- Starlink hopes to court more customers, following the announcement of a $0 hardware kit.
- It will offer a 30-day free trial in selected countries for its satellite connectivity services.
- You can cancel at any time during the 30-day trial, but if you do not, a 12-month commitment kicks in.
SpaceX-owned connectivity company, Starlink, is seemingly pushing for more customers, and to entice them, has announced a new “free” offering – the $0 Starlink Kit.
This kit is focused purely on the hardware required to set up a satellite-powered connection via Starlink, with no cost being carried for the dish and router of the system. In the United States, the hardware costs around $349 (~R6 474), but this new offer brings that cost down to zero.
If that sounds too good to be true, there are some caveats to be aware of. Along with bringing the hardware cost to zero, the $0 Starlink Kit also comes a 30-day free trial to new customers, but should you not cancel the service before the 30 period elapses, you will have to pay for the service over the next 12 months.
“The customer has a 30-day trial with a full refund period. After the 30 day trial, the service commitment ends 12 months after the customer’s activation date,” it explained in a blog post.
It is also worth pointing out that a “change fee” will be charged, should customers take any number of actions during the trial period. These include:
- “Change service address
- Cancel service
- Fail to timely pay your bill
- Attempt to transfer your kit to another user
- Cancel service during the 30-day trial and not return your kit.”
Starlink does not advise how much the change fee would be, but given it potentially covers the cost of the hardware, it may be as much as $349.
As for where the $0 Starlink Kit is being sold, most of the European nations that the company operates in are listed, along with Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada, and the US, although these five latter regions do not fall under countrywide availability from Starlink.
The nations that do, are:
- Italy,
- Germany,
- Spain,
- Greece,
- Ireland,
- Poland,
- Austria,
- Norway,
- Netherlands,
- Croatia,
- Czech Republic,
- Switzerland.
As you may have spotted, no Middle Eastern or African countries are listed, so it remains to be seen if this offering will be made available in countries like Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Mauritius, and more.
For those in South Africa, at the time of writing, there is no change in the official availability of Starlink locally, which has yet to get regulatory approval to operate here.
