For anyone who’s been eyeing SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet but balked at the hefty $599 upfront cost just for the hardware, Starlink has cooked up a potential solution, now offering customers the option to finance that initial dish expense and spread the payments out over 12 months.
New payment model aims to make Starlink’s setup fees a bit more digestible by breaking them into affordable $50 monthly charges. There’s just one catch – you’ll still need to cover the taxes and standard shipping fee upfront when ordering.
Once your Starlink kit arrives and gets activated (or 30 days after shipment if activation is delayed), that’s when the $50 installments for the dish kick in each month on top of the $120 monthly service subscription. Do the math and you’re looking at $170 per month for the first year before the dish is paid off.
The new financing terms also include the obligatory fine print, because of course they do. SpaceX reserves the right to immediately charge users for the full remaining Starlink dish balance if they miss an installment payment.
To be fair, this definitely isn’t the first consumer-friendly move we’ve seen from the Starlink team lately as they work to expand the service’s reach and attract more subscribers.
Earlier this month, SpaceX started selling refurbished Starlink dishes at a discounted $399 price point for select customers. They’ve also been trialing crazy affordable $1 for 30 days introductory offers in some U.S. markets to help customers test the waters.
With over 3 million Starlink terminals already deployed worldwide, it’s evident there’s serious demand for SpaceX’s satellite internet solution. So anything they can do to ease the upfront sticker shock and financial burden, even if it’s just breaking up the dish costs, could go a long way.
Payment plan or not, $599 (or $600 if you include the $1 trial) is still a sizable investment on top of the $120 monthly fees. But for rural customers and anyone desperately in need of decent high-speed internet, Starlink’s new installment option at least provides a slightly more affordable, digestible path to signing up.