Starlink satellite internet by Elon Musk is now as fast as fiber broadband. Almost

SpaceX’s Starlink satellite has matched up to the speed of the broadband, a speed test has found. Starlink which now has close to 90,000 active users has almost superseded the speed of traditional satellite internet. A new report by Ookla speed test has revealed that the speed of the Starlink Internet has improved a lot, and it is now close to the speed offered by wired broadband. A couple of Months ago CEO Elon Musk had announced that company will enable global coverage after crossing the “strategically important threshold” of 69,420 active users.

The Ookla speed test report had compared HughesNet, Starlink and Viasat during Q2 2021 and found all of them encouraging. “Starlink was the only satellite internet provider in the United States with fixed-broadband-like latency figures, and median download speeds fast enough to handle most of the needs of modern online life at 97.23 Mbps during Q2 2021 (up from 65.72 Mbps in Q1 2021). HughesNet was a distant second at 19.73 Mbps (15.07 Mbps in Q1 2021) and Viasat third at 18.13 Mbps (17.67 Mbps in Q1 2021). None of these are as fast as the 115.22 Mbps median download speed for all fixed broadband providers in the U.S. during Q2 2021, but it beats digging twenty miles (or more) of trench to hook up to local infrastructure,” the report said.

As per the report, the upload speed of Starlink internet service was of 13.89 Mbps which was closer to that on fixed broadband (17.18 Mbps in Q2 2021, 15.99 Mbps in Q1 2021). Starlink was closely followed by Viasat, which had the second-fastest upload speed among the satellite internet providers. It had an upload speed of 3.38 Mbps while the upload speed of HughesNet was at 2.43 Mbps.

The Ookla report said that Starlink was the only provider amongst the three with a median latency that was anywhere near that seen on fixed broadband. Starlink was able to achieve this feat because of its low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation. This makes the satellites closer to earth’s surface as compared to the traditional internet service provider. The Viasat and HughesNet, on other hand, have higher “geosynchronous” orbits of around 35,000km for their satellites. This was the reason why Starlink was faster than the other two.

Earlier in June, Starlink company president Gwynne Shotwell had revealed that the company deployed 1,800 or so satellites and once all those satellites reach their operational orbit, Starlink will have continuous global coverage by September.

As of now, Starlink offers beta services in 11 countries including the US, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Europe. SpaceX's goal is to launch around 42,000 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit by mid-2027.