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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk maintains an extremely close relationship with Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr.
Under Carr’s leadership, Musk’s rocket company has effectively been given carte blanche in its efforts to roll out its orbital Starlink broadband service to more Americans, a glaring conflict of interest that could have profound implications for society.
That’s despite concerns over thousands or even millions of satellites cluttering our planet’s already extremely busy orbit and the environmentally damaging rocket launches that send them up.
And the space-based network is already starting to experience some major strains — as some experts have long predicted. It’s a lesson some Starlink customers are finding out the hard way. As TechDirt‘s Karl Bode highlighted, SpaceX is now charging some users so-called “demand surcharges” of up to $1,500, simply because their address is within a high demand area.
“Starlink is too congested to handle meaningful load at scale so they’re quietly hitting people with $750-$1500 ‘demand surcharges,’” Bode wrote in a recent post on Bluesky. Even worse, those who are trying to contest these charges are facing a “black hole,” since SpaceX doesn’t “invest in customer service.”
The development highlights some considerable shortcomings that satellite-based internet has over physical broadband infrastructure back on the ground, including fiber. It’s a particularly controversial conversation, considering Musk’s extremely cozy relationship with US regulators. Efforts to ensure fiber internet access, particularly in rural America, continue to fall flat — or be defunded altogether — as SpaceX is awarded government contract after government contract.
Just this week, the FCC announced it was looking to accelerate approvals for next-generation satellite broadband launches, another major regulatory win for SpaceX.
Meanwhile, fuming Starlink customers are taking to social media to vent their frustrations.
“I have been charged 1,500 dollars demand surcharge for simply verifying my address that I have subscribe to three years ago,” one disgruntled customer wrote in a Reddit post. “I have contacted Starlink customer support but it’s pretty worthless. I have been getting tossed from one agent to another agent for the past five days.”
“This is robbery,” they added. “Even one of their agent verified that this was an internal system error but she won’t be able to cancel it because the amount is high and she is going to escalate the case, but the last message says that he can not circumvent this.”
Another user, who had been traveling in an RV using Starlink’s residential plan was surprised after getting “hit with a $500 surcharge” after “apparently” choosing a “high demand surcharge area in the NW.”
“I tried to appeal it, telling them we didn’t get any notification and that we would stop using it in that area if they would remove it, which they obviously declined,” the user wrote.
While the customer was ultimately refunded after a representative found an automated system had “detected a slight difference in the latitude and longitude coordinates, which mistakenly triggered the demand surcharge,” other users could be stuck paying exorbitant fees to get connected.
Last year, a separate Reddit user noticed that Starlink was charging them a $1,000 fee while trying to subscribe to Starlink’s residential plan in Washington state.
“Demand surcharge to the Moon,” the user wrote at the time. “That’s gonna be a no for me dawg.”
The congestion charge was quietly added back in 2024, starting out as a one-time $100 fee, depending on location. By June 2025, that number grew to up to $1,000 in parts of the country, as PCMag reported at the time. As of last month, surcharges can hit $1,500 in parts of Alaska, as the publication points out, indicating the fee has grown exponentially in a matter of two years.
A SpaceX support page (which appears to only be available in Swahili, for some erason) explains that moving from a high-demand to a non-high-demand area will not incur any additional charges. The other way around, however, will result in a surcharge, “based on current network capacity.”
“Pricing, availability, and surcharge amounts are subject to change based on network capacity and regional demand,” the page reads, translated into English from the African language.
In short, now that users are getting hit with fees of up to $1,500, SpaceX has its work cut out to attract new customers, particularly in congested areas.
Meanwhile, monthly rates are starting to creep up as well, making it an even more bitter pill to swallow.
“I can complain about Starlink raising their prices, but it’s the only genuine option we have,” former Nebraska state senator and Republican Julie Slama told the Washington Post last month. “Once they have rural customers on their service with no meaningful alternatives, they’re free to raise prices at will.”
More on Starlink: Elon Musk’s Conflicts of Interest With the Trump Administration Regulating SpaceX Are So Profound That They Have Grim Implications for Society
