(Credit: Getty Images)
Want Starlink at a lower price? In New Zealand, SpaceX is offering customers a 50% discount on the monthly payment for the satellite internet system—in exchange for slower speeds.
A user on Reddit spotted SpaceX offering the new “Deprioritized plan” for residential customers in the country. The option appears when signing up for the service on Starlink.com. Users can pay NZ$159 (US$98) for the standard plan or NZ$79 for the Deprioritized access.
The cheaper plan has no data or speed caps. But users can “expect 50-100Mbps download speeds (as compared to 150-250Mbps for the Standard service plan),” the company writes.
“Standard service will be prioritized over Deprioritized service during peak hours. This means that speeds will be lower for deprioritized service relative to our Standard Starlink service, especially when the most users are on the network,” SpaceX adds.
The company might be offering the new plan because it has plenty of capacity in New Zealand. According to Starlink.com, the country has some of the fastest downloads speeds, averaging between 158Mbps to 266Mbps. In contrast, the download speeds in the US are generally lower, spanning between 38Mbps to 104Mbps, particularly in southern states.
(Credit: Starlink.com)SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, making it unclear if it’ll ever bring a Deprioritized plan to North America. In general, SpaceX has refrained from offering discounts on Starlink within the US, although last year it did decrease the subscription fee for US customers living in “areas with excess capacity."
Instead, the company has often been spotted offering deals on the satellite internet service in other markets, such as Europe and Latin America, which appear to have less demand. In New Zealand, SpaceX is also offering consumers the option to buy refurbished Starlink dishes for half their original price.
But on the upside, US consumers have received access to the newest hardware from SpaceX. This includes the new V4 dish, which is currently exclusive to the US market.