a few grand. They don’t want their practices in the UK to be subjected to proper legal scrutiny because they know that any competent court would demolish them.”
The County Court Claim (N8QZ7D0J) has now been transferred to the High Court of Justice for enforcement, which has issued a Writ of Control that authorises High Court Enforcement Officers (HCEOs) to execute recovery (i.e. an order to seize and sell a debtor’s assets to satisfy an unpaid money judgment).
In theory this could mean that agents may soon be visiting Starlink’s corporate address in London. The writ also specifically lists several of Starlink’s critical UK ground infrastructure sites — including satellite teleports at Goonhilly (Cornwall) and Chalfont (Buckinghamshire) — as authorised locations for enforcement.
“Under the powers of the writ, enforcement officers are legally entitled to force entry to these commercial operational sites to inspect, tag, and seize physical corporate assets—including ground station network hardware and power infrastructure—to satisfy the judgment debt,” said Nik. But we strongly suspect Starlink will most likely pay off the debt once directly presented with the demand.
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High Court Writs of Control are governed by Schedule 12 of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 and Part 83/84 of the Civil Procedure Rules. Enforcement agents operating under a sealed High Court Writ possess statutory powers to take control of and sell a corporate debtor’s goods, equipment, and operational machinery.
ISPreview has attempted to contact SpaceX’s media office in the hope of extracting a comment, although they’ve never responded to our comment request before and so we suspect they won’t start now.
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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This HAS to be a joke, This is the worlds richest man. I mean seriously!?
Ban Starlink. That would be the best way forward.
Not for the people who rely on it – me being one of them!
The benefits outweigh the cost of effective such a small minority of people.
The money and materials spent on LEO programs could be spent on land infrastructure, which would be more resilient, reliable, last longer and be recyclable at end of life.
Starlink and other LEO satellites costs an insane amount of resources to put up, they pollute the skies, last barely anytime at all, then burn up in the atmosphere and cause crazy damage to the ozone layer.
It should be completely banned.
Starlink was created to bring Internet to people who can’t get it any other way.
which backs up Anon’s point – if they invested decent internet to those areas instead of satellite… you wouldn’t need starlink.
This is in my opinion why the product is not suitable for a backup service, for USO purposes etc. The company seem to think that no rules apply to them, you have no idea at the start of the year what it’s going to cost you by the end, and media enquiries go unanswered.
I am not convinced either Musk or Bezos are good people, but at least the Amazon LEO service is less likely to be operated by children.
Stop spreading lies. I’VE HAD STARLINK FOR YEARS. NONE OF WHAT YOU SAY IS REMOTELY TRUE.
Honestly this seems like a nonsense case, driven by a personal hatred of Elon Musk. Nik Fox should talk to actual Starlink customers who have been saved from rural broadband isolation. There is no “hardware trap” – you buy the dish and use it to connect to Starlink’s network, for which you pay a monthly fee. We pay £40 per month for 100Mb/s – our only other option is terrible 4G internet or <5Mb/s fixed line. There are occassional outages as with traditional broadband but overall the service great and we are very happy.
Musk does enough litigation himself and most of the time it’s pretty vexatious, so he can expect to be on the receiving end occasionally.
Ah yes. You hate musk thanks to your horrible jealousy of him & want to stop him from reminding you he shares this Earth with you. Woooosss!
@John Adams you are funny, very amusing.
I would really love to see a special episode of Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away! on this!
An episode of one of those “Can’t pay, won’t pay” series on Channel 5 (where else?) saw the bailiffs turning up at a Fujitsu site, where an equal lack of understanding of the law was demonstrated by the security guy on the gate.
Those are always the ones we want to see, not someone who’s ripped off a car buyer.
Hopefully the cameras will be there if it does happen.
I would genuinely pay decent cash to watch bailiffs take away their assets.
Corrr this really triggers the snowflakes doesn’t it.
Just had the Starlink Performance Kit arrive for backup, outstanding service and good quality kit.
Stable prices would be nice but they operate their prices inline with supply/demand.
So why is it that Mozillion mobile can give me a 2 year fixed price contract but starlink can not?
That would be because Mozillion isn’t launching, decomissioning, and replacing thousands of satellites every year to provide high speed internet anywhere in the world.
