Interested in Starlink satellite internet? It could be awhile. SpaceX is signaling that more areas across the US won’t receive coverage until “late 2022, early 2023.”
The company began pushing wait times for Starlink into 2023 this past August for a small number of areas in the US, such as Roundhill, Virginia, and Evergreen, Colorado. But overall, SpaceX’s Starlink website has been telling new customers that coverage would arrive in 2021 or late 2022.
Now, with this year coming to a close, the company seems to be updating wait times for more areas. On Tuesday, eager customers on Reddit hoping to try out the service began noticing the Starlink website was stretching out the estimated date of arrival by an extra year.
Indeed, PCMag plugged in numerous random addresses across the US into Starlink’s website, and found many returned a “late 2022, early 2023” arrival date for the satellite internet service, particularly in California, Oregon, and Washington. Meanwhile, other areas in Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Texas showed an "early to mid 2022" or "late 2022" date.
However, users who pre-ordered months ago say the Starlink website continues to show them the original estimated arrival date. “My account still says mid to late 2021 for me, but I went to the home page and put my address in as if I were to order again and it now says late 2022 there. Sucks to be anyone that hasn’t pre-ordered by now,” wrote one user on a Starlink Reddit forum.
The new wait times come as SpaceX is preparing to move Starlink out of the beta phase by the end of this month. According to CEO Elon Musk, a “nationwide rollout” is slated for October, but even if you live in an area full of existing Starlink users, you’ll still need to wait for access. Starlink is currently serving over 100,000 users with download speeds of 50Mbps to 150Mbps, but faces a massive backlog of 500,000 customers still waiting to try out the service.