In some cities across the US, SpaceX is raising the one-time “congestion charge” for new Starlink sign-ups from $100 to $250.
Recently, a Reddit user observed that Starlink.com had updated the order prices for Sacramento, California, to include the $250 congestion charge. “Sacramento area is pricey, ouch! Back to the waitlist for me,” they commented. The same $250 fee also appeared on orders for San Diego and Phoenix.
SpaceX has not provided a reason for the price hike. However, the company had previously placed Sacramento, San Diego, and Phoenix on a waitlist. It seems that SpaceX is now reopening access, but exclusively for customers willing to pay the $250 congestion charge. The same approach appears to have been taken in London, UK, where the waitlist has been removed but the congestion charge increased.
Last year, the company started implementing $100 congestion charges in specific areas where the network had become overloaded. The congestion charge still allows users to enroll in a Starlink residential plan, provided they are willing to pay the higher fee. In other US cities, SpaceX has reinstated the waitlist, requiring prospective customers to wait until additional capacity is established.
SpaceX is still facing challenges with capacity limitations. It has placed a significant speed cap on subscribers with the Priority plan and has warned that Roam customers might be blocked if they use the service in a “sold out” area for over two months.
The positive aspect is that the congestion fee remains $100 in numerous other US cities, including San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Orlando, Florida. In states with ample network capacity, SpaceX is taking a different route by offering discounts on Starlink through its “regional savings” initiative, which provides a $200 price reduction.
This can reduce the cost of the standard Starlink dish from $349 to $149. In several US states, SpaceX additionally offers free or discounted installation for Starlink dishes.
Two years back, residents across Northwest Alaska found themselves without internet or cell service. A large piece of arctic sea ice had damaged a fiber optic cable buried 13 feet underground, below approximately 90 feet of water, about 34 miles north of Oliktok Point. Suddenly, residents could no longer use ATMs, schedule doctor appointments, or call 911.
The repair of the cable would take 14 weeks, but by that time, Eben Hopson, a photographer in Utqiagvik, had switched to Starlink — a satellite internet service from Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
“It has been transformative,” Hopson shared with me. “You take a Starlink dish out there and plug it in. Within two minutes, you’ve got access to the whole world right in your hands.”
Starlink has ignited a competition in low-Earth orbit, or LEO — the ideal altitude where satellite providers can deliver fast, low-latency internet to individuals like Hopson. When it launched in 2019, Starlink joined around 2,000 satellites already in orbit; a 2020 article in Nature predicted that having 100,000 satellites in the sky by 2030 is “not just feasible but quite likely.”
I’ve encountered many stories like Hopson’s over my seven years of covering the broadband industry and its technology. People living in rural locations often tell me they have no internet choices in their regions — or at best, very poor options. Starlink essentially provided a portal, accelerating people in those areas from 2005 to 2025 overnight. However, with any significant technological advancement, there are potential repercussions.
The massive number of satellites launched by Starlink has significantly contributed to making space extremely congested. Scientists have raised concerns about the unforeseen impacts on the ozone layer, astronomical studies, and a sky cluttered with debris — resulting from decades of rocket launches and satellite placements that have escalated in recent years — which poses risks even to internet providers like Starlink.
Since the inception of the internet, there has been a divide between those who have access to or can afford high-speed internet and those who cannot. This gap is known as the digital divide, and rural areas often find themselves limited to few (or outright poor) options.
It’s an ironic situation: The satellites we increasingly rely on to help close this gap might ultimately contribute to their own challenges.
How Starlink has contributed to bridging the digital divide
Many of us consider internet access a given. It’s as routine as electricity in our monthly expenses, and we typically only think about it when there’s an interruption. In 1930, almost 90% of urban and rural non-farm homes had access to electricity, while only around 10% of farms could say the same. Although the disparity isn’t as significant with internet access, the comparison is valid: in 2019, the year Starlink initiated its satellite launches, 67% of rural Americans could reach download speeds of 100 megabits per second and upload speeds of 10 Mbps, contrasted with 98% in urban locations.
“There’s really no comparison,” remarks Edwin Walker, a retired electrical engineer based in Chattaroy, Washington, regarding his prior internet services. “With Starlink, we receive 100 or 200 megabits per second for downloads, and it’s dependable.” Walker notes that his previous provider only offered about 10 to 20 Mbps.
High-speed internet has been the last to reach rural regions due to the high costs linked to installing fiber-optic lines in sparsely populated areas.
“Fiber is excellent, but our cost estimates indicate it could be around $120,000 to $130,000 per site just to connect it with fiber,” explains Greg Conte, director of the Texas Broadband Development Office, referring to rural areas in West Texas. “You’re investing all that money to lay fiber — either on poles or underground — and the household might not even sign up for it.”
It’s not an exaggeration to claim that Starlink transformed internet access in rural America seemingly instantaneously. The satellite internet service was launched in 2015 by SpaceX and has become a personal endeavor of the tech billionaire. Its satellite dishes are roughly the size of a pizza box and can establish connections anywhere there is a clear view of the sky. Starlink also introduced its Mini dish last summer, which is tailored for mobile internet access.
Since its launch in 2021, Starlink has accumulated about 1.4 million subscribers in the United States and 4.6 million worldwide — having doubled its user base in 2024 alone. Although it represents just 1% of all internet connections nationwide, the residences Starlink serves are located in the most persistently hard-to-connect regions of the country.