Well, one main reason if you like is that an Mozillion esim does not csot £2500 to make – it also does not use a cell tower costing 20-50Million each.
It’s never going to be a bargain basement affair – and due to, I don’t know the trillions they have spent just on the sats alone, they need to vary price to suit
Or maybe it’s because they are tight, and you should get the moon on a stick for £1 with the stick back!?
Who knows!
What’s new?? There’s always been regional pricing on things, constant price changes, you can buy something today and tomorrow it could be £10 less. But at the same time it could be £10 more…? except now as always the people in power may fuck things up, all they have to do is be like “we are going to stop serving UK”
I’m unsure how many in the UK use it, but those who do, use it because OR have failed them. This is only going to hurt those that need good internet.
In this week’s episode, Brian has gained entrance to the Starlink ground station. He’s wasted no time in seizing the 30 metre dish outside. But he’s having a little trouble getting it in the van…
Maybe you should google what a ground station looks like
have a look at Gonehilly – the 9 golf balls in a cage should give it away. In fact let me google that for you
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Goonhilly+Earth+Station/@50.0484125,-5.1799219,104m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x486b29557b29d9dd:0x2dce12fb378ad862!8m2!3d50.0481728!4d-5.1810449!16zL20vMDNiMjk?authuser=0&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDcyMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
I mean the high court can pay a trip to 7 Albemarle Street, London, W1S 4HQ and see it’s a shell office or they could take a trip to LEO and take a satatlie 😀
Someone has some personal hate for must that’s fine. As a consumer product it’s fantastic I pay £120 a month and I’m able to work remotely. Travel with the mini mounted to the car and the children can game all previously was not possible due where we live.
Pricing is based on supply and demand.
Starlink is doomed now
unless they have the Cash to Pay up
I do not like Starlink because it is very expensive
and it is better to have a Fibre Fixed Line instead
I live on a boat. Fixed line is impossible. If starlink is too expensive for you then don’t buy it.
They have 12million subscribers. A low estimate would be £500,000,000 a month income,so they have the cash.
Similar to many Starlink users, the service is the only viable solution for home workers where no reliable fixed or mobile service is available. Rest assured it will be decommissioned as soon as fibre is available, 2 years and counting now we have a BDUK subsidy for our area.
Yet again “officers” have far too much power when an obvious deranged group seeking to cause damage is being successful
Starlink is a fantastic product and people are welcome to buy it or not
You seem to be of the opinion that people should be able to ignore the law, and the lawfully given orders of the courts when they choose.
Whilst I accept that anarchy is a perfectly valid political goal, it is unlikely to lead to better internet access overall and therefore probably isn’t going to be supported by the majority of people reading this site.
And yet if someone owed you a lot of money – I guarantee you would welcome their power. Yes they have the power to enter commercial premises by force – so the gates will be opened.
Prior to Starlink, rural dwellers and nomadic users had other options… None of them had/have anywhere near the convenience, speed, price or reliability of Starlink. It’s orders of magnitude different, if you multiply those factors up.
Starlink is a great service, to those that NEED it, essential to those that HAVE to have it. It was a very, very risky venture when proposed and extremely expensive. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Be careful knocking it.
I have fortunately just got fibre and am no longer in that unfortunate group, but they will always exist, you can’t put fibre or decent 5G everywhere. The guy on a boat, a great example.
In time Starlink will get competition from Amazon’s Leo, RocketLab, the Chinese and others. That’ll alter Musk/Starlink’s behaviour, slowly.
An AI reset, probably more so.
I have just received not from Starlink increasing cost to £80 a month but also received note saying £40 plan at 100 MPs. Am I mad to switch? We only get about 40 MPs.
how much does Starlink owe? when the enforcement officers come, maybe starlink will give them a truck load of old receivers to pay the bill!
I’m imagining Can’t pay, we’ll take it away walking out of Goonhilly carrying geodesic domes
I’ve a bigger bank and legal department than you proles so I’ll do what I want and ultimately get away with it even if ‘guilty’ with a ineffective penalty fine, and even then just arise charges for consumers to pay it :-}
Well if people will patronise such moral organisations, enjoy. Caveat emptor.
About the only justice these days is if consumers boycott bad actors, put personal greed and division undermine and squnder consumer’s few ultimateremaining powers.