Starlink Discounts Broadband Kit to £99 for UK Rural areas
SpaceX’s popular Starlink ISP, which harnesses thousands of compact satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to deliver ultrafast broadband speeds and fast latency times to homes, has launched a new promotion for people in UK rural areas that slashes the one-off hardware cost by 75% from £460 to just £99.
Customers in the UK would normally pay from £75 per month, plus £460 for the regular home kit (standard dish, router etc.) and £20 for shipping on the ‘Standard’ Starlink package, which gets you unlimited usage, a monthly contract term, 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).
However, the latest email from the provider that dropped last night introduced a new promotion, which drops the hardware price for “select rural areas of the UK” from £460 to £99 for a “limited time” (although technically they’d already discounted the kit to £300 via an earlier offer). But this offer is only “valid for residential fixed service” users (i.e. you must use it at your main home address).
Despite the supposed rural focus of this new promotion, we’ve already been able to confirm via our own testing that quite a few people in more urban areas are still being offered access to the latest discount. Suffice to say, Starlink’s definition of “rural” appears to be quite flexible, at least for now.
The new promotion makes Starlink’s service significantly more attractive, although the high monthly fee remains a significant obstacle for many consumers in the current climate.
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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Great news, getting more and more attractive for people in rural areas.
I’ve got a number of friends using Starlink and they’re all very pleased with it.
open reach bt 55,000 jobs going they have failed to provide good internet fttc is useless its the cables many put in around the 50s they should have fttp now for a large chunk of people
Struggling for custom as people already have faster, much more power efficient, much more sustainable solutions?
Speak for yourself. Not everyone has access to anything beyond FTTC or even ADSL.
would have to be quite a poor FTTC line for Starlink to beat it with any regularity. Not to mention probably double the monthly cost + a lot more on the energy bill to run the dish, as well as having to deal with CGNAT and other nonsense.
I have FTTC too. I won’t be “upgrading” to this.
As someone with 80/20mbps VDSL/FTTC and Starlink… Starlink always* beats the FTTC on download. Upload is a different matter.
(*so regularly and reliably faster that I treat the starlink as my faster line),
I would be using starlink as my main service if it gave me a public IPv4.
@Ivor…
Obviously it depends where you live. Many people in rural locations don’t have access to high speed internet connections.
without repeating myself yet again to you John (if you’re the same one), clearly not that many people. Hence the drastic discounts we are seeing. Even if your “remote” area is in fact not remote at all and/or has many high speed options.
SpaceX has always been coy about how much money starlink (doesn’t) make and moves like this do not surprise anyone who has been following it.
The only people I know who have Starlink are pleased with it, but less than pleased with Openreach as despite there being a fibre enabled pole opposite their house Openreach say they can’t get FTTP only a sub 10mb FTTC
@Ivor you think?
I am on the Roam version so not as high priority as Residential and I get 300-400mbps all day long on the NE coast. Even at the slowest it’s been 90mbps. Up is from 14-54 depending on the time of day. I love it. I have 6 kits coming for family who can’t get the offer (and a spare for me)
Starlink is the solution for remote locations
what’s the definition of “remote”?
parents place – semi rural, last to get ADSL, has had FTTC for 11 years, will probably get one if not two FTTP options in the next few years – have a £99 dish.
my place – suburb, has had FTTC for years, Openreach and altnet FTTP already available though not in my flat – have a £99 dish. (I even used a postcode of a place that can get FTTP, just to be sure)
Starlink was originally pushed as the option for those who have no options. There aren’t many people in the UK who can’t get wired or mobile internet.
Remote = rural where it would cost several thousand to build to
yep, sure, but as I said their idea of “remote” doesn’t seem to fit with that based on where they have the discount, which from trying a few postcodes seems to be “everywhere but London”.
as I said, the UK doesn’t have that many places where other options are not available or are likely to never be available. So it’s not a surprise that it seems Starlink have to lower prices drastically.
I hasten to state first that I’m not getting at @John per se for repeating the “Starlink is the solution for remote locations” mantra one sees fairly widely espoused.
On the face of it it seems a true enough statement. It is going to be Starlink, or BT using OneWeb, or similar (topography, local to me, makes 4G difficult as a solution at scale, or to get anything near 30 Mbps consistently, and 5G is likely near impossible). But the statement is a little like many blandishments, and at the moment I’m particularly thinking of Suella Braverman’s pronouncement on training UK workers to pick fruit and veg. Once you scratch below the superficial layer you see it’s not “the” answer at all.
