SpaceX has started informing Starlink subscribers of plans to introduce a Fair Use policy on connections in Canada and the U.S. starting in December — reports Tesla North.
“To ensure our customer base is not negatively impacted by a small number of users consuming unusually high amounts of data, the Starlink team is implementing a Fair Use policy in the US and Canada in December 2022,” SpaceX told customers in an email.
The company’s Fair Use policy will allot 1 TB of “Priority Access” data to all Starlink Residential subscribers in Canada and the U.S. According to SpaceX, under 10% of its current Starlink user base in these regions uses more than 1 TB of data per month.
All customers will still have unlimited data on their Starlink connections. They’ll simply start each billing cycle with 1 TB of Priority Access, which means “their data usage will be prioritized” during peak usage hours on the network.
“Customers who exceed 1 TB of data use on a monthly basis (currently < 10% of users) will automatically be switched to Basic Access for the remainder of the billing cycle, which means their data usage will be deprioritized during times of network congestion, resulting in slower speeds,” the company explained.
SpaceX noted that any data used between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. won’t count towards a user’s 1 TB of Priority Access.
In its email, SpaceX is telling each Starlink customer whether the data cap will affect them, based on their usage patterns over the last six months. What’s more, Starlink users can now monitor their data usage on their Starlink account page.
SpaceX’s upcoming data cap only applies to Starlink Residential customers, which is far from the only service the company is currently providing.
The company has Starlink Maritime for ships at sea and Starlink for RVs, and last month it even launched Starlink Aviation for airplanes. In addition, SpaceX has also announced a new Flat High-Performance Starlink dish, launching in December, that will make the service operational on moving vehicles.
Earlier this week, SpaceX expanded Starlink coverage to northern Canada, including the entirety of Nunavut.
