Starlink, a satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and promising to offer broadband internet speeds, announced a price increase on both the hardware required to run the service and the monthly subscription fee, citing inflation.
The Starlink kit, as the hardware is called, will now cost $549, a $50 increase. The monthly subscription has also gone up $11 to $110. In an email to customers posted to Reddit, the company says “the sole purpose of these adjustments is to keep pace with rising inflation.” Motherboard asked SpaceX to clarify what the inflationary pressures are of running a satellite internet service where customers set up their own service and the satellites orbit Earth through the power of gravity, but did not hear back before publication.
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Customers are also noting that Starlink had previously signaled the service would cost less over time, but now seems to be going in the opposite direction. Last year, Starlink told reporters it expected the price to fall over time so that the service would cost $80 a month and less than $300 to set up. Starlink also originally told customers that it would not do a tiered pricing model; earlier this year it announced Starlink Premium, which is going to cost at least $500 per month, plus a $2,500 startup cost.
In any event, Starlink has applied the $50 kit increase to preorders as well as new orders, which has annoyed some customers who note Starlink delayed delivery of their kits by up to a year in some cases. If the orders had been fulfilled on time, they note in the Reddit thread, they would have been delivered before the price increase.