Starlink Got More Expensive in Canada. What Happened?

So, Starlink changed things up in 2025. If you run a business in Canada, especially somewhere off the beaten path, you probably felt it. The bill went up. Maybe way up. That fast satellite internet that seemed like a miracle suddenly feels… different.

For a while, Starlink looked like the answer. Canada’s huge, and lots of it doesn’t have good internet—no fibre, sometimes not even a decent cell signal. Starlink came along offering actual speed, without the crazy lag of old satellites. Businesses doing work in the middle of nowhere—mining, construction, farming, shipping, plus whole remote towns—signed up. It worked pretty well.

But then something changed. Starlink tweaked how they charge, especially for businesses using their ‘Priority’ plans. Let’s unpack what changed and why it matters.

What Actually Changed? Data Caps and Bigger Bills

The main thing is this: unlimited fast internet for businesses is gone. Starlink switched to selling buckets of ‘Priority Data’. Use up your bucket for the month, and your internet slows down to a crawl.

Here’s roughly what it costs for a fixed business spot in Canada now, in early 2025 (Canadian dollars):

• • The Dish: $3,170 (You need the fancier ‘High Performance’ one for Priority)

• Monthly Plans (Priority Data):

• • 50 GB: $94
  • 500 GB: $165
  • 1 TB (1000 GB): $290
  • 2 TB (2000 GB): $540
  • (They have bigger plans too, and ones for moving boats or global use cost even more)

The sticker shock isn’t just the monthly fee for the data bucket. It’s what happens when the bucket runs dry. If you burn through your Priority Data—and you haven’t agreed to pay extra for automatic top-ups— Starlink says your speed drops . Hard. Down to 1 megabit per second (Mbps) for downloads and 0.5 Mbps for uploads.

Let’s be clear: 1 Mbps is basically useless for most businesses today. Video calls? Forget it. Sending large files? Takes forever. Using cloud software? Painfully slow. It feels like dial-up internet from 1999. This isn’t just “a bit slower”; it’s like hitting a brick wall.

Why Would Starlink Do This?

SpaceX didn’t exactly send out a detailed memo explaining their thinking. But you can guess the likely reasons. Running a global satellite network isn’t simple or cheap.

1. Keeping the Network Running Smoothly

Satellites aren’t magic pipes with infinite capacity. Even thousands of them orbiting the Earth can get crowded. As more people signed up, especially businesses using lots of data, parts of the network probably started feeling sluggish.

Putting caps on data and charging more for bigger buckets is a standard trick network operators use. It does two things: manages the load so things don’t grind to a halt for everyone, and makes the heaviest users pay for the strain they put on the system. It’s a way to balance things out.

2. Making Money

This one’s obvious. Building satellites, shooting them into space on rockets, and keeping them all working costs a staggering amount of money. The early prices might have been low just to get people hooked and grab market share. Now that Starlink is established, they likely need to start showing serious profits. 

Charging businesses—who often need reliable internet more desperately and can pay more—is a pretty direct path to making the numbers work. Reports suggest their revenue is climbing fast , and business customers are a big part of that story.

3. Splitting the Market

Starlink now has clearer lines drawn between regular folks (Residential, Roam plans) and businesses (Priority plans). By taking away the unlimited fallback for businesses, they force companies that need consistent speed to buy the bigger, more expensive data plans. It lets them charge a premium for what businesses perceive as higher reliability and priority.

What This Means for Businesses (Not Just Numbers)

These price and data changes aren’t just spreadsheet entries. They cause real problems.

Budget Nightmares

Companies that had planned their budgets around the old Starlink prices—maybe assuming unlimited or much cheaper data—are now looking at bills that could be double, triple, or even five times higher , depending on how much data they use. That’s a big hit, especially for smaller outfits or businesses in industries where money is already tight.

Operational Headaches

Now, someone has to watch the data meter. Constantly. Worrying about hitting the cap and getting throttled—or facing hefty overage charges—is a new job nobody asked for. If your business relies on the cloud, checks remote equipment over the internet (like sensors on a farm or a remote mine site), or needs to send large files often, this is a constant background stress. The threat of your connection suddenly becoming unusable is always there.

Imagine trying to run a remote construction site where plans are updated digitally, or a fishing boat relying on satellite weather data. Suddenly hitting that 1 Mbps wall isn’t just annoying; it could halt operations.

[GB Quote Placeholder: Insert quote about specific business impact here]

So what does this actually look like on the ground? Galaxy Broadband is hearing from industry contacts about the sticker shock. For some heavy data users, especially in demanding sectors like mining, the monthly bills have ballooned. 

We’ve heard stories of costs jumping from around $7,600 to nearly $40,000, or from $1,300 to over $16,000 – just to handle the same amount of data they used before. Try explaining *that* increase to your finance department. It’s a massive hit for businesses trying to stick to a budget.

The Remote Problem Gets Sharper

This hurts most in rural and remote Canada. For many businesses and communities out there, Starlink wasn’t just an option; it was the only option that offered decent speed. It was a lifeline. Now that lifeline has strict limits and a higher price tag. The digital divide they thought Starlink was closing suddenly feels wider again.

Now, instead of just using the internet, businesses are stuck constantly watching the data meter, stressed about hitting the cap and getting throttled, or facing nasty overage fees. 

Unsurprisingly, some companies, especially those needing consistent high bandwidth, are now actively looking at (or switching to) alternatives like Eutelsat OneWeb . When you need reliable performance without the budget surprises, options with guaranteed service levels start looking pretty good.

