Starlink Service Lines: Activate, Change and Transfer

A Starlink service line is the subscription that carries a terminal’s service. A Starlink device cannot be active on the network without one. Through the Enterprise API, a provider creates service lines, changes their plan and data, and cancels them. Moving a service line between accounts has no single endpoint: Starlink describes it as a multistep process the provider builds.

# What does a service line hold?

Starlink lists four parts (service activation):

1. A service plan, with its data blocks. The two primary plans are Local Priority, for in-country priority data, and Global Priority, for global and ocean service.
2. A Starlink device: a user terminal, and optionally a router.
3. A service address.
4. A name, which defaults to the service line number and can be changed at any time.

Service line numbers begin with SL-, or AST- for lines created before 15 January 2024.

# How is a service line activated?

On a provider-managed customer account, activation follows a fixed order:

1. The customer accepts the letter of authorisation for provider management. Without it, no service line can be created.
2. The provider creates or selects a service address.
3. The provider creates the service line with its product. Starlink advises saving product IDs for later reference.
4. The provider adds the user terminal to the service line.

For new equipment, service lines can be created once the order has shipped, because the device IDs join the customer account at shipment. Starlink’s advice is to activate once the customer has the terminal and is ready to install, since customers may pick kits without checking device IDs.

# How do you change a service line’s plan?

Changing the product is two calls (updating products): get the available products, then put the new product onto the service line. The delayUpdate flag decides the timing:

• delayUpdate false: the change applies immediately.
• delayUpdate true: the change waits for the next billing day.

An upgrade mid-cycle brings a prorated charge on the next bill, and the data block size is prorated in the same way. The same endpoint reactivates a cancelled or paused service line on the chosen product.

# What else changes on a service line?

Through the API, a provider also renames service lines, enables a public IP address, adds or removes terminals, sets recurring data blocks and adds top-ups. Customers can change some settings themselves in the Starlink dashboard, including the service address, the IP address policy and technical configuration. Anything that changes billing stays with the provider.

# How do you move a service line to another account?

Starlink’s creating accounts page is plain: “The Starlink APIs do not include a native transfer process. The administration will need to develop a multistep process for managing transfers.” The steps it describes:

1. On the old account, cancel the service line and remove the terminal from it, then remove the device from the account. Terminals are locked to their account, and the order matters: the terminal comes off the service line first, then off the account.
2. Where the hardware carries a transfer restriction, a Starlink support ticket on the old account, with the new account number. Starlink Support moves the hardware.
3. On the new account, add the device, create the address and service line, and attach the terminal.

Each step is an API call, apart from the support ticket, which a transfer process has to wait for.

# What should a platform do for service lines?

• Activation that checks the letter of authorisation and product availability before it starts.
• Plan changes that state the timing and the proration before they are confirmed.
• Transfers run as tracked jobs, step by step, so a failure resumes rather than restarts, and the support ticket step is visible while it is pending.
• Every action traced to the endpoint it calls.

# How does Nexus Telemetry Enterprise approach this?

Nexus Telemetry Enterprise manages service lines through Starlink’s API, with each action traced to Starlink’s public documentation. It runs transfers as Starlink describes them: a multistep process, each step recorded.

# Where do you start?

Check the letter of authorisation status on every customer account first: service lines cannot be created without it. Then read the usage and data blocks guide for what each service line carries month to month.