Starlink Users Report Speeds of Over 200 Mbps on Satellite Internet Service

[Tsing]

Image: Starlink



An increasing number of beta testers for Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite-based internet service, are reporting impressive data speeds that are quite a bit higher than the 50 Mb/s to 150 Mb/s speeds that are advertised on official marketing materials. The latest comes from a user in California, who shared speed tests with Wcctech suggesting that Starlink can now provide speeds of up to 200 Mb/s on select occasions. That’s much better than competitors HughesNet and Viasat, which reportedly max out at around 20 Mbps and 25 Mbps. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted in February that Starlink speeds would be increased to 300 Mb/s this year...

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[Brian_B]

I have seen peak speeds around 235 but it’s very, very rare. Latency is decent but Speed is very inconsistent. I don’t have good data to tell what it averages at - if I had to guess probably close to 100

 

[Grimlakin]

When this opens up to North East Texas I will be getting my inlaws signed up if I can. They are Hotspot only where they live.

 

[Brian_B]

I've seen it spike as high as 296 now in the Edgerouter tracking, but nothing sustained. The dropouts are much better than they were a couple of weeks ago when I first started, but I still see things like hangs/dropouts in Zoom calls, and Geforce Now flat out doesn't seem to want to work at all. Streaming movies and such are no problem though (Kong v Godzilla was a horrible movie that looked GLORIOUS on my remodeled HT I spent all my GPU bucks on)




I also got this yesterday, which is very nice seeing an ISP focused on improving their service. I'm used to the DSL/cable guys, who would happily continue to sell you that 1Mb package for $99 that you've had for the last 10 years just because you didn't think to call and complain that now their slowest package is 25Mb for $30.

Throughout the beta program, customer feedback has helped drive some of our most important changes to date as we continue to test and scale the network. The Starlink team has implemented a number of improvements since our last update. Below are some of the key highlights:

Starlink Expansion Since rollout of initial U.S. service in October 2020, Starlink now offers limited beta service in Canada, U.K., Germany and New Zealand. To date, we have deposits from almost every country around the world; going forward, our ability to expand service will be driven in large part by governments granting us licensing internationally. Preventative Maintenance Recently some beta users saw short but more frequent outages, particularly in the evening hours. This was caused by two main issues— preventive maintenance on various ground gateways, coupled with a network logic bug that intermittently caused some packet processing services to hang until they were reset. The good news is fixes were implemented and users should no longer see this particular issue. Gateway Availability As more users come online, the team is seeing an increase in surges of activity, particularly during peak hours. The gateway infrastructure to support these types of surges is in place, but we are awaiting final regulatory approval to use all available channels. Near term fixes have been implemented to facilitate better load balancing in the interim, and this issue will fully resolve once all approvals are received. Dynamic Frame Allocation The Starlink software team recently rolled out our dynamic frame allocation feature which dynamically allocates additional bandwidth to beta users based on real time usage. This feature enables the network to better balance load and deliver higher speeds to the user. Connecting to the Best Satellite Today, your Starlink speaks to a single satellite assigned to your terminal for a particular period of time. In the future, if communication with your assigned satellite is interrupted for any reason, your Starlink will seamlessly switch to a different satellite, resulting in far fewer network disruptions. There can only be one satellite connected to your Starlink at any time, but this feature will allow for choice of the best satellite. This feature will be available to most beta users in April and is expected to deliver one of our most notable reliability improvements to date.

These upgrades are part of our overall effort to build a network that not only reaches underserved users, but also performs significantly better than traditional satellite internet. To that end, the Starlink team is always looking for great software, integration and network engineers. If you want to help us build the internet in space, please send your resume to starlinksoftwarejobs@spacex.com. Thank you for your feedback and continued support! The Starlink Team

 

[Armenius]

If the latency is good I could see finally being able to ditch Comcast for this. I'm really more interested in the latency and performance in adverse conditions since those are the biggest issues with satellite.