Depending on your location on Earth, your Starlink connection speed may vary drastically. That’s why some users are experiencing frustratingly slow internet connection at times.
When advertised, Starlink’s internet was said to reach lightning connection speed. However, two years into providing satellite internet and as users pile up, the connection slows down.
Is Elon Musk’s Starlink Internet Speed Satisfactory? – Users Complain Slow Connection
For example, in Canada, users claim that the download speed has been down by more than 50% in recent months, sometimes even drastically falling below the 50% mark. According to experts, this is most likely happening because the popularity of the service sky rocketed. There are more Starlink users each day.
“Starlink speeds decreased in every country we surveyed over the past year as more users sign up for service.” – the new Ookla report reads. The outlet performed an analysis and found out that Starlink’s average download speed dropped somewhere between 5 and 55%. This is happening for the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany and each country that parked a raise in users of Starlink.
This affects the ‘strength’ of connection in the United States greatly. The average download rate dropped from around 90 Mbps to about 60. Yes, you can say that 60Mbps is not a terrible internet connection, however, it is far from what it was advertised.
According to the experts in the area, the show connection is due to an insufficient number of satellites in space. And SpaceX is already working on it. They are launching new satellites each day. However, in order to keep up with their promised internet speed, they’ll need to increase the number of satellites further.
But, space might be facing another issue. There are some regulations and guidelines that need to be followed when launching satellites into space. Scientists are trying to find out the effect that the constellations of satellites have on the environment. In addition, NASA already warned that the number of Starlink satellites interferes with their ability to detect potentially hazardous asteroids.
However, Elon Musk has something else in mind. As he says, Starlink’s internet service has one purpose only – to fund his Starship program that has a goal to eventually colonize Mars.
SpaceX announced that they already have around 2500 satellites in the Earth’s orbit. There are more than half a million active Starlink internet users. As a result they are constantly increasing the number od satellites in the orbit.
When you think about it, this is merely a problem that Starlink now has. The reason behind it is that there are more and more Starlink users resulting in a drop of internet speed. While the number of users raises, SpaceX will make effort to raise the number of satellites as well.
In addition, Ookla’s report also finds out that Starlink is still by far fastest of all its satellite internet rivals. Viasat and HughesNet are far slower than Starlink, even with the drastic drop of speed.
The problem that Starlink users have is that they get 4 times slower internet connection than advertised. SpaceX advertised its internet to reach speeds up to 200Mbps.
The question now is, how many more satellites can the orbit support before it becomes too clustered?
