Photo: Nathan Owens
Since SpaceX announced plans to place data caps on Starlink internet accounts last year to help prevent mass slowdown, the company has delayed its effective date two separate times.
SpaceX is delaying the implementation of its Fair Use data cap policies in the U.S. and Canada once again, this time saying it will become effective “no earlier than April 2023” in a statement on its website (via @Nathan Owens).
The change applies to all Residential, Business and Maritime Starlink accounts, and the news comes after SpaceX initially delayed plans for its Starlink Fair Use policy to February 2023.
Starlink Allows Drone to Deliver Emergency Supplies in Japan, After Landslide [VIDEO] https://t.co/XApy3h4JxB
— TeslaNorth.com (@RealTeslaNorth) January 27, 2023
The data caps will still offer Residential service users unlimited data, but upon reaching 1 TB in a given billing cycle, users will be downgraded from the Priority Access tier to Basic Access for the remainder of the billing cycle.
SpaceX said in a past statement via email that users using this much data represent under 10 percent of users.
Basic Access is not Starlink’s lowest tier, with the even-lower “Best Effort” access level still offering between 5 and 100 Mbps of data download speeds.
Last week, SpaceX launched another 56 Starlink satellites on what was the heaviest payload yet to be launched with the Falcon 9 booster. By December, SpaceX had reached 3,000 Starlink satellites in operational positions in orbit.
Today, SpaceX launched 49 Starlink satellites and D-Orbit’s ION SCV009 Eclectic Elena to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The first stage Falcon 9 booster that successfully landed today on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship stationed in the Pacific Ocean, previously supported NROL-87, NROL-85, SARah-1, SWOT, and two Starlink missions.
Check out the replay below:
