Starlink Discounts UK Satellite Ultrafast Broadband Kit to £300
The UK division of SpaceX’s global Starlink ISP, which uses thousands of compact satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to deliver low latency ultrafast broadband speeds to homes, has begun informing consumers that they’ve introduced a 30% discount on their hardware cost (terminal, router etc.) – dropping it to just £300.
Customers in the UK would normally pay from £75 per month, plus £460 for the regular home kit (standard dish, router etc.) and £40 £20 for shipping on the ‘Standard’ Starlink package, which gets you unlimited usage, fast latency times of 25-50ms, advertised downloads of c. 50-200Mbps and uploads of c.5-15Mbps (speeds may change as the network grows).
The latest email from the provider, which was sent to both customers and potential customers on their mailing list, simply boasts of a “Starlink hardware limited time offer” that cuts the kit price by 30% on both “Residential and Roam services!” We also note from their website that the shipping cost has been slashed from £40 to £20. But generally speaking, £300 for any satellite hardware these days is pretty darn cheap.
As a side note, those with deep pockets who want to take their “High Performance” hardware option will now pay £2,410 for the kit (this option wasn’t available to UK customers until very recently). But it’s unclear how long the new 30% discount will run for on their standard kit.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Whilst LEO broadband options look to be uneconomic vs fixed line in the longer term, these really ought to be a core part of the interim gigabit strategy. We know the technology works, yet the bunglers of government are still messing about with painfully long winded trials rather than just doing the maths and working out where existing commercially available LEO option present a logical and cost effective way of buying time for a proper, long term asset replacement approach to hard to reach properties. That’s a morning’s work on Excel.
Ideas welcome for how common sense can be brutally forced upon the political classes.
Exactly
Just because someone chooses to live like a hermit, does not mean the taxpayer should foot the 50k bill to get that one guy connected. We are at record taxation levels because people do not understand that their money is being squandered in ways worse than this
Hans, you say people choose to live in the rural areas? Wake up and start orbiting Low Earth for us! I live in the town of Tylorstown with a very flaky “Super fast” connection that syncs at 44Mbps but only see 33Mbps on a good day, my average is well below the threshold most of the time, thanks to a cracked 1km stretch of Aluminium and OR just aren’t bothered to fix it, leaving not just me, but around 70 houses with FTTC that’s like the dialup era.
I’m not a fan of RF based internet, that includes the very expensive Starlink, and being registered blind with other ailments, this almost 49 year old is waiting patiently for FTTP, hopefully Ogi so I can get shot of Aunty Beaty….
So, with respect, the UK Government are plodding along, squandering taxpayers money on other things, Queen Truss is the main problem we now have inflation and mortgages as they are..
I see Oneweb are about to launch their systems to the public, but as always Money talks and Politicians sprout rubbish!
I imagine they’ll push oneweb, not starlink.
Gentlemen, gentlemen! There’s room for everybody here!
A big part of the problem (speaking as a civil servant) is that the government themselves don’t have a scooby where our money is spent. Nobody from the executive side (politicians) ever sits down and does a proper zero based budget across all departments and asks “is the UK taxpayer getting better value for money with this expenditure than other uses?” Ministers themselves have no clue where the money goes even within their own departments, and even where it’s patently obvious that money is being wasted (HS2, most defence procurement, international aid, emergency services radio etc etc) they’re just committed to continuing waste because to perform a U-turn is seen as losing face for the party, CCP style.
Let’s work from a rough figure: Government publicly reckon national FTTP would cost £30bn. It needs to find around £10bn of subsidy to achieve full national coverage of FTTP assuming that two thirds of the £30bn national cost can be delivered commercially, over say three years that’s £3-4bn a year, small change in a budget that blows around £700bn without knowing where or how well. Or they could stop messing around and get more than required simply by getting multi-national tax dodgers to pay their share. Government figures put total UK tax avoidance at £35bn a year, and just on dodgy US outfits blatantly booking their profits overseas you’re talking about £6bn of tax dodged – with the knowledge and cooperation of our politicians.
David no one is forcing you to live where it is not financially viable to bring fibre over where companies are currently deploying. There was a lot of inflation before your guardian Boogeyman Liz Truss and there’s still inflation . Liz Truss has/had no control over the amount of money that has been printed, nor in the amount of taxes, which she actually tried cutting and which artificially inflate prices
Tax avoidance is legal. Tax evasion is not. Regardless, taxation is theft anyway and rural broadband is actually peanuts in the grand scheme of things. Projects like HS2 that benefit no one are criminally corrupt but none of the main parties actually don’t want to scrap it because they are in on the same corruption.
£30bn is a baffling figure and seems to apply the general government rule of diseconomies of scale: huge projects cost far more per capita than small ones, flying in the face of capitalist norms.
If we said there are 30m UK households for easy reckoning, that is £1k per household. At these prices every house could get starlink and a yearlong subscription for that sum. You might assume such a bulk purchase would lower that price a fair bit, probably by half. In reality the number of households that need help to get reasonable broadband speeds is far lower – nearer 3m – and therefore they could have this service for 11 years even at retail price.
I’m sure the queue of Tory donors in the ISP and civil engineering industries will ensure worst value and a painfully slow rollout.
A simple solution to crack the digital divide would be for the government to introduce VAT relief for starlink subscriptions in areas where there is no commercially available alternative.
This would reduce costs to consumers to a point where it’s affordable. It would also be simple and fast to introduce and free up investment to accelerate gigabit connections elsewhere.
At least they don’t have to dig up your road 3 times for 3 different network providers to lay their FTTP.
I know a few people with starlink in the UK and 150-200 Mbps speed tests aren’t uncommon, however I think they’ve learned to underestimate, and sell based on filling capacity rather than what it does today.
I’d say nothing is pretty darn cheap, why should the user pay for the network hardware which is useless for anything else.
Still too expensive.
Starlink really needed to work faster to capture any sort of market in the UK, underserved areas do still exist of course but it seems like every day now there are less. FTTP is rolling out in rural areas and in those areas still without that there is often LTE and WiMax ISPs filling the gaps at a much lower price.
Starlink just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in much of the UK and their market is always going to be tiny, you get a sense of that with all their discounting and offers to rent equipment etc right now but I doubt the UK will ever be a big market for them.
Live in St Austell.. not rural , open reach “upgrade” doesn’t reach 1 mile from town centre, and BT want £29/month…for a rapid 15/1 mbps!!
Took advantage of starlink price drop, now getting 260/30 for £75 ..
Oh to live in a city
£75 pm plus whatever the watt-guzzler hardware draws – £15-£20 pm on top at today’s prices?