At the end of last year, the hardware disk required to get SpaceX’s Starlink internet service was discounted from $924 down to $450. At the time, the discount was positioned as an end-of-the-year offer, however, the calendar year has now well and truly ticked over to 2023 and the hardware remains on sale.
Starlink costs A$139 per month, which is certainly more than many pays, but for those who are fed up with sub-standard NBN service, this is a great option where you can pay more, to get more.
At this stage, nobody knows how long the Starlink discount will last, but what we do know is that offering significantly cheaper hardware means customers win, getting the equivalent of 3.5 months of service for free.
When Starlink first launched, the company was losing money on the hardware, but now in its second generation and at a much larger scale, it’s likely the costs to produce have decreased significantly.
Unlike virtually any other Elon Musk product, Starlink is being advertised heavily in Australia, likely due to the massive potential customer base.
Starlink isn’t going to be familiar to the average internet subscriber. Often home internet services are purchased from the same company that you buy mobile service from like Telstra, Optus and Vodafone. Another common choice is one of the entrenched ISPs like Aussie Broadband, TPG, iiNet so to steal market share away from the incumbents, SpaceX advertising is important to let people know there is another option for internet in Australia now.
Globally SpaceX now has more than a million paying customers and the product portfolio has grown to include Business, RV, Maritime, Aviation and IoT (applications in Space). Despite the growth in users, Starlink hasn’t suffered significant slowdowns in speed, with many people still reporting 250Mbps or higher speeds.
The residential price for Starlink is definitely the cheapest, followed by the business grade version at A$750/mo and that special version of the disk costs a mega A$3,740. Starlink Business users can expect download speeds of up to 350 Mbps and latency of 20-40ms, enabling high throughput connectivity for offices of up to 20 users, storefronts, and demanding workloads across the globe.
If you’re a grey nomad and love to travel, the RV version costs A$174/mo and you can go month to month with the service, just turn it on when you’re travelling and turn it off when you get home. The new Flat High-Performance Starlink allows users to enjoy high-speed, low-latency internet while in-motion.
If you’ve got a boat, the Maritime option is for you. Currently, the coverage is great for the lower half of Australia (and below) and in Q1 2023, they are planning on supporting almost everyone in the ocean.
The final arena is aviation. Starlink on planes offers a significant savings over traditional satellite services which means we are likely to see those savings and speeds, passed on to aviation customers soon. Being in the air, you have a clear, unobstructed connection to space. While it’s early days now, expect Starlink to dominate aviation connectivity for these reasons.
As you can see from the Starlink coverage map below, the vast majority of Australia could get the service, with some areas in NSW and lower QLD, due to come online in 2023.
If you haven’t yet considered Starlink and are frustrated by what’s on offer through the NBN, it’s worth a try.
