An organisation with more than one Starlink account has three ways to manage them: switching between accounts in the Starlink dashboard, connecting each account to the Enterprise API with its own service account, or asking Starlink to arrange them as managed accounts under one manager account. The dashboard works for a handful. Past that, the API is the only way to see every account in one place.
Why do organisations end up with many Starlink accounts?
Starlink accounts are billing entities, and several of Starlink’s own rules create more of them:
- Country and currency. A provider holds one provider account per country, and customer accounts are created only by a provider account in the same country and currency (creating accounts).
- Customers. Providers create a dedicated Starlink account for each customer, linked to the provider account at creation.
- Organisation structure. Multinational corporations hold accounts for different countries, business units or legal entities.
The result is an estate spread across many accounts, each with its own service lines, terminals, usage and invoices.
What does the Starlink dashboard offer?
The dashboard manages one account at a time. A user with access to several accounts switches between them. That is workable for two or three accounts. It gives no combined view: no list of every offline terminal across accounts, no usage total, no single place to find a service line by name.
How does the API handle many accounts?
Starlink’s authentication documentation is direct: “Starlink V2 service accounts are linked to an individual Starlink account.” To call the API for several accounts, you create a service account in each one and attach the right bearer token to each request.
That approach works for any set of Enterprise accounts, with no arrangement from Starlink. It has three costs:
- One credential per account, each created by a user with the Admin or Service Account Management role on that account.
- One rate limit per account. Each account has its own budget of 250 requests a minute, which helps a large estate rather than hurting it (rate limits).
- Your own aggregation. The API answers one account at a time. Combining accounts into one view is the integration’s job.
When do managed accounts help?
Managed accounts suit organisations whose accounts belong to one structure. Starlink sets up a manager account with managed accounts beneath it. A service account in the manager account can then request a short-lived token for any account below it, by account number. One secret reaches the whole tree. Starlink performs the initial set-up, through your account manager.
What should a multi-account view show?
Whichever route you take, the value is in the combined view:
- Every account, with its status, service line count and exceptions.
- Every service line across accounts, searchable by number, name or terminal.
- Offline and over-limit service lines first, wherever they sit.
- Usage per account and in total, against each account’s own billing cycle.
How does Nexus Telemetry Enterprise approach this?
Nexus Telemetry Enterprise connects every account through its service account, or the whole tree through a manager account, and shows them in one view: accounts, service lines, terminals and usage, with exceptions first. It keeps its own synchronised store, so the view never waits on the API or spends the rate limit, as Starlink recommends.
Where do you start?
List the accounts you hold and who administers each. Accounts under one organisation are candidates for managed accounts, through your Starlink account manager. Accounts held separately each need a service account. Either way, the complete guide sets out what to demand from the tool that brings them together.