SpaceX will double Starlink’s internet speed later this year

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says the company’s Starlink satellite internet service will “double the speed to customers” later this year as it continues to build the global consumer network.

“Speed ​​will double to ~ 300 Mb / s and latency will drop to ~ 20ms later this year,” Musk said in a tweet Monday, responding to a user who showed speed tests between 77 and 130 Mbps.

Latency is the amount of delay in an internet network and determines how much time it takes for a signal to travel back and forth from a destination. Latency and download speeds are important measures for an ISP.

In a subsequent tweet, Musk added that Starlink will reach customers across “most” of the Earth by the end of 2021 and expects to have full global coverage “next year”.

He emphasized that Starlink, like other satellite broadband services, is intended for customers in “areas of low to medium population density”.

“Cellular will always have the advantage in densely populated urban areas,” said Musk.

To date, SpaceX has launched more than 1,000 satellites for Starlink. In October, SpaceX began rolling out early service in a public beta to customers in the US, Canada and the UK – with a service price of $ 99 per month, plus a $ 499 upfront cost for the hardware needed to connect to the network.

The company recently expanded the scope of that public beta, allowing potential users to pre-order the Starlink service. SpaceX announced in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission earlier this month that Starlink has “more than 10,000 users in the United States and abroad” in just over three months since the public beta began.

SpaceX noted in that FCC filing that Starlink’s service “meets and gets more than 100/20 megabits per second (” Mbps “) throughput to individual users,” while most users saw latency “at or below 31 milliseconds. “

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