Is There Anything Else? (Enter OneWeb)

Starlink isn’t the only company putting lots of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) for internet. There’s another player called Eutelsat OneWeb. They’re based in the UK and Europe, and they do things differently.

OneWeb doesn’t really sell to individuals or small businesses directly. They focus on big customers: governments, airlines, shipping companies, and large enterprises. In Canada, they usually work through partner companies, like Galaxy Broadband in Canada.

Here’s why OneWeb is suddenly more relevant:

Guaranteed Speed

OneWeb offers Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Committed Information Rate (CIR). This means businesses can pay for a guaranteed minimum amount of bandwidth. 

Starlink’s Priority plans promise good uptime (like the connection won’t drop), but the actual speed you get is still mostly “best effort” – you get priority, but no hard speed guarantee. For businesses where a certain speed is absolutely critical, that OneWeb promise might be appealing.

Built for Business

Because they target big companies, their network and the support offered (through partners like Galaxy) are often designed with business needs in mind. This might mean more robust security options or features that plug into existing corporate networks more easily.

The Politics and Data Privacy

Something else has popped up recently that makes the choice more complicated: politics and data privacy.

A few years back, during a trade spat between the US and Canada under the Trump administration, some Canadian provinces actually cancelled their Starlink contracts . It was a political move, but it showed a potential risk: relying heavily on a US company for critical internet could make you vulnerable if relations sour.

Then there’s the data issue. Laws in the US, like the CLOUD Act , arguably give US authorities the power to demand access to data held by US companies, even if that data is stored physically outside the US. If you’re a Canadian business or government agency handling sensitive information—health records, financial data, citizen information—the idea that US agencies might get access is worrying.

OneWeb, being UK/EU-based and working through Canadian partners that often use ground stations in Canada , can argue they offer a safer option. They can position themselves as less exposed to US political whims and data access laws. This “data sovereignty” angle is becoming more important for some organizations.

So, Starlink or OneWeb? Which Way To Go?

There’s no single right answer. It depends entirely on what a business needs and what it’s worried about.

Starlink

It’s still probably the easier and cheaper LEO satellite option to get started with, especially for small to medium businesses. The speeds are generally good if you stay inside your data limit. It’s likely the better fit if your budget is tight, you need internet across many scattered locations quickly, and you can either live with occasional slowdowns or afford to buy more data when needed. The political and data sovereignty concerns are real, but might be an acceptable risk for many.

OneWeb (via Partners)

This is the premium, heavy-duty option. It makes sense for businesses that absolutely need guaranteed bandwidth (those SLAs/CIRs), require top-tier reliability for essential operations, want business-focused support, and are perhaps more sensitive to the political and data sovereignty risks of using a US provider. The catch is the cost – it’s generally more expensive and might only be justifiable for larger companies or critical infrastructure where connectivity failure is unthinkable.

What Else is Out There? Any Other Choices?

Starlink and OneWeb get the headlines, but they aren’t the only ways to get internet in remote Canada. The other options usually involve trade-offs:

• GEO Satellites (like HughesNet, Viasat): This is the older satellite technology. The satellites are much farther away, which means high latency (a noticeable delay). Speeds are usually slower than Starlink, too. But they’ve been around a long time and have business plans. Sometimes they might be cheaper, or available where LEO isn’t yet.
• Fixed Wireless Access (FWA): Think of this like mobile data, but for a fixed building using a dedicated antenna. Companies like Xplore, Rogers, Bell, and smaller local providers offer this. Where you can get it (especially the newer 5G FWA), it can be quite good. But its reach is limited – you need to be relatively close to a tower. It’s not going everywhere like satellite can.
• Telesat Lightspeed: This is Canada’s own LEO satellite project. It promises high performance aimed at businesses and governments. The catch? It’s not ready yet. Service isn’t expected until 2027 or later. It’s a future competitor to watch.
• Amazon Kuiper: Amazon is also building its own LEO satellite network. They started launching satellites in late 2024/early 2025, but widespread commercial service, especially in Canada, is likely still a ways off. Another future player.
• Fibre Optic Cable: This is the gold standard – fastest speeds, most reliable. But digging trenches or stringing cable across vast, sparsely populated parts of Canada is incredibly expensive and slow. The government has goals to connect everyone by 2030, but for many remote businesses, that feels like a lifetime away.

Wrapping Up: It Just Got More Complicated

Starlink’s move in 2025 feels like a turning point. The initial phase of disrupting remote internet with surprisingly low prices seems over, at least for businesses. Now, it’s about making the business model sustainable and profitable.

The new reality of data caps, higher costs for heavy use, and the painful throttling means businesses can’t just sign up and forget about it anymore.

They have to think harder: How much data do we really use? What happens if our connection slows to a trickle? How much can we afford? Are we worried about where our data goes or political issues?

Competitors like OneWeb start to look like serious alternatives for businesses that need guarantees or want to sidestep some of the risks associated with Starlink. The simple choice for remote internet in Canada isn’t so simple now. Businesses need to look closely at their specific situation and decide what trade-offs they’re willing to make.

And don’t forget, mixed into this cost calculation are those trickier issues of politics and data sovereignty that keep coming up (we’ve talked about those elsewhere). For some businesses, especially government-related ones or those just wary of geopolitical games, relying too heavily on one US-based provider adds another layer of risk to think about. So yeah, the simple choice isn’t so simple anymore.