Starlink tweak Personal Maritime Broadband Plan to support bigger boats

Good news. Starlink’s new Personal Maritime Plan for users of their ultrafast satellite broadband service, which is currently only being offered to selected customers, has corrected one of the biggest annoyances that appeared shortly after it first launched last month. The plan was previously limited to personal boats of up to 40ft in length, but this has now been extended to 60ft.

As we pointed out in our article on the new plan, a lot of personal sail boats, particularly those used for crossing rougher seas, will often exceed that length by a few feet (just take a stroll around some boat yards in the UK and you’ll see plenty above 40ft). But Starlink has now quietly updated the small print on this plan to increase the maximum length limit to 60ft (credits to PC Mag).

The Personal Maritime Plan will set customers back $185/month (£136), excluding applicable taxes. For that you’ll get unlimited data and use in territorial waters worldwide; Ocean Mode then becomes available beyond 12 nautical miles for $6/GB (i.e. for when you’re travelling beyond the coast and in international waters) and there’s no 30-day Roam international travel limit (except in extremely rare cases when required by local regulations).

Starlink currently has around 11,100 satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – mostly at altitudes of between c.340-550km. Residential users in the UK pay from £40 a month for the 100Mbps unlimited data plan, which also promises uploads of c.15-35Mbps and low latency connectivity (c.20ms). Faster packages exist at greater cost, while more restrictive (data capped) options also exist for roaming users (e.g. £55 per month for 100GB of data).