The statement presupposes that rural communities are all populated by rich buggers who can afford that monthly outlay. Now, it is true that there are some in that category in my locale (a few from London/Southeast have recently been buying up scarce properties in the area for first, second, and even third homes), and it is also true that farmers (even small-scale tenant farmers), running a business, and there are a few of them hereabouts, can get such costs offset as a business expense and thus make it more affordable. However, by and large, my area, one of the most rural in the country, has consistently low median weekly earnings, well below the regional figure, which in turn is lower than the UK national figure (https://understanding.herefordshire.gov.uk/economy-place/topics-relating-to-the-economy/earnings-and-hours-of-work/).
These people, and a high proportion of the older age groupings on state pensions, will never be able to afford that level of monthly outgoing (especially when being so rural there are other more essential “first” calls on income). So “Starlink is the solution for remote locations” may be “an” answer, but it is also not “the” answer, not at that price level. The phased array is not a passive device that runs on freely available air either! It has a substantial weekly cost if you have a low median wage and are already considered in fuel poverty.
And what is true for my local rural area is probably the case for many other rural areas in the UK.
Err no, cant really put it any simpler than that John. Short term yes it provides better than currently available but that doesn’t constitute a ‘solution’
I’m not going to reply separately to your second post defining rural as somewhere costing several thousands to build to. I’m sure you can do simple math ? £75 a month quite soon covers your ‘several thousand’ to build to scenario for ‘rural’ yet provides a limited and wasteful service.
There’s so much wrong with touting starlink as a long term solution for connectivity its not even funny.
Not least that Starlink is Musk owned and thus can rot in hell. Anything that man touches and is involved in should be shunned and binned.
And the real reason comes out. Some individuals rather spend tens of thousands of other people’s money rather than having a good internet connection because Elon Musk dared to speak his mind publicly
Got this email. Definitely tempting but that £75 a month is the real blocker. I know living in a small town I will get fttp at some point (potentially in the next year) so its just too expensive a step up to take when FTTP 900Mb is £40 from giganet if I hold off a while.
Yep £75 a month is not at all competitive.
It’s not competitive when it’s the only option to get beyond FTTC speed.
Tell me how else I can get 200+Mbps internet to my house for £75 or less a month?
Cognizant – If its your only option go for it. My comment still stands. Its too expensive a jump when I will get alternatives in the next year (It just sucks waiting). Ultimately if it had been £50 it would have been worth it to me overpaying to cover the gap.
I just placed my order now that the hardware is cheaper. I live semi-rural but my property is 1 mile off the main road so FTTP skipped over my house and FTTC only promises 2Mb/s download and 1Mb/s upload. Quote to get FTTP installed was nearly £4k. Currently running 4G home broadband which is £50 a month for unlimited data and a 30mb connection. £75 is 50% more but the average speeds of starlink are 3x faster so definitely worth it for me.
giggidy giggidy giggidy
With Netomnia point blank refusing to build my stret despite building my town, Openreach stating July 2025 for building despite them building the rest of the town now, Starlink is a perfect replacement for copper for me to get beyond FTTC speeds.
Looking forward to receiving my dish next week.
been waiting over a year for Netomnia now. Thinking about going to Starlink because I don’t know when Netomnia will ever come to my street despite being wired up a year ago now.
They are probably not.
Do you have OR ducts or poles to your house currently?
My house is DIG (Direct in Ground) copper for the very last part of the current copper run, thus Netomnia won’t be building. I’ve been told “they’ll come in after Openreach have ducted”.
Too late by then…
Starlink will face competition in really remote areas from the likes of BT/EE, and others, offering services over 4G/5G and using OneWeb for backhaul connectivity.The price drops are likely due to the increasing competitive landscape. As another poster pointed out, it isn’t just the high monthly cost but the amount of power required to operate the dish.There are also the developments around HAP’s, which may compete with LEO’s, so things will likely become ever more competitive.
One amazing use for Starlink might be low latency intercontinental communication, for things like high frequency trading; If Starlink manage to enable a mesh network, with laser interconnectivity between satellites, they could potentially offer low latency services, faster than Hibernia, which may appeal to the big stock market traders; It wouldn’t have the bandwidth of a fibre system, but could potentially offer faster connectivity between all the World’s stock markets.
4G can’t compete with Starlink speeds.
5G can, but due to the limited range of 5G it’s not really suitable for rural locations.
@john,
4G can quite clearly compete /beat starlink speeds depending on location. I get more than the 50 meg they give as their low estimate from to and I’m not in an ideal 4G location. Sure i may get more on Starlink but others may not.
