Free Starlink pause morphs into $5/month Standby Mode with unlimited low-speed data as $10 Roam plan is gone

Starlink is forcing subscribers to "upgrade" from its free pause service, which froze monthly payments when the service was not needed, to a paid pause with Standby Mode option that charges $5 per month.

New Standby Mode notifications are now rolling out to users in the US to inform them they have to sign up for the option within the current billing cycle, or opt out and have their service line cancelled, leaving them no option to continue with free pausing.

Starlink plans with Standby Mode

All Starlink subscribers on the Roam, Residential, or Priority plans must pause their service with a mandatory Standby Mode from the next cycle. Those who can't pause their Starlink service with the $5/month Standby include Enterprise accounts with users on Business plans, as well as those who are currently on promotional offers.

The news hits Starlink Roam plan users especially hard. Those who purchased a Mini dish to travel with shelled out hundreds of dollars regardless of the current promo offer on Amazon. A lot of them did it becuase they were enticed by the promise for a free service pause option and the introduction of a $10/month plan for 10GB of data. Both options are now gone, so Roam plan subscribers with a Mini dish sititng in the closet will have to pay $60 annually for the privilege.

As if to compensate for the forced transition from a free pause option to the paid mode, Starlink says that the new Standby now includes unlimited low-speed data, whereas before no connectivity was available while pausing.

Moreover, Residential plan users who use the new pause option with Standby Mode are not guaranteed a return to the same line of service upon reactivation if their area is at capacity. They will have to either hop on a Roam or Priority line, or put a deposit and wait for a Residential service opening.

Starlink Standby Mode download and upload speeds

• 1 Mbps download speed
• 0.5 Mbps uplink

The new Standby Mode comes with unlimited satellite Internet data connectivity, says Starlink. From the description of the purpose that this unlimited low-speed data connection can serve, however, it immediately becomes clear that the download speeds will be very slow indeed. 

Starlink says that Standby Mode connectivity will be for emergency messages or "ongoing software updates" and that's that. This indicates that the service in Standby Mode will be severely throttles and unusable for anything of higher substance.

While Starlink doesn't mention the level of data speed throttling in Standby Mode, those who updated to the new option don't report anything above 1 Mbps of download and 0.5 Mbps of uplink speeds. Oftentimes, the Standby Mode download and upload speeds are even lower, as can be seen in the test below.

On top of all that, the Starlink Standby Mode terms and conditions for Americans seem more unfavorable than for subscribers in Europe and other places. In Europe, for instance, the Standby Mode costs €5/month, but comes with 5GB of high-speed data and then gets throttled to the speeds that only allow messaging and receiving software updates. In short, there is no more free pausing of the Starlink service and the cheap Roam plan that many users bought a Mini dish for is now gone, too.