Satellite internet has existed since the dial-up era, but its performance hasn’t improved significantly since then. Starlink’s main innovation was deploying its satellites closer to Earth than older systems — approximately 342 miles above the planet, in contrast to over 22,000 miles for geostationary satellites utilized by providers such as HughesNet and Viasat.
For users, Starlink offers faster speeds due to its significantly larger satellite fleet, but the more notable enhancement is in latency, which is the duration it takes for data to travel from the dish atop your home to a satellite in orbit.
Based on Ookla speed tests, Starlink’s average latency in the US was 62 milliseconds in 2023, compared to 681ms for Viasat and 886ms for HughesNet. (Note: Ookla is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.) That translates to nearly a full second delay between when you speak during a video call and when the other participant hears you (or 2 seconds if the other person is also using HughesNet).
In a matter of years, millions of individuals who experienced slow internet or had no access at all suddenly found themselves with service robust enough for telehealth visits, video chats with loved ones, or online gaming.
“Literally, it’s like you flipped a switch and we were brought into 2025,” stated Colby Hall, executive director of Shaping Our Appalachian Region, or SOAR, a nonprofit organization focused on promoting economic development in eastern Kentucky.
However, that newfound connectivity has come with a price — both for users and globally. An internet connection is only beneficial if it’s affordable, and Starlink’s $120 monthly fee and $349 satellite dish remain out of reach for numerous Americans. A Pew survey from 2021 revealed that 20% of people without a home internet subscription indicated cost was the primary reason — significantly higher than the 9% who mentioned unavailability of service.
“The digital divide is intrinsically linked to inequality,” states Christopher Ali, a telecommunications professor at Penn State University. “While many perceive it as an issue of infrastructure—especially in rural, remote, and Indigenous areas—the main reason most individuals lack internet access is cost.”
Starlink has initiated a transformative era in our skies. Since SpaceX deployed its initial group of Starlink satellites in May 2019, there were approximately 2,000 operational satellites orbiting the Earth. Today, that count has increased to over 11,000, with nearly 7,000 belonging to Starlink. SpaceX aims to ultimately expand this number to 42,000.
Starlink is beginning to face competition as well. Amazon’s Project Kuiper intends to launch its first operational satellites in early 2025, having received authorization from the Federal Communications Commission to deploy as many as 3,236 satellites.
“It’s not solely about Starlink; it’s about all entities aiming to operate in space,” remarks Hugh Lewis, a professor of astronautics at the University of Southampton. “I don’t believe we can safely manage the current number of spacecraft, let alone the projected growth.”
Starlink declined to comment on this report when approached by CNET.
Starlink has significantly impacted rural regions. The reality is that the majority of people in the US don’t require Starlink. According to the latest FCC data, 90% of addresses are served by cable or fiber internet, which is generally faster and more affordable than Starlink. However, for the remaining 10%, it has proven to be invaluable.
Maine has the second-highest proportion of residents in rural areas among all states, many of whom reside in extremely remote locations.
“The demographic distribution in Maine causes it to decrease rapidly,” explains Brian Allenby, senior director at the Maine Connectivity Authority. “When you reach one or two households per mile, LEO service becomes the most economically viable.”
In Maine, 9,000 households currently lack any internet providers available at their location. “These are individuals for whom the FCC map indicates no technology code at all. Their download and upload speeds show as zero over zero,” Allenby elaborates.
To support these areas, the state recently started providing free Starlink dishes to residents in “Maine’s hardest-to-reach locations,” as stated by Governor Janet Mills. Digital equity advocates say this is a crucial aspect of solving the issue.
“The price of Starlink is a significant hurdle,” mentions Angela Siefer, executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. “It’s a feasible option where no other technologies exist, but it becomes viable only if you can afford it.”
The cost for Starlink’s satellite dishes begins at $349, and its lowest plan costs $120 monthly—nearly double the average internet bill in the US. In a survey conducted among households earning under $50,000 annually, more than half indicated that an internet bill up to $75 is beyond their means.
While Starlink’s prices are high, they align with what many rural residents were already paying. Geostationary satellite providers, such as Hughesnet and Viasat, which are the sole options for internet in many rural areas, have equipment costs of $400 and $250, respectively, along with slower speeds and stricter data limits compared to Starlink.
“It’s actually cheaper than what I used to pay,” Walker shares. Before having access to Starlink, he used a local fixed wireless provider that charged $125 monthly for 20 Mbps speeds.
Hopson noted that the internet service options in his area cost more and are slower than Starlink. “I know many more people using Starlink because of its affordability.”
Before Starlink, Hopson reported paying $200 a month for speed under 1 Mbps with monthly data caps of 20GB—conditions that complicated his work as a photographer. “Uploading a single video to Google Drive used to take one to two days. With Starlink, it takes just two minutes,” he recounts.
SOAR began supplying approximately 90 low-income seniors in the most challenging areas of the state with free Starlink equipment and one year of complimentary service. In the initial pilot program, over half of the newly connected users stated they primarily utilized Starlink for accessing telehealth services.
“Most of our clients were incurring monthly charges of $150 to $200 for geostationary service,” Hall, SOAR’s executive director, notes. “Even though we prepaid for the initial 12 months, we were confident they could continue on with Starlink afterwards.” Hall mentioned that about 95% of participants in SOAR’s pilot program opted to keep paying for Starlink after their first year of free service ended.
In 2021, Congress enacted the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program—significantly the largest federal investment in broadband to date—with the aim of enhancing infrastructure in these regions, thus closing the digital divide for good. BEAD has prioritized fiber infrastructure development but has made exceptions for particularly rural and hard-to-reach areas.