SpaceX Updates on Starlink’s V3 Broadband and V2 Mobile Satellite Plans

The top two bosses of SpaceX, Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell, yesterday issued some useful updates to investors on the progress of their third generation (V3) ultrafast broadband satellites and their second generation (V2) mobile satellites, which confirmed their current launch plans and some other details on future capabilities.

As of now, Starlink currently has around 10,900 satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – mostly at altitudes of between c.340-550km. Residential customers in the UK currently pay from £40 a month for the 100Mbps unlimited data plan, which also promises uploads of c.15-35Mbps and low latency connectivity (c.20ms). Faster packages exist at greater cost, while more restrictive (data capped) options also exist for roaming users (e.g. £55 per month for 100GB of data).

Some of the aforementioned satellites also help to provide mobile network operators (aka – Direct to Cell / Direct to Device), such as O2 in the UK (O2 Satellite), with a space-based mobile service that can help regular Smartphones to connect via a 4G mobile network in some of the remotest locations.

In terms of the latest investors update. Firstly, in relation to Starlink’s planned V2 Mobile satellites, which are expected to deliver a 5G service and offer mobile broadband speeds of around 150Mbps per user, Shotwell said, “we’re going to start flying the next-generation Starlink mobile satellites … next year [2027]” and “we will start providing service end of next year“.

Shotwell added that the current mobile system uses about 5MHz of bandwidth (hence why V1 is only good for basic comms tasks and apps), but she added that they’ll have “65MHz of bandwidth available to us through the EchoStar spectrum, which gives a massive increase in capability“.

Shotwell then covered the progress on their future V3 broadband satellites, which will need to use SpaceX’s experimental Starship rocket due to their larger size (their first test launch of twenty real V3 satellites happened last month – here). Version 3 satellites are expected to deliver 10x the amount of broadband capacity and data density from their current generations, potentially offering up to gigabit speeds to consumers.

As we’ve previously reported, each v3 will be able to handle 1 Terabit per second (1000Gbps) of total downlink (up from 96Gbps on V2 Mini) and 160Gbps of uplink speed (shared capacity), with the future Starship rocket able to put around 60 of these into orbit per launch (here).

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX President & COO, said:

“As Elon said, the first 2 flights of our V3 Starship vehicles put us in an excellent position to achieve our near-term goals of reaching orbit, catching and reusing the ships and boosters and deploying our V3 Starlink broadband satellites. Speaking of which, Starlink had a standout quarter, driven by continued growth across our consumer, enterprise and government businesses.

During the second quarter, we added net more than 1.7 million Starlink subscribers globally, consumer. This reflects our best quarter of new customers to date, an increase from the 1.4 million we added during the first quarter. We achieved this by holding ARPU, which is the average revenue per user, stable at $66 per month compared to the first quarter. We ended the second quarter with service availability in 167 markets and have continued to activate new markets since then with some very exciting announcements coming soon, maybe even as early as today.

As of June 30, our constellation of operational Starlink broadband and mobile satellites in orbit grew to roughly 10,200 with our 9,600 broadband satellites delivering roughly 800 terabits per second of total downlink capacity. Following a successful speed run test of the V3 Starlink satellites on the most recent Starship launch, during which we connected every satellite through every laser link, we intend to deploy V3 satellites into the constellation for operational use on the upcoming Starship missions.

The significant amount of capacity we’re able to add to the Starlink constellation from the V3 satellites will enable us to continue providing even better service. I think it’s pretty great already, but to do so while serving more and more customers over the world. In fact, in the years ahead, we expect Starlink will represent a significant portion of global Internet traffic, which Elon also talked about.”

The Founder & CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, then responded to a question concerning how long, once they start launching the V3 broadband satellites, it will take for that to translate into improved Starlink service for customers (i.e. better speeds etc.). “So we need some critical mass of V3 satellites, probably at least on the order of about 1,000. But probably that’s, I mean, approximately second quarter next year would be, I think, where we’d get to that point,” said Elon.

On the above comment Elon appears to be giving himself about another year to reach 1,000 V3 broadband satellites, which still sounds a little bit optimistic given how Starship has yet to fly in a commercial launch capacity and reach the proper orbit. But recent tests of the rocket have been positive and do suggest that we could see hundreds of V3 satellites being launched by this time in 2027. The V2 mobile satellites will also harness Starship’s rocket.

Interestingly Shotwell mentioned that their V2 mobile service will also have a terrestrial component (she’s talking about more than mere gateway sites here): “The spectrum that we purchased from EchoStar does have terrestrial components. So we definitely intend to build out the terrestrial component. So you will have not only the capacity from the satellites themselves, but you will have a build-out of the terrestrial, basically the hardware and systems necessary to make a true mobile service exactly what you want it to be,” said Shotwell.

All of this lends more credibility to the expectation that SpaceX may launch their own mobile operator in the future, which would put them into direct competition with some of their own customers (e.g. O2). “Let me give a little hint, and that is you could put a base station, a cellular base station on the — basically the gear that holds a Starlink broadband dish. So you can have kind of these little femtocells around the country and you deploy that as you need it. You don’t have to necessarily spend many billions of dollars in low-band spectrum all upfront before you deploy your system,” said Shotwell.

One problem with the above idea is that Small Cells usually don’t deliver much coverage, and we’re not sure how many of Starlink’s subscribers would actually want their internet connection being used by other people.