Can You Actually Get Unlimited Satellite Internet?

Traditional geosynchronous (GSO) satellites, like Viasat and Hughesnet had very restrictive data caps compared to terrestrial internet for most of their history; however, Starlink set out to challenge these assumptions. At the time of its launch, Starlink offered truly unlimited data, though it had to roll this back as its network struggled to manage the influx of eager Starlink customers.

After waffling back and forth on the issue and briefly implementing a 1 TB cap (which is still massive for satellite data), Starlink has gone back to offering unlimited data on its satellite internet, though there is a catch.

In place of caps, Starlink now has multiple tiers of priority for its customers: roam, residential, and priority/mobile priority. Residential plans come with Standard data by default, though you can purchase a chunk of priority data for the month starting at 1TB (50GB for mobile priority). For those who have been paying attention, paying for “priority data” with Starlink and paying to avoid “deprioritized data” with Hughesnet kind of sounds like the same thing. Because it is.

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This heavily qualified version of unlimited data is still a major improvement over how satellite connections worked just a few years ago. Assuming that the Standard data plan never drops below the minimum advertised speed, Starlink gives you the ability to pretty much everything you could do on any other unlimited internet plan, including streaming video and downloading software without having to pay for additional data.

Even though Starlink wasn’t able to maintain its goal of offering truly unlimited connections, the attempt seemed to light a fire under the competition. I don’t think we’d have seen the vast improvements in satellite data without Starlink leading the way, even if it didn’t quite stick the landing.

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