Starlink Internet connection now takes more than a month on top of $1,000 fee in congested areas

Faced with unprecedented demand in several US states, Starlink is now warning future satellite Internet subscribers that they may have to wait for up to a month and a half before their order ships.

In an apparent effort to space out new Starlink subscribers in the already congested areas of the Northwest, Starlink now cautions that they will have to wait for up to six weeks for their dish to be delivered after clicking the buy button.

The shipment delay warning seemingly coincides precisely with those states where Starlink recently bumped the initial connection surcharge to the whopping $1,000.

Not only will some residents of the Washington, Idaho, or Oregon states now have to wait for more than a month to get their Starlink fix, but they will also be paying a grand on top of the Standard Residential Kit price plus taxes.

Starlink has removed waitlists in congested areas, but it introduced those congestion fees that started from the fairly reasonable $100 for the initial connection in Seattle, Redmond, and Spokane, as well as in and around Portland in Oregon.

Since this couldn't bring demand down and existing subscribers started to complain about speed and connectivity issues, the one-time Starlink fee was raised to $250, making the Standard Kit more expensive than the Starlink Mini dish for the first time.

This didn't solve the equation for SpaceX, too, despite that it now launches 5 Tbps of new capacity every week. Starlink then slapped a $750 connectivity surcharge and, now, the congestion fee is a grand in those areas in the Northwest.

Apparently, even the extra $1,000 charge isn't stopping subscribers from wanting to join the Starlink network, so it is now resorting to more desperate measures, like delaying the dish shipment for "up to six weeks" after ordering to get its carrying capacity ducks in a row.

These congested areas in the US could see some relief when Starlink starts launching the V3 satellite that will offer 10x the throughput and 24x the uplink capacity of the current crop. This should happen some time in 2026, when SpaceX will also light up the Starlink gigabit network.