Starlink crosses the milestone of one million connection kits

Slowly but surely, Starlink, the SpaceX service that provides an internet connection by satellite, is progressing. In a recent Tweet, Elon Musk indicates that SpaceX has now passed the mark of one million connector kits manufactured.

Unfortunately, the boss of SpaceX and Tesla does not indicate how many are in use. However, in May, an official document revealed that SpaceX had more than 400,000 subscribers worldwide, a marked increase from the 250,000 subscribers reported a few months earlier. As a reminder, pre-orders for these connection kits were launched in February 2021.

In the meantime, Starlink has already changed the design of its antenna, switching to a square model. Starlink has also extended the uses of its service. For example, users today can pay extra to temporarily change location. There is also a special offer for motorhomes. And more recently, an offer for boats has been created.

It should also be noted that today, Starlink does not only target individuals, since there is already a “Business” offer for companies. It costs more, but provides better connection quality.

SpaceX also has agreements with companies, such as the Royal Caribbean, which will equip its cruise ships with Starlink antennas. And before the announcement of the iPhone 14 series, the company announced a collaboration with an American operator in order to put an end to the gray zones in the United States, thanks to a direct connection between the smartphones of this operator’s network and the satellites. Starlink.

Starlink, victim of its own success?

Unfortunately, Starlink already seems to be a victim of its own success. In a report, Ookla (which offers a service to measure connection speed), indicates that the speed has decreased in all the countries covered by its study, as new users arrive.

According to this study, median download speeds for Starlink dropped in Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, dropping between 9% and 54% from the second quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2022.

“Download speeds have also slowed on Starlink, with speeds dropping in every country we’ve tracked over the past year. Latency fared a bit better, with latency remaining relatively stable (albeit high compared to fixed broadband) in most countries”can we also read in the publication.

Nevertheless, Starlink still shows good performance compared to fixed broadband. Ookla says Starlink was fast in Europe during the second quarter of 2022, surpassing the median fixed broadband download speed in 16 countries and achieving download speeds above 100 Mbps in 10 countries.

“In contrast, fixed broadband only reached median download speeds above 100 Mbps in six countries: Romania, Spain, Portugal, France, Hungary and the Netherlands during the second quarter of 2022. Starlink was fastest for median download speed in Portugal at 123.01 Mbps, the Netherlands (122.43 Mbps), Austria (112.01 Mbps), France (110.98 Mbps) and Belgium (110.40 Mbps)”, indicates Ookla.