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Upcoming Starlink upgrades will unleash 2 gigabit speeds for users of the satellite internet system, says SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell.
“Next generation, we’ll have smaller beams, more capacity per beam, lower latency,” she said at the Annual Baron Investment Conference on Friday.
According to Shotwell, SpaceX’s satellite communication advancements are moving fast, similar to Moore's Law, which famously predicted that the number of transistors on a computer chip would double about every two years. "The cycle of the increased capacity is basically on the same cycle as chipsets, which is like double the capability every two years,” she said.
Shotwell also noted that Starlink users can already get gigabit speeds—but only if they buy multiple dishes. Currently, a single $349 Starlink dish can receive download speeds between 100 and 200Mbps, depending on the area.
SpaceX anticipates that a single Starlink dish will be able to receive gigabit internet speeds in the future, thanks to next-generation satellites in development.
"If you just had multiple dishes, you could get gigabit per second speed. And what we’ll do is, instead of people having multiple dishes, we’ll just improve the satellite signal and the receive signal, and you’ll have gigabit, two gigabit per second speeds,” said Shotwell, who also noted Starlink is close to reaching 5 million global users.
Gigabit internet speeds have been a goal for Starlink since at least 2016. But in recent weeks, the company has been more bullish on the prospect following last month’s successful test flight of Starship, SpaceX’s next-generation flight craft. Although Starship promises to one day send humans to the Moon and Mars, the vehicle is also designed to carry heavier, more powerful Starlink satellites in orbit.
While Starship will still need more test flights before it begins commercial operations, Shotwell said in her talk: “I would not be surprised if we fly 400 Starship launches in the next four years… We want to fly it a lot. I have a lot of satellites to fly."
It's unclear if users will need to buy new Starlink hardware to access the faster speeds. But SpaceX has requested permission from the FCC to use more radio bands on its satellites to beam internet data. It has also proposed orbiting Starlink satellites closer to Earth and letting SpaceX operate nearly 30,000 satellites in Earth’s orbit —far more than the over 6,600 currently circling the globe.