Starlink hikes prices for monthly service and starter kit, even if you put down a deposit

Photo credit should read Nina Lyashonok/ Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images

According to a new email sent out to customers this afternoon, Starlink is increasing prices for both the purchase of Starlink kits and the monthly service. The company says the purpose of the adjustments is to keep pace with inflation.

A starter kit with all the necessary supplies, including a user terminal and antenna, was required for Starlink to connect with SpaceX's satellites. Customers would pay a monthly fee to keep the service running. Going forward, the monthly price will be $110. If you put down a deposit for the original Starlink kit, you will have to pay $549 instead of the new price of $599. Different customers will have different prices when the new monthly prices come into effect.

Starlink's premium service costs $2,500 to purchase the kit and $500 a month for higher performance, but the new prices seem to be different. The new Starlink Premium service was unveiled this year despite the fact that Shotwell had previously stated that the company had no plans to add price tiers for the service.

Starlink is the ambitious program of the company to launch tens of thousands of satellites to beam broadband Internet coverage to the entire globe. To get into the system, users need to point their terminal at a large patch of open sky. The satellites relay signals to the ground stations on Earth, which are connected to existing fiber-optic infrastructure. The company has launched more than 2,000 Starlink satellites, and an executive for the company claimed this week that Starlink has 250,000 users worldwide, according to CNBC. The Ukrainian government requested that SpaceX send thousands of terminals.

The cost to build each user antenna for Starlink was $3,000, which meant that the company was selling its kits to customers at a loss. In April of 2021, Shotwell claimed that the construction cost for each terminal was around $1,300. She promised that the user terminals created by the end of 2021, would be roughly half of what our current user terminals cost, according to PC Mag.

The Starlink team has tripled the number of satellites in space since launching the public version of the service in October 2020.