Starlink will likely need at least 10,000 satellites in orbit before it can claim to offer full service to most of the globe, and SpaceX has shown signs that it wants as many as 42,000 satellites in the constellation. Starlink's fleet expansion continues at a rapid rateīy the end of February, Starlink had launched 12 new satellite payloads in 2024, adding 269 to the fleet of nearly 6,000 functional satellites. Per Musk, the list of