(Photo by John Keeble/Getty Images)
This past weekend, Starlink users in Africa began experiencing latency at around 30 milliseconds—a drastic improvement from the 100ms to 200ms they had to endure before.
But this wasn't due to new satellites entering Earth's orbit, which is how SpaceX typically upgrades Starlink. Instead, the company has begun routing users in Africa to a dedicated ground facility in Nairobi, Kenya, called a “point of presence,” where the space-based Starlink network connects to terrestrial internet infrastructure.
“In Kenya itself, our customers have seen average latency drop from 120ms down to 26ms over the weekend!” posted Jimmy Grewal, a managing director at Elcome, an authorized reseller of Starlink dishes to commercial ships.
These Starlink POPs also underscore how ground infrastructure is becoming equally vital to improving the capacity and latency for SpaceX’s satellite internet system. "Of course, satellites are important, but they are only part of the story," says Jianping Pan, a computer science professor at the University of Victoria in Canada.
SpaceX hasn't publicly disclosed much about the POPs. But in December, Pan co-authored a paper tracking the Starlink network, which found the system connected to 33 active POPs before the Nairobi facility went online. This included 14 POPs in North America—where the majority of Starlink subscribers are based. The same paper estimated that Starlink has at least 1.95 million users in North America.
Building the ground infrastructure close to users is important because it means orbiting Starlink satellites can transmit the internet data more quickly, thus reducing the time the data needs to travel. A Starlink POP will receive user traffic through connected ground stations, which can communicate with orbiting satellites. If a POP is too far or out of view from a Starlink satellite, the data needs to travel a longer distance, reducing the connection speeds.
That’s what’s been happening in Africa. Previously, the continent only had one POP through a facility in Lagos, Nigeria, which might have had limited capacity. As a result, many Starlink subscribers East Africa connected to POPs in Europe, leading to higher latencies, Pan said.
A POP "can also help in terms of congestion,” Pan said. “The POP is where user traffic goes to connect to the real internet, like YouTube or other apps. The traffic has to go a POP, but each one has limited capacity.”
It’s why SpaceX has been expanding the number of POPs across the US and the globe as Starlink’s customer base has grown to over 4.6 million active customers. “In 2023 in the US, there were only 7 POPs, and in 2024, they added six additional POPs,” Pan said.
The company has also established a POP in Mexico and another in Calgary, Canada, which has also recently become active. In total, SpaceX currently has 37 POPs, Pan added, following the arrival of two other points of presence in Warsaw and Milan in Europe.
In the US, the Starlink POP in Seattle is also serving the most users at over 315,000, followed by the POPs in Chicago, Dallas, and New York City, which each serve over 200,000 customers.
Although many POPs remain based in the US, that could change as SpaceX looks to attract more Starlink users in foreign markets. In Africa, demand for Starlink has been so high that the company’s satellite dishes have sold out in certain regions.
Pan added that the newly established POP in Nairobi promises to not only improve Starlink for local users, but also increase competition among broadband providers in Africa. “The land-based service providers can be very expensive or offer low speeds. But now because of Starlink opening this new POP, many of the traditional providers will need to offer lower prices.” he said.