Starlink shifts hardware from one-time purchase to $10/month rental

Starlink shifts hardware from one-time purchase to $10/month rental(arstechnica.com)

24 points by Lihh27 5 hours ago | 12 comments

This might be reflected in upcoming metrics reported on Friday if the IPO goes through. It seems aligned with improving subscriber growth metrics, smoothing out upfront hardware costs into predictable monthly revenue, and generally increasing adoption by lowering the barrier to entry. Curious if anyone closely following the IPO story has more context on this.

hn773746483 4 hours ago | |

Don't forget "sudden price hikes" and "aggressively overselling"...

soared 3 hours ago | |

Agreed - this shifts large single time purchases into MRR which looks way better to investors.

daft_pink 3 hours ago |

I think it makes sense as their expensive hardware makes me much less likely to order their services.

schmookeeg 2 hours ago | |

$199 is expensive hardware? to receive magic internet sent from orbit to wherever you are on the globe?

I feel like if I took my AT&T home internet router, drop-kicked it into the bay, then asked for a replacement, they'd charge me a heck of a lot more than $199. :)

danpalmer 4 hours ago |

I suspect this will change, or not roll out in many places, or users will get the choice between up-front or rental. Router rental isn't tolerated by the market in the UK or AU from what I've seen.

protocolture 4 hours ago | |

For AU consumers it puts even more obligations onto starlink. Only Telstra does this, that I am aware of, and their rental device comes with full remote configuration support for the duration. Telstra of course is targeting "Sell this product to your in laws and you never have to give them router support again". Starlink on the other hand, are trying the old Wisp gamble of hoping that people keep paying for their hardware long after it has paid off, which is probably a poor decision at least where Australia is concerned.

grim_io 4 hours ago | |

It will only change if it becomes illegal to rent a router.

danpalmer 1 hour ago | | |

I'm saying it will change with market forces. In the US renting your router is the norm, it'll stick, and I'm sure it was a US based team that thought this would be a good idea. In some other countries it'll never get off the ground because the concept will get laughed out of the room and everyone will just use competitors.

You could argue that Starlink have a captive audience, but that's not true in most of the UK/AU at least, where high speed internet is widely available to most. Those who need Starlink probably already have it and own the hardware, their growth market will have to be homes that have other options, and those other options don't charge $10 a month for the hardware.

protocolture 4 hours ago | | |

Nah, it will just become untenable to rent a router, because of the added obligations.

laughing_man 3 hours ago |

That's what my ISP does with the cable modem. Why not?

verdverm 3 hours ago | |

My ISP gives me the equipment for free and the same bandwidth at a lower price than my prior ISP.

doctoboggan 4 hours ago |

I guess we are well into the enshittification phase of starlink. Here's hoping Amazon Leo comes soon so we can have some competition in this market.

verdverm 3 hours ago | |

I'm not sure it will be as much a competition as a cartel, two of the world's richest people playing space cowboy