SpaceX has scrapped a speed restriction it had quietly imposed on Starlink home internet customers who used especially large amounts of data. The move came after numerous subscribers complained that their satellite internet speeds were being cut to around 10 Mbps despite paying for what was advertised as unlimited service.
The restriction appeared without any public announcement from SpaceX. According to affected users, the throttling appeared to kick in after a customer used around 5 terabytes of data in a month or 500 gigabytes in a single day. Some subscribers who had used Starlink heavily for months without any issues suddenly received notices claiming they had violated the terms of service, after which their connection speeds dropped sharply.
For some customers, the slowdown made the internet effectively unusable even for ordinary web browsing. Complaints spread quickly among Starlink users, including on the Reddit forum.
SpaceX Restores Speeds
The situation then began to shift. Some subscribers reported that after contacting SpaceX technical support, their original speeds were restored. Restrictions were later lifted for other users as well. SpaceX has not officially confirmed the specific thresholds involved, so the figures of 5 terabytes per month and 500 gigabytes per day are based solely on customer observations.
Not the First Attempt to Limit Usage
This is not the first time SpaceX has tried to limit the load on its Starlink network through data usage policies. In 2022, the company planned to introduce a 1 terabyte monthly cap on high-speed data for home subscribers. The rollout of that policy was postponed several times, and in May 2023 SpaceX abandoned the idea altogether, keeping unlimited data on its Standard plan.
Restrictions later appeared on the more expensive Priority plan, where speeds could drop to as low as 1 Mbps once the included data allowance was used up. That change also drew complaints from some users.
Starlink is SpaceX's satellite internet service, which uses a constellation of low Earth orbit satellites to provide broadband access, including in remote areas without traditional cable or fiber infrastructure.
