Via Techdirt: Musk’s Starlink Socks Customers With $1500 ‘High Demand’ Surcharge
These surcharges are actively designed to deter use because the network is struggling to handle the load. They started at around $100 a few years ago, then jumped to $750. And last week, Reddit users began complaining that they were automatically hit with a $1500 demand surcharge.
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That a niche broadband option gets congestion normally wouldn’t be that big of a deal; the problem is Trump Republicans have hijacked and retooled the $42.5 billion infrastructure bill broadband grant program to throw billions of dollars – and millions of new customers – at Musk’s Starlink as a personal favor to one of the U.S. president’s biggest donors.
I was sitting at the local watering hole last night and saw the same Starlink commercial at least 4 times. I remember when the dream was “fiber to the home”. It infuriates me that a group of conmen, hucksters, grifters, and all of their sycophants – and their gullible followers – have destroyed that dream.