The Ontario government in Canada has officially pulled out of a satellite Internet contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink.

Local press, including CNBC, Globe News, and the Globe and Mail, report Ontario Minister of Energy and Mines, Stephen Lecce, confirmed this week that talks to end the contract had finished. Lecce declined to say how much the cancellation cost.

“I can confirm that the Premier has fulfilled his word, which is to cancel that contract because of the very reasons he cited,” the minister said.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford signed a CA$100 million contract with SpaceX’s Starlink unit last November. The ONSAT program aims to provide high-speed Internet to some 15,000 remote premises in rural and northern Ontario.

“These communities will gain access to high-speed satellite internet capable of supporting streaming video calls, online gaming, and more activities that have become second nature to so many of us,” Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma said at the time.

However, earlier this year, Ford threatened to cancel the Starlink deal as part of ongoing trade tariff disputes with the US.

The deal was briefly cancelled, before Ford announced the government was pausing a number of planned retaliatory measures after US President Donald Trump postponed a series of import tariffs from Canada. Trump has imposed new tariffs on Canadian imports, which are paid by the importer.

At the time, Musk had shrugged off Ford’s threat, saying “Oh well” in a post on X. Musk and SpaceX are yet to comment on this week’s news.

Opposition parties criticized Premier Ford's approach to the cancellation, arguing that a replacement vendor should have been identified sooner and that the kill fee should be made public.

The province is now reportedly aiming to find a Canadian company to replace Starlink.

Telesat, which is developing its own Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network to rival Starlink, is the largest of a few Canadian satellite operators. Canada's Kepler.Space also operates an IoT satellite fleet in LEO. Telesat’s Lightspeed network is being partly funded by the Canadian government, with the satellite operator noting space sovereignty could be a driver of new business.

Existing Starlink services within Ontario are unaffected by the cancellation.

Starlink launches IoT device support

Starlink, which offers direct-to-device services to some mobile providers, is now offering support for connectivity for IoT devices.

New Zealand telco One recently announced its satellite IoT service – powered by Starlink’s direct-to-cell capabilities – has gone live. Kiwi company APIS Solution is offering a direct-to-device IoT solution for beehive monitoring that relies on OneNZ and Starlink.

As reported by PC Mag, Starlink and One NZ recently notified the US communications regulator, the FCC, about their plan to use more radio spectrum to increase capacity for satellite connectivity.

In a letter to the FCC, One NZ said: “We now want to ensure that we continue to have sufficient capacity to provide services to users and to enable additional services to be offered, including data and IoT services. The allocation of additional spectral capacity will support these outcomes.”