At least on 5G for rural we can agree, If i never hear anyone suggesting 5g is the solution for rural again it’ll be too soon.
4G “could” compete with Starlink speeds if contention and backhaul allowed it too in the UK. Sadly the lack of infrastructure investment means it never will.
EE is useless
Everyone gets in a tiz over 50W continuous.. SL will be doing 1-10Gbps in the next year or so.. Giggidy
Bought mine on the 19th of April and because it was purchased within 30 days of this promotion I got a £201 account credit refund.
I’ve gone from a 16mbps down 1.5mbps up FTTC connection for £25 per month to 200+Mbps down 30+mbps up and slightly higher but more consistent ping for £75 per month and I can cancel whenever I want.
When I contacted openreach for a community fibre partnership build the quote was £30k+ for 9 premises. Now the vouchers are of decent value my area is classified as urban and not eligible for vouchers and no supplier will help ammend it.
I’m very happy with my starlink.
Think im going to bite finally.
Live in urban Telford but no FTTC or FTTP – not in any commercial build plan and even not showing as a location in the Project Gigabit roll out. We are 14 properties with a large company on the other side that sure enough have leased lines.
Virgin close by but two attempts with them and they have turned us down without stating a reason. Our road is private and will always remain so. No reason to upgrade the cabinet to even fttc as its only is and a handful of properties that are covered by Virgin.
BT CFP wanted 212k. We have tried our local Councillors, MP’s you name it however we can see Telford town centre!
We all get around 12/1 (so just over USO) so this is the best options. I currently spend £18 with Nowtv for ADSL and 30 for unlimited 4G from Vodafone (best from testing all operators) on a B818.
Yes its expensive but when im paying almost 50 and 4G has crazy CG-NAT the additional 25 can be found by cutting back on other bits.
I don’t particularly live in the most rural location but the best I could get was 50/15 on FTTC and no fiber in sight. I regularly get 200-250mbps down on Starlink and I’m a pretty heavy internet user and game a lot. Its been super solid for me, no packet loss and reasonably low latency (20-30ms commonly). I have never once regretted making the switch. I can get 50-100mbps on 4G but the packet loss is crazy. I know a few other people in my area which also went with Starlink and everyone is happy. 50mbps is just too slow for a family of heavy internet users now, all it takes is someone downloading something and someone else streaming and things get rough. I’ve found Starlink to be more than adequate.
I’ve recently installed a Starlink for our Elderly owner of the business I work for.
He lives in the middle of fields upon fields in Rural North Yorkshire, he previously had bonded ISDN’s and was receiving less than 1mb download and 0.3mb upload over copper.
Openreach quoted £37,000 to bring FFTP on Demand – fibre to the premises.
That’s a quote that gives most people a stroke and quite honestly shocking.
Unfortunately we paid £460 pound for the Starlink kit and a few accessories on top of that and put in a Unifi Dream Router & U6 Pro / LR Access Point Setup.
But I can honestly say after weeks and weeks of average Speedtests everyday, we’re getting on average 210mbps, fastest download speed was 405mbps, and the upload is averaging around 22mbps and fastest has been 48mbps and average ping of 28ms.
Elon’s probably reduced the price to compete with OneWeb which I haven’t seen faster than 150mb in trials.
Don’t worry, OR quoted me, wait for it £136,000
I’m not even in the middle of nowhere, FTTP is available in the next street.
Just had a quote from Openreach for the provision of fibre to the premises for our rural animal rescue centre and it is £300,000. As a charity that is prohibitive so Starlink looks attractive at least in the short term! And before you ask that quote is not a typo as I can provide the breakdown.
This is not unheard of. multiple media outlets reported (in the early days of fibre broadband) how these companies did absurd quotes for installation. At one point, a few farmers got together, did their own digging, and paid a contractor to install the fibre for a tenth of the cost. I would advise you look into the same…
So if I buy kits in rural area and ship it to real address is work if I changed my plan to mobile global roam
Do you know how to access the rural discount? On the Starlinnk website it isn’t showing. Desperate to try and find a reliable provider – our options are very limited where we live. Any help much appreciated.
Yes where’s the £99 link?
Anyone answer these questions. I’m there too, will buy now for £99 if there was a link?
Ditto
Stay in rural area next to a railway line, spent thousands on terrable Wi-Fi signal, with current provider offering constant upgrades. Now looking to install Starlink. Am also looking for the discounted price. Can anyone please advise