SpaceX: Starlink, America’s Best Satellite Internet Provider?

In April 2021, SpaceX had received the approval of the FCC to operate 2,814 satellites in orbits lower than planned. As a reminder, SpaceX initiated the Starlink satellite Internet access project by deploying several thousand telecommunications satellites in low earth orbit.

If the project is intriguing, it is clear that the SpaceX project already seems to be a real success. More so, Starlink would start to overshadow traditional ISPs and may soon become the best at it.

Starlink could soon surpass traditional internet providers

A few days ago, ZDNet relayed a study by the Speedtest service which compared the performance of the various services available in the United States. It soon became apparent that Starlink was approaching traditional broadband offerings, with a download speed of 97.23 Mbps in the second quarter of 2021, while the download speed of fixed broadband providers was 115.22 Mbps. The providers HughesNet and Viasat meanwhile have a median download speed of 19.73 Mbps and 18.13 Mbps.

Starlink’s median upload speed is 13.89 Mbps versus the fixed broadband median upload speed of 17.18 Mbps. Despite this slight difference, Starlink puts the rubber on the level of latency since it displays 45 ms, against 14 ms for broadband. For their part, the suppliers Viasat and Hughesnet show 630 ms and 724 ms respectively.

Note that the Starlink constellation is located at an altitude between 550 and 1,200 km. The Hughesnet and Viasat geosynchronous satellites are about 35,000 km away. In other words, these providers can certainly cover large areas but the latency of their signals is present.