Starlink Delays Eliminating Opt-In Mobile Priority Data Feature Until “Early 2025”

Starlink had previously announced that the ability to opt-in to Mobile Priority data on Roam plans would be going away on October 10th.

Since the Roam plan only provides coverage on land or near shore, this feature was particularly important to boaters - who would often enable Mobile Priority ($2/GB) to keep coverage during brief jaunts offshore or while island-hopping.

The news that this feature was leaving, coupled with new Coastal Coverage limitations (see our news story earlier this week), has been causing a lot of distress in various cruising forums.

Many boaters felt that they were being pushed to jump from the $165/mo Roam plan to the $250/mo Mobile Priority - 50GB plan.

With just a week to go before the opt-in feature was set to be eliminated, yesterday SpaceX sent out an email postponing the removal of the opt-in Mobile Priority data feature until early next year.

Just what is going on here?

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Ongoing Starlink Roam Plan Changes 

As we reported on last month - Starlink announced some significant changes to the popular Roam plan that was slated to go into effect on October 10th.

Changes included raising the monthly price from $150/mo to $165/mo - and completely eliminating the option to purchase Priority data only when needed (such as during a brief ocean crossing) for $2/GB. 

The price hike is sticking around, but it seems that SpaceX has backed away from eliminating the opt-in Mobile Priority feature - for now.

It is currently unclear just what SpaceX intends to bring out in early 2025 to make it possible to "seamlessly switch plans for use when traveling on international waters" - but the wording seems to indicate that this will be a feature that will only be needed when cruising further offshore than the new 12nm "Coastal Coverage" categorization for territorial waters.

Concluding Thoughts

SpaceX has a history of making sudden and seemingly haphazard changes to Starlink plans, so this surprise announcement just a week before the feature was slated to go away is just par for the course with Starlink.

Hopefully SpaceX has been paying attention to the concerns raised in cruising forums - and is going back to the drawing board to work on a less disruptive change.

We also wonder - will postponing these changes around opt-in Mobile Priority data also delay the enforcement of the new Coastal Coverage limitations that are coming to the Roam plan as well.

We reported just a few days ago about Starlink limiting Roam plan customers to just 5 consecutive days of usage in "coastal waters", with a limit of just 60 days on the water per year.

This new limitation remains in Starlink's online plan description, but perhaps it will not be enforced until the new "seamless" experience is ready.

We'll be waiting and watching - because the only thing certain with Starlink is that everything is subject to change.

 

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