Starlink Testing Out Soft Data Caps in France With a Price Cut

Some Starlink users in France recently got an email (copy of the email in French users received) that their monthly service cost would be almost cut in half from their 99€/month to 50€/month, but included in that email was a new fair use policy stating that starting in October, users would still have access to unlimited data, but would now be subject to a soft data cap.

Users who use more than 250 GB/month would now be deprioritized after that 250 GB threshold was exceed in any given month. 

Starlink in France Price Drop Video

Purchasing More Data

The email went on to explain that users still have the ability to purchase additional priority data in chunks of 100 GB for 10€/month. So if you wanted to continue to pay 99€/month, you would have access to 750 GB before you were deprioritized. This change should only affect the heaviest of users and even then they still have access to unlimited data, just at a lower priority once they cross the threshold they are paying for. 

It seems Starlink is using France as a pilot program to see how this change affects users and most likely tweak network settings to make a more positive experience for the majority of their users. France reportedly only has 1 ground station so heavy users affect all users in that country and could be a main reason they are testing it in this location. 

Could This Change Come to US Market?

Could we possibly see a similar change come to the US? The Eastern half of the US has become heavily saturated with both Starlink residential and Starlink For RV users. Many current users have been complaining of a continued degradation of speeds over the past few months as more users are added each month.

The current waitlist for Starlink Residential for a new customer just about anywhere in a waitlist area in the US is out to 2023, but users can continue to order Starlink for RVs anywhere in the US immediately adding to more congestion in already saturated markets. 

Starlink For RVs is already deprioritized

Would a plan with a cut in the monthly price of the Residential Starlink service at the expense of a data cap for priority data even make sense in the US? Starlink For RV's is already deprioritized all the time, along with Residential users using portability, so it doesn't appear that a change to these plans would be necessary.

If this change came to the the US, it would most likely affect regular Starlink Residential customers the most who are stationary at their service address and are using large amounts of data.

Concluding Thoughts

Would limiting priority data for those extremely high residential data users really make enough of a difference though to ease network congestion for users still under their priority data limit? What about Starlink for RVs with deprioritized data already? Could deprioritizing large data users help make everyones service work a little better during peak times? 

If you are using Starlink Residential with Portability, would you welcome a price cut with a soft data cap possibly allowing you more room in your budget to maintain more cellular lines of service along with Starlink? Would the data threshold affect you if you were at your service address?

We can only wait and see if this is something that perhaps comes to the US market in the future and how users respond to the change.