Starlink’s Satellite Broadband Hits Capacity Limit in South East England
Customers in the South East of England who may be looking to sign-up with SpaceX’s popular Starlink service, which offers ultrafast broadband connectivity via a global mega constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), may have to wait a bit longer as the network in that area is now “at capacity“.
At present Starlink’s network has a staggering 6,906 satellites (c.2,800 are v2 Mini / GEN 2A) in orbit – mostly at altitudes of c.500-600km – and they’re in the process of adding thousands more by the end of 2027. Customers in the UK typically pay from £75 a month for a 30-day term, plus £299 for hardware on the ‘Standard’ unlimited data plan (inc. £19 postage), which promises latency times of 25-60ms, downloads of c. 25-100Mbps and uploads of c. 5-10Mbps.
However, from time-to-time parts of their network may reach a capacity limit, which means that Starlink’s standard fixed residential service is full and new activations are not possible unless more data capacity is introduced. This is done to avoid the impact of excess subscriptions causing a bigger detriment to service quality (performance / speeds) for existing customers.
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The issue of capacity isn’t just a matter of how many satellites Starlink has in orbit and their capabilities (inc. any limitations of the chosen radio spectrum bands), but also of how many ground stations you have active in the same area and whether they have enough capacity to effectively feed current demand. Localised capacity issues often tend to reflect more of an issue with ground stations, which can take a little bit of time to rectify (usually a few weeks or months).
In this case, a large swathe of South East England, mostly reflecting the Greater London area and parts of several surrounding counties (see picture – top), has reached capacity (credits to Thinkbroadband for spotting this). This means that anybody putting in an order for the standard fixed residential service will be placed on a waiting list until the issue is resolved.
So far as we can recall, this is the first time that any significant part of the UK has reached one of Starlink’s capacity limits, although it’s perhaps not too surprising given that the service’s broadband speeds seem to have declined across the UK over the past six months (details here). Nevertheless, this should still be considered as a fairly routine part of how the service works, with various other patches of the world also dipping into and out of the company’s capacity limits over time.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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So more of Musk rubbish in the sky. Ready to move into action to spy if needed for Trump.
it wouldn’t surprise me if there are more to these satellites
Maybe China or Russia will do us a favour and knock them out,
Oh my dear fellow. Put the foil hat away ok.
I don’t think you got enough hugs as a child.
@Invisible Kid, are you saying you trust him and Trump? You, me or anyone else have no idea what those satellites can do apart from those that made them, and they are not going to say.
Musk is a dangerous man, and Trump is as well.
Good grief.
The US government have plenty of spy satellites. They don’t need to co-opt anyone else’s.
Is there no topic you have no knowledge on that you’re not driven to make inane comments on? It’s not compulsory.
An opinion on everything and knowledge of virtually nothing. The online incarnation of the bloke on their own at the end of the bar.
What do you think would happen to the literally millions of tiny fragments of debris that would be created by a single satellite being kinetically destroyed, let alone thousands of them? If it helps they’d go really, really fast, cause a lot of damage to anything in their path and cause severe issues with satellites in higher orbits including little things like GPS, geostationary communications/broadcast, etc, etc.
One of the first things that would happen in an all-out world war is space denial, accomplished through satellites being ‘taken out’ and release of chaff into orbit to disrupt communications which may or may not be done at the same time as release of re-entry vehicles with things that make really big booms on them.
Just FYI the Starlink satellites are used extensively for military communications with more on the way. If they were also being used to spy on people optically it’d be obvious to both military and non-military people. The locations of military satellites at any one time are not a big secret which is part of why spy flights remain a thing: dodgy stuff may be timed for when satellites aren’t overhead.
Noone cares about this country, much less wants to spy on it. We are a third world country with nothing to offer.
I hope you are right, I for one don’t want my night sky ruined by 1000,s of satellites. Musk is not to be trusted and has no right messing with the night sky.
@125 – “The US government have plenty of spy satellites. They don’t need to co-opt anyone else’s.”
Starlink is a cover for SHIELD. It is being used by the US space command.
This was it’s purpose right from the start.
Not really: own satellite constellation and under such deep cover it’s on the SpaceX website.
https://www.spacex.com/starshield/
Why would so many people in the two wealthiest regions of the UK feel the need to subscribe Starlink?
As above, most of the users come from the rural parts of that very wide area, many of which are still waiting for better fixed line connectivity to arrive.
Surely the question should be, why is internet beamed from space faster than what’s available via fixed line for so many people in such a ‘first world’ country?
Our broadband provision is decrepit in comparison to much of the world
The answer to that question is BT can’t be bothered to put fibre from poles to peoples homes and would rather allow Altnets to do it at their own cost.
This would be the BT/Openreach that’s installed more FTTP than all the altnets put together and is currently building faster than everyone else.
If you are rural in the South East speed can be very low.
4G/5G is not an option either in my experience as while you have a nice connection speed congestion is so high that it is not particularly usable.
I’m considering jumping because the earliest date for an upgrade on speed is 2030.
The price is now less than what I am currently paying.
It’s the cheapest way of adding a useable failover service to a broadband connection.
You’ll note as well that this is the most densely populated part of the country. It would only take a fraction of a percent of residents to subscribe to use an sig of can’t amount of capacity.
Where I live we have 65mbits FTTC. Several neighbours I have have bought Starlink. Speaking to them it’s not about having good internet connections but all about the house image of having the dish on the roof as it’s “cool”.
Yes very strange given all teh noise of successfull gigabit rollout out across the UK, and in the highly rural SE a) amazing, b) what a ridduculous cost for not very good performance.
Particularly given teh common view of oh just fall back on to mobile service coverage… that must also be so comprehensive.
Some folk must have more money than sense.
And as for the polluting of space with future junk – I’ll bet the ‘owner’ has thorough through life to disposal plans and organisation in place, fully vetted by internation space regulation bodies, must (could be a misspelling) be a wild trump west up there.
More plannet earth led pollution, bills to be paid later…
Maybe its just to stop the intergallactic police from being able to get through the junk to us actually on earth to do ‘a day the earth stood still’ on us ?
@Mark Jackson says:
I’m sorry, but I could not find that mentioned in the article. Has a Strlink source confirmed this?
@S says:
Except it is not faster. Fibre-based access provides higher bit rates and lower latency without all the risk of interference on the down and up links.
@buggerlugz says:
That is an urban-myth and demonstrably untrue.
@125us says:
Starlink is not the cheapest way to provide backup to a fibre link. 4G/5G mobile is a better option – you can implement that on a smartphone using tethering with no extra cost if you are on an unlimited contract. So it is definitely not the cheapest option.
Where it says “mostly in rural areas” – This reflects both Starlink’s publicly stated focus and Ofcom’s statement in its recent Connected Nations 2024 report (P20).
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/research-and-data/multi-sector/infrastructure-research/connected-nations-2024/connected-nations-uk-report-2024.pdf
Mark Jackson says:
OK I see now. I read the article twice but only glanced at the information box briefly.
It wasn’t *that* long ago that you could put in any old postcode, including in the SE, and get Starlink’s “rural” offer of free equipment.
I do wonder who’s subscribing to it down there though. I have to assume it’s people looking at backup services (and shunning cellular for some reason) – it’s not as if the South East of England is some kind of unserved internet desert where starlink would be the only option. That or the amount of capacity is so low that comparatively few users can exhaust it.
This isn’t right. Many parts of the south east ARE an internet desert – many rural parts and also towns are still not served by full fibre.
I’m a subscriber in that area and it’s for backup purposes when the overhead Openreach fibre gets clobbered. Second to last outage it took them 4 weeks to fix! Mobile coverage is unworkable for anything other than basic text / browsing.
Ispreview: this is the second time the area has been on wait list mode. The last time it was only a week or so, this time it’s remained wait list much longer.
JG – starlink is not a competitor to FTTP. Anyone who can get decent enough VDSL is not really in scope for starlink unless they really want to pay several times more for the theoretical promise of slightly faster speeds some of the time.
I am from a far more sparsely populated part of the UK and I have not seen a single starlink dish in the wild. It turns out that everyone’s happy with at least VDSL (judging by the relative lack of fibre cables coming out of the manifolds in FTTP enabled areas)
> people looking at backup services (and shunning cellular for some reason)
Cellular will go down in a power cut as the masts have minimal backup power.
Ben – usually enough to ride through typical power cuts, and that assumes landline service is not available (VDSL should stay up for a while, Openreach FTTP OLTs have the same resiliency as the PSTN does/did)
I am also doubtful that there’s huge numbers of people in the south east who a) must have internet literally at all times, b) have generators, and c) can dedicate a significant amount of their generator’s capacity to the considerable power consumption that the starlink terminals require (the website says 75 to 100W).
I stand by my point. I just don’t see this huge market for the service.
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that my own inability to see a demand for something doesn’t mean that the something doesn’t exist.
There might be a number of people fed up with a VDSL-powered 45/8 service that goes down when it’s windy or if it has rained a lot in the past few days: “Sorry, your line only manages so much”. So you look at mobile options. The best provider in your area manages 2 bars of 4G when outdoors (0-1 when indoors, and of course wifi calling would defeat the whole purpose of this exercise), and you run a speedtest getting 35meg when it’s quiet, but only 5meg when it’s busy, and are told that there’s nothing much you can do about any of it.
Then along comes Starlink offering 100-200mbit for double the price of what you’re currently paying? Seems to work, job done. Worth it.
I can understand a lot of rural areas having a few customers with this situation, or one very similar to it.
I live in the South East (Winchester in Hampshire) and FTTP coverage is very poor.
Hampshire, and especially Winchester, lags behind the rest of the country massively. FTTP coverage is estimated by Think Broadband to be around 56% in Hampshire and in Winchester it is a shocking 27% (Openreach just 11.5%). Only around 50% of properties in Winchester are covered by VM coax. There is a tiny bit of Giganet (APFN) but they gave up and left after (selectively) covering some areas.
UK and England has over 73% FTTP coverage so Winchester sits at around a third of the national average.
Mobile coverage is a cruel joke but 5G has started appearing in some parts from one provider (EE). The rest, as Tom mentioned, is useful for only the most basic calling/texting/browsing. Even WhatsApp struggles at times.
So yeah, if I didn’t have (just about) adequate FTTC, I would be looking at Starlink too. While living in one of the wealthiest cities in the country in an urban area.
Starlink subscriber here from a nearby village to Winchester. Its the best we can get right now. 40 Mbps is simply not fast enough for a family of 5. Have been a subscriber since Starlinks residential offer, and overall, happy with the service.
City Fibre appear to be beginning works around here, so obviously plan on switching whenever that is ready.
@J
wouldn’t it be cheaper than Starlink to get a second VDSL openreach line into the home and hence an additional 40mpbs (crudely balanced by using different SSID for different people/uses, or put in a small business type of local network that can load balance across multiple connections). May not need an additional cable in from street, as often there is a spare “pair” that Openreach can patch in for you (unless that would interfere with the other pair in use), although it would be an additional master socket (ensuring you have up to date NTE5Mk4 master with VDSL faceplate directly connected to router with a short cable to make the best of what you have for each line). Presuming no Altnets available; and this is one of the few cases where Virgin (as a second line) might make sense.
Maybe even a 3rd line within same budget as Starlink, and likely better performance
Depending how well 4G/5G works the second line could be wireless broadband (a different sort of redundancy). Maybe splitting additional lines to different ISP’s from different companies to mitigate any “back end” failure/congestion (i.e. not getting one line from Sky and a second from Now).
Also, unless 5 people are streaming 4K (multiple streams at same time), gaming, or shunting round massive files all the time, the problem may be crap WiFi not VDSL bandwidth exhaustion, fixable by partially or completely replacing ISP’s routers and setting up a mesh/running data cables.
@Sonic says:
The figures you quote for Winchester are ver different from what TBB is actually reporting.
I’m in East Sussex. No fibre, fttc unreliable, when up 15mb down. No sign of fttp, so Starlink it is. Got mine a few years back. No 5G and 4g coverage poor either.
Yep same. I REALLY do not want to be in Elon’s pocket, but it is a service that is vital to our family and (side) business needs.
Out internet is yeah 15mb and that’s with the community paying for the upgrade from 2-6mb a few years ago.
I have seen nothing to show this will improve anytime soon. As soon as I can get 100mb from BT I will. But until then with very poor cell coverage too, Elons service is a must.
And it is a great service. Never not had a connection for more than a few moments and last night was getting over 300mb and less than 20ms latency.
The only issue is yes it’s not cheap PM but the original router at least, was a total POS. A mesh system is 100% required and even the new one I’d say it probably is
But if you can get good land kind speeds I don’t see why you’d have Starlink. Or at least monthly on month.
Elon is a *bleep so the minute I dot have to make him any richer I won’t be doing so.
I’m in rural west sussex, 3miles from the nearest town and adsl is quoted faster than fttc as we are so far from a cab. Quote for fttpod just said (over 100k). Starlink works flawlessly and we both work full time from home running a business.
I’ve had Starlink in the highlighted area since July 2021 as our local offering was terrible and we were not in any build plan for FTTP. For the first 2 years it was excellent with great speeds around 200 but it has now deteriorated so badly I am regularly getting 10-11 down at peak periods in the evening making streaming unviable. No resolution offered by Starlink other than pay double for their ‘priority’ service.
I have now cancelled and gone back to FTTC as at least it is stable. We are hoping for FTTP in the next year as well thanks to a surprising announcement from Openreach accelerating our area’s build plan.
In fairness I don’t think it should be considered a FTTC replacement if you’re able to get 30Mb+.
I know it’s crazy but there’s plenty of folks still on under 30Mb who really need this more.
lol lol lol all the people raving about this kit it’s like derek trotter having a satellite on his balcony
I think even Trotter would know that satellites are only useful when in orbit.
OMG the funniest thing about the 99% is the fact they don’t realise they are in it cause they are stupid you build a self landing rocket and innovate the tech to beam internet around the globe to fix a global communications problem and you can join the 1%. Until then enjoy getting angry at a genius cause you have a small brain
You should give yourself the night off Elon. Maybe try and repair your relationship with your kids.
No wonder why people prefer starlink in UK… As UK 4g,5g coverage and quality probably shittiest in Europe…
It costs me £54 with virgin media and I get 125mbs, I can add a bolt on for £5 and would receive 250mbs, starlink is way overpriced.
Good for you. In my area no amount of money will provide 125mb or 250mb terrestrially. It’s priced to keep people who have better options (like you) off the service.
Openreach will install an EAD pretty much anywhere if you’re prepared to pay the excess construction charges, so you do have terrestrial options.
And they’ll do that for £54 a month as with VM or Starlinks £75 a month? No. I had OR (and others) price up EAD et al and it was outrageous. The ECS was more than 12 years of Starlink service and the monthly rate was much more than Starlink as well. I don’t have that sort of money knocking about and most people don’t. It’s not a realistic option.
True, but the ECCs for must rural users are likely to be 6 figures, and the monthly cost is significantly higher than Starlink. Not a viable option for most.
Jeff:
“ no amount of money will provide 125mb or 250mb terrestrially. ”
Clearly an amount of money will.
I use one of fibre networks I’m on toob got 1gb up and download for £25 per month its now £29 which is still way cheaper than those traditional fibre companies, can totally understand those in rural area using starlink mind you
There’s an extra charge to pay for new Starlink customers in my area of Lancashire due to high capacity on the network in the area.
The reality of Project Gigabit in the rural South East is dreadful, both in the arbitrary decisions of Openreach and the poverty of FTTC or 4G mobile data alternatives. 5G no chance.
UK government seems determined for 50+ rank as reported here recently.
Growth requires service obligations and offcom isn’t delivering that despite supplier consolidation.
The only thing worse is the offer to make fascist billionaires richer…
Starlink – no thanks – I ain’t paying towards Elon Musk as I knew starlink it pile of rubbish kit.
It’s a last resort service, I’d avoid it over anything else, garbage and ultrafast it is not, it’s just like his cars, low quality trash
It is absolutely is a last resort service and should be treated as such. It’s not low quality trash though. It’s orders of magnitutide better than previous GEO satellite service and has revolutionised the industry. Don’t get me wrong, I dislike Musk intensely, but Starlink is a major leap forward in space-based connecivity.
It’s been a game changer for me working at sea. Before our speeds were 1 to 2mbs, now it’s like having normal internet.
This is great. Shows demand is greater than supply. All ISPs would be jealous to have this problem
Not really. Unless there were factors outside of their control people would be being fired for failing to capacity plan.
A good opportunity to do some Elon cheerleading for sure but the idea any ISP wants their network so saturated they have to stop selling is laughable.
Unfortunately I’m in that area so can’t order Starlink yet. Of course you would expect to have decent broadband but we get 6 up yes 6 not 60 and 0.5 down. 3 adults in the house so imagine how slow it gets when we are all using it. No mobile signal on any network indoors either. Not any choice but to put up with it sadly. Got our MP on the case but it’s purely down to lack of fibre infrastructure. Starlink was the only option for anything decent.
Maybe good to people in rural areas, but BT are pricing to it all over UK.BT don’t mind, kerching.
The latency’s not much cop and if its anything like satellite TV . . . . one decent downpour can put paid to any meaning communication. . . . not that UK has lots of rain . . especially at Xmas.
The current concern eminatating from those that “Manage” the celestial heavens on our behalf is that the satellite density is getting to the point where the limits of Chaos theory may be tested simply by one orbital object making a glancing blow against another and a “Knock-on fission effect” chain being started which would render the orbital heavens uninhabitable/Unusuable for man-made satellites for years to come.
If the Americans are collecting enough data through spy satellites, why do they then need, and have had for some time, a “Backdoor” to the internet. Nah, . . the desire to exercise informed and effective control of the ROW means that, if your aim is World domination, your appetite for data, from whatever source, must be insatiable.
If you don’t like BT/EE pricing buy the service from somewhere else. There is nowhere in the UK where a part-fibre or full-fibre service is only available from BT. Can get gigabit over Openreach for less than £30 a month.
No idea what you’re talking about with spy satellites and the Internet. Physics makes it pretty challenging to know the signals being carried by an armoured cable on the sea bed from a satellite in orbit. Internet taps are signals intelligence, spy satellites imagining intelligence. They’re complimentary. They don’t replace one another.
> Can get gigabit over Openreach for less than £30 a month.
How? 🙂
Good, a built in clean up, sad it’ll be down to humanoid delinquency and chaos rather than decent management. One could hope they all plummet into musk’s back yards.
Anyone supporting an immoral tsar, is by implication also guily of being immoral.
When will we get the truth of geograpic coverage of mobile and landline coverage in the the uk, rather than the shams we get from ofcon and ‘providers’.?
I’m in rural Wales. In theory, we are the ideal customers.
Fibre is only a mile away from us but OR cancelled our hamlet’s FCP after we got 100% of the vouchers signed. Getting our MP involved achieved nothing.
There is a copper line that gets 2-3 Mbps down and 0.3-0.4 up with around 200-400ms latency. There is zero mobile signal outdoors.
Starlink solves my connection problem. In fact of the 10 households in our hamlet, 5 have Starlink now.
Yes it costs a lot. Yes it does consume a bit of power (33w average). Latency is around 30ms. Speeds vary a lot. One minute it’s 50 down. The next it’s 350 down. Heavy rain doesnt affect it. Thunderstorms block it for literally 1 minute.
Do I want to spend this much on connectivity? Not really. If there was an alternative then I would jump in a heartbeat.
I would imagine most users of Starlink don’t have a reliable alternative and are happy to pay more for something that just works.
In this article: people who dont have a certain service, which is so good that it is over subscribed, complaining about it just because the man who wants to send people to mars has too much money
“Starlink isn’t as cheap as FTTP, therefore it is not good”. People are seriously using this argument when Starlink can deliver a service at a fraction of the cost to remote areas
Although after all the exposures yesterday, no wonder so many on a certain political side hate Elon and reform: they rather cover up for all the horrible gangs than protecting the innocent girls
You’ve not seen the extensive reports showing how Musk is making huge sums of money by allowing materials showing child sexual abuse to flourish on X then? He should perhaps get his own house in order first.
Starlink user here.
This is just a musk tax. It’s not congestion.