Starlink Speed Tests Are Disappointing

In a new edition of his always-excellent blog "Pots and Pans", Doug Dawson with CCG Consulting discusses recent speed tests (measured by Ookla) for beta test customers of Starlink, Elon Musk's satellite-based internet delivery service.

As Dawson reports, there are only a limited number of speed tests available as bet customers are just starting to be activated for Starlink. But reported download speeds ranged from 35 Mbps to 60 Mbps and upload speeds of 5 Mbps and 18 Mbps. Latency, always a concern with satellite services (and a big problem for geosynchronous orbits) are reasonable, between 31 milliseconds and 94 ms.

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I call these results disappointing because the speeds are so much slower than Elon Musk’s hype about providing gigabit data speeds from the satellites for the average customer. Unfortunately, a lot of rural Americans let themselves get sucked into that hype and they’ve been talking about satellite broadband as the solution that would solve rural broadband issues forever. There are communities putting broadband plans on hold since they think that the satellites will solve all of the local broadband problems. - Doug Dawson, CCG Consulting, Pots and Pans 

While Starlink speeds are far better than what many rural citizens have access to, they do not match the speed and performance of fiber optic networks. Hopefully as the full constellation of Starlink satellites is deployed performance will improve.