Elon Musk's 'Free' Starlink Internet For Helene Victims Comes With $400 Catch

Elon Musk pledged he will make the internet available for free on his Starlink satellite service for victims of Hurricane Helene, but failed to note that would-be users will have to shell out $400 for hardware to support it.

Starlink, a division of Musk's SpaceX, announced last week that it will provide 30 days of "free" internet service, which usually goes for $120 a month, for the thousands of victims of Helene in the southeast lacking phone service or where flooding destroyed fiber cables.

Musk, the world's richest person, also touted the free service on his X account.

"Starlink terminals will now work automatically without need for payment in the areas affected by Hurricane Helene," he said.

Online publication the Register put the offer through a test run and found that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

To see if you're eligible, you have to enter your address on the Starlink web page.

"But try to sign up for the ostensibly 'free' service in an area Starlink has designated as a Helene disaster zone, and surprise: You still have to pay for the terminal (normally $350, but reportedly discounted to $299 for disaster relief, though that's not reflected in Starlink's signup page), plus shipping and tax, bringing the grand total to just shy of $400," the outlet discovered.

The Register put in an address for city hall in Boone, N.C., one of the areas ravaged by the hurricane and it showed the cost of the hardware, shipping and handling, and taxes coming out to $393.91.

"Though better than nothing at all, it is not quite the humanitarian aid it was promoted and heralded as," the Register said.

For existing customers, Starlink said on its site that the user would have to fill out a support ticket "requesting a Helene relief credit," and a team would evaluate eligibility.

And customers who were able to get the "free" service will automatically be moved into a $120 monthly subscription service.

An editor at the Register tried to sign up for the "free" service and ended up with a nearly $400 tab.

"Like everyone else using what little phone battery was left, I navigated with SOS bars and no connectivity to starlink.com/activate only to see that it wasn't actually free," Nicole Hemsoth Prickett.

"I could connect to an active webpage in the middle of nowhere, which really says hey, data connectivity could actually be working again, but not for you with Starlink unless you pony up. It was insult to injury for many here who thought Free Internet Space Magic was real," she said.