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If you subscribe to Starlink, have you noticed faster internet speeds? SpaceX says download and upload rates for its satellite internet service have significantly improved since January.
Over the weekend, SpaceX’s VP for Starlink Engineering, Michael Nicolls, tweeted a graph charting this year's speed increases. Although Starlink.com already publishes expected speeds across each US state, Nicolls’ graph seems to focus on the median speeds during peak hours across the entire network.
The graph shows that median download rates for Starlink were between 140Mbps and 160Mbps in January, but have since risen to 210 to 220Mbps—or about a 50% increase.
In addition, the median upload rates have also increased by 50%, rising from around 20Mbps to 30Mbps. Nicolls attributes the faster speeds to “some significant low-level software and networking improvements, in addition to the overall capacity increases,” from new Starlink satellites entering into service.
Interestingly, the upload rate improvement seems to have occurred in late July, when Starlink suffered an hours-long outage that it later blamed on a mysterious "upgrade procedure."
Nicolls posted the tweet a day after SpaceX sent an email to prospective customers, touting "speeds up to 400+ Mbps." Some customers have also posted speed test cores showing their download rates occasionally topping 400Mbps.
The satellite internet system has long focused on delivering high-speed broadband to rural and remote areas. However, the company has also increasingly discussed Starlink as a competitive alternative to ground-based fiber internet providers in its effort to secure more federal funding through the US Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. SpaceX is already poised to receive over $300 million in federal funds, although the majority of the deployments are still slated for fiber providers.
To encourage more sign-ups, SpaceX has been promoting even bigger discounts, including offering a “free” Starlink dish to new customers on the Residential service and slashing the monthly service price.
The company is also working to deliver gigabit internet speeds by launching next-generation V3 satellites. However, SpaceX has indicated that customers will need to purchase new hardware to access the gigabit connections.
In PCMag's most recent tests of Starlink, mean download speeds increased from 148Mbps in 2024 to 177Mbps this year. Daily top speeds also climbed higher than ever before, peaking at 315Mbps. Meanwhile, the lowest speed results never dropped below 42Mbps during the full testing period and stayed above 50Mbps the majority of the time.