Ookla Publish Q4 2021 UK Starlink Satellite Broadband Speeds
Ookla, which runs the popular Speedtest.net service, has today published their latest Q4 2021 report into the internet download, upload and latency speeds for UK customers on SpaceX’s new Starlink constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based ultrafast broadband satellites.
At present Starlink has over 2,000 LEOs in orbit (2,034 are “working“) and their initial plan is to deploy a total of 4,425 by 2024. Customers in the UK typically pay a hefty £89 a month, plus £54 for shipping and £439 for the kit (dish, router etc.). But for that you can expect unlimited usage, fast latency times of 20-40ms, downloads of c. 50-250Mbps and uploads of c.10-20Mbps (such figures will change as the network grows).
The latest data from Ookla suggests that the service has seen a slight performance improvement on the downstream side over the previous Q3 results, albeit not the big leap that some were expecting given the company’s past promises. A year ago there was some talk of download speeds doubling to around 300Mbps by the end of 2021 (here), but the latest average (median) speeds show that many UK users are still quite a long way off that.
On the other hand, it’s worth remembering that web-based speed testing like this can easily be affected by all sorts of complex issues, such as slow home Wi-Fi, limitations of the tester itself and home network congestion. Not to mention that the speeds you do get are nothing to sniff at, particularly if you live in a poorly served rural location (i.e. the target audience), where nothing else may come close to Starlink’s performance.
Starlink’s UK Broadband Speeds
Q4 2021
Download 121.94Mbps
Upload 13.96Mbps
Latency 36ms (lower figures are faster)
Q3 2021
Download 111.66Mbps
Upload 16.02Mbps
Latency 37ms (lower figures are faster)
Q2 2021
Download 108.30Mbps
Upload 15.64Mbps
Latency 37ms (lower figures are faster)
By comparison, the average (median) download speed for all UK fixed line broadband connections in Q4 was 57.66Mbps, while uploads returned 16.84Mbps and latency times remained stable at 15ms. However, those fixed line speeds are being dragged down by older and slower technologies, such as ADSL and FTTC (VDSL2), as well as the consumer’s own choice of package, thus this is not a particularly useful comparison.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Doesn’t matter what the speed is if you want to connect in to your own network. Starlink don’t provide routable public IP’s.
Look up CGNAT, very few mobile networks support inbound connections.
If you need to bypass CGNAT use 3internet APN on Three network or use a VPN.
Can be done even behind CGNAT however this is a great use case for AAISP’s L2TP service.
I use tailscale hosted on a pi with starlink just find for inbound connections
5g for a small portion of the country if you are on the right network and don’t hit their data caps.
Neither of my 3 routers use CGNAT for a cost of £24 a month each. I don’t require any other device or service to connect to my own network. Starlink currently charge £89 and expect me to pay for another service, to connect in to my own network. On top of that the available DL speeds have halved in 3 months. The honeymoon is over, bye bye Starlink.
Older technologies such as FTTC. Brillient. I’ve work been working in IT for years and I am yet to quote anything other than FTTC or leased lines. I don’t know where FTTP is being rolled out. As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t exist. The only thing that eve comes up is FTTP On-Demand, which in my opinion hardly counts! Had a quote for £13k. BT need to pull their finger out. I haven’t even been able to quote anyone a sogea line yet, and that’s supposed to be generally available.
FTTP is being rolled-out a lot in North Wales, due to the distances from the cabinets. But there’s a big difference between ‘rolled-out’ and actually available and working. In our village Openreach (OutOfReach), installed fibre on the poles with the junctions and CBT’s in August 2021. They now tell us we ‘might’ be connected by April 2023.
Seems they like to install the client end, then delay the backend for years.