Starlink 2024 Report Details 1Tbps Speed LEO v3 Broadband Satellites
SpaceX’s Starlink service, which offers ultrafast broadband speeds to the UK and globally via a mega constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), has published an annual 2024 Progress Report that summarises their recent upgrades and reveals how their future V3 (GEN3) satellite will be able to handle 1Tbps (Terabits per second) of capacity.
At present Starlink’s network has around 6,900 satellites in orbit (c.2,800 are v2 Mini / GEN 2A) – 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, those with a long enough memory may recall that the operator has long held an aspiration toward delivering up to 1000Mbps (1Gbps) download speeds to customers (possibly even rising up to 10Gbps in the future), although today’s real-world experiences often still fall quite a bit short of that. For example, the average (median) UK download speed on Starlink is currently 66.8Mbps and this rises up to 157Mbps for those with the top 10% of fastest connections, while uploads average 10.2Mbps or 16.7Mbps for those in the top 10% (here).
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Suffice to say that the network is currently a long way off the 1Gbps+ mark for UK consumers, which in fairness is partly how they’re able to keep the service so relatively affordable for what you get. According to Starlink’s new 2024 Progress Report, the company’s current network has already launched a total cumulative data capacity of around 350Tbps (Terabits per second) into orbit, but that’s about to grow considerably.
Adding Capacity via Starlink’s GEN3 Satellites
SpaceX has long envisaged that their huge new Starship rocket, which is now nearly ready to handle its first commercial launches, would be capable of lofting much heavier / larger satellites in the future – in a greater quantity and thus higher cost efficiency. This is important because they’re currently preparing their next generation (V3) satellites to take advantage of this.
Just for some context, Starlink’s current V2 Mini satellites, introduced in 2023, have already enhanced performance with quadrupled bandwidth capacity (96Gbps per satellite) compared with their previous v1.5 spacecraft. But the company’s new progress report tells us precisely what we can now expect when they start launching their first v3 / GEN3 satellites in the near future.
In short, each v3 satellite will be able to handle 1Tbps (1000Gbps) of downlink speeds and 160Gbps of uplink capacity, with the Starship rocket seemingly able to put around 60 v3 satellites per launch into orbit (Credits to PCMag for spotting the release of this report). But this is an assumption of ours based on the statement below, which assumes 60Tbps is only referring to downlink performance, otherwise it may be closer to c. 50 satellites (inc. uplink).
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V3 STARLINK SATELLITE
The V3 Starlink satellite will be optimized for launch by SpaceX’s Starship vehicle. Each Starlink V3 launch on Starship is planned to add 60 Tbps of capacity to the Starlink network, more than 20 times the capacity added with every V2 Mini launch on Falcon 9.
Each V3 Starlink satellite will have 1 Tbps of downlink speeds and 160 Gbps of uplink capacity, which is more than 10x the downlink and 24x the uplink capacity of the V2 Mini Starlink satellites.
The V3 satellite will also have nearly 4 Tbps of combined RF and laser backhaul capacity. Additionally, the V3 Starlink satellites will use SpaceX’s next generation computers, modems, beamforming, and switching.
At the time of writing, we still don’t know precisely when SpaceX will start using Starship for full-scale commercial launches, but it’s highly likely to begin sometime during 2025 given the rocket’s recent progress. The new satellites may well sit slightly closer to earth (lower altitude, which is good for performance but does sacrifice a little coverage) and will be able to harness more radio spectrum frequency to help support their performance, as well as other enhancements (newer antennas etc.).
Speaking of Starlink, SpaceX are currently planning to launch their next rocket test around 10th January 2025 from their Starbase at Boca Chica Beach (Texas, USA). This will be another suborbital flight test of its fully integrated Starship rocket, a combination of the Ship upper stage (S33) and the Super Heavy booster (B14).
SpaceX plans to catch the Super Heavy booster using the chopsticks on the launch tower again, but will make a final determination on the catch following lift-off and stage separation. This mission will feature the first block upgrades for the Ship upper stage. S33 will perform a landing flip and make a hopefully gentle splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
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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You just know Musk is hoovering up all that user data for far more nefarious intentions, wouldn’t buy an ice-cream off that one
What do you think is happening to your date right now?
How would Musk read encrypted packets?
“Musk” can’t read encrypted packages, but like any ISP, “he” knows which site (not pages) and IPs you’ve visited, when, and from the traffic patterns you can easily guess what you were doing there. For example, connecting to WhatsApp servers and a low download/upload data stream indicates a voice call. Going to PN and then downloading big chunks of data means you’re watching videos. And so on.
Anon, as you say like any ISP Starlink can technically collect and abuse such meta data but unless you give consent it’s still against data protection laws to do so. Given half a chance I don’t doubt they would do it but the potential fines are not going to be worth the risk in the UK and the rest of Europe.
Using third party encrypted DNS will obscure the final destination from your ISP.
But SNI will give it away. Every connection you make using TLS (e.g. HTTPS) is encrypted, but the name of the site you’re connecting to is included, unencrypted, within the initial TLS handshake. A packet sniffing tool like Wireshark will show it to you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication
Winston, no, SNI isn’t yet encrypted
Lol with so many nefarious actors that can already take your data including ones that can actually jail you and your concern is the visionary that wants to colonize Mars and whose number one concern is population collapse
No Winston, it does not obscure the IP address from your ISP. Dnssec is a method to prevent spoofing, it doesn’t provide confidentiality.
How do you believe an ISP could route your data if you failed to provide them with readable IP address to forward your packets to?
My ISP only knows the outbound IP of the packet it sends. It can’t see the SNI because I have ECH enabled (it’s been enabled by default on Firefox for some time) so it can’t see the final destination IP. Obviously the DNS provider can.
@Winston
For clarity, when you use ECH on Firefox (or any other compatible browser), it only encrypts the SNI data when the content you’re accessing is on a server that also has ECH enabled.
ECH is primarily useful to CDN operators and they will of course have visibility of your activity, more so if they also operate the DNS resolver you use.
I’m not a big fan of Elon Musk but I am impressed with what he’s done with Starlink.
What exactly are you not a fan of? His next gen cars or him exposing the corruption that covered up hundreds of thousands of girls in the UK victims to the rp gangs?
@Sam
Elon Musk is a far right wing (I’d go as far as to say fascist) nut job. His views on human rights are abhorrent. His treatment of his own daughter inhumane. His meddling in global politics is frightening. His “visionary” ramblings are nothing more than you’d get from a raving lunatic. If you’ve read anything about his beginnings and his so called “genius” you might realise he is nothing of a sort. He’s a mentally unstable manchild who has clear and severe mental issues who was incredibly lucky to be in the right place at the right time with a LOT of “daddy money” to support him. He has a lot of smart people working in his companies, but he isn’t one of them.
There are PLENTY of good people in this world we should be idolising and revering but Elon definitely isn’t one of them.
By “human rights” you mean him safeguarding the fundamental human right of freedom of speech?
By “daughter” you mean his first born son who joined a death cult?
By “meddling in global politics” you mean having opinions and exposing the evil gangs operating in the UK?
By “visionary ramblings” you mean the aspiration to make space travel possible?
Just to be clear here. All the haters are deranged and worship some of the worst in humanity
His misunderstanding of free speech has turned X into a fact free cesspit and pushed the more reasoned onto other platforms. Presumably he will answer to the shareholders for his decisions.
His views on Net Neutrality are concerning as is his choice to comment on the democratic discussions of other countries when he appears to be the US president elect.
Respect for separation of nation states is fundamental to diplomacy which now seems a role he’s also taken on by no obvious mandate.
Election Interference by foreign powers is not acceptable to the USA so makes no sense towards their Allies, either. But then he’s not a US citizen, and presumably that’s not taught in South Africa schools. Idk.
Overall I do expect communication providers to uphold the law and act transparently without political bias.
So I’m not confident that Starlink and its owner provide that, and would prefer their competitors who do better..
What exactly is misunderstood? Community notes is the best existing tool to ensure facts prevail. X is the #1 app in many countries with most user app time and still growing in user numbers. If anything it is the scum that left X, which makes it even better
Did you also complain when the labour party ACTIVELY CAMPAIGNED for the democrats in the US? OR maybe when George Soros injected 400 million into anti Brexit in the UK? Elon Musk having an opinion is not political interference at all, especially when considering these facts
He is a US citizen. Citizenship does not mean where one is born
Elon Musk has done nothing for Starlink. it is a for profit corporation and he is a shareholder and CEO. He is kept away from the day to day operations of Starlink and has very little control of what it can and can not do due to the regulations around space flight and communications.
If you must give someone credit for Starlink, then credit Gwynne Shotwell and Mark Juncosa but don’t forget the hundreds of nameless engineers actually solving the difficult problems of making Starlink work.
Elon Musk has done nothing but bought himself a place on the board like all his “success” stories.
It will be flight seven not six in a few days time. Flight six took place last year.
Indeed, it is flight 7.
*sorry, you’re right, I doubt Starlink has Deep Packet Inspection devices
Lets try and separate the achievement of Starlink, and SpaceX away from Musk, since it does a deservice to the 12000 plus employees who work for SpaceX, and work bloody hard. Musk, who I personally think has drunk far too much of the kool aid.
“I don’t like Elon exposing criminal gangs but I like Starlink, somehow the success of a company has nothing to do with the CEO”
Musk isn’t the CEO of Starlink/SpaceX though
He is the founder
starlink user here
this is nice and all, but my starlink dropped from 250-300mbit to < 50mbit
and musk puts congestion charges on people, but it does absolutely nothing to deal with the congestion so what's it for?
Perhaps it’s more efficient not to build a technical solution to congestion when a commercial one will have a similar effect without requiring all that expensive design, build, test, deploy, support activity..