SpaceX Expecting 100Mbps Broadband from Starlink Satellites UPDATE

SpaceX has revealed the results from their most recent “official” testing of the new future mega constellation of small Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Starlink satellites, which they claim has now “shown super low latency” and download speeds “greater than 100Mbps” (Megabits per second).

The figures have not been independently confirmed, but would mark a welcome improvement over some of the initial tests that leaked out last month (here). On the other hand the new results are still a long way from the “gigabit” or “fibre-like” levels of performance that have been stated in the past, although there’s still plenty of scope for improvement as the constellation grows, improves ground station utilisation and begins to harness more spectrum bands etc.

After this week’s launch SpaceX now has over 700 LEOs in orbit around our planet and that’s just shy of the 800 they’re targeting in order to deliver partial global coverage for an early commercial launch, albeit not reaching the UK for awhile (the first customers will be in the USA and Canada). We also recently got our first glimpse of the beta setup for the new service and its terminals (here).

As it stands the satellite operator has an initial ambition to deploy 4,425 LEOs by 2024 (possibly followed by 10,000+ at a later date). However, despite the positives for rural broadband connectivity, many astronomers will no doubt be concerned at any increase in the number of LEOs, particularly with SpaceX’s early fleet causing more than a few irritations for observational science (mitigation efforts are underway but it remains to be seen how effective those will be).

UPDATE 8:10am

A post on reddit has revealed one of SpaceX’s recent submissions to the FCC (here), which confirms some known facts but also reveals the results from three recent officially approved beta speed tests via Ookla’s speedtest.net service. The figures are as follows (take note that the figures for test 2 and 3 are indeed identical).

Test 1
Download 103.07Mbps
Upload 41.99Mbps
Latency 19ms (milliseconds)

Test 2
Download 102.88Mbps
Upload 40.58Mbps
Latency 18ms

Test 3
Download 102.88Mbps
Upload 40.58Mbps
Latency 18ms

Sadly, no information was included to clarify the exact LEO setup for this test, although it is revealed that they were using “standard user equipment” and expect “round trip to internet” latency times of faster than 40-50ms from their platform. Just remember, tests issued by the operator itself will always attempt to show the service in its best light and might not reflect real-world experiences for every user.

The document also reveals that SpaceX now expect to deploy a slightly reduced number of LEOs from than their original plan stated (i.e. 4,408 satellites by 2024 than 4,425). The company is currently building about 120 of these per month. Credits to one of our readers (Steve) for pointing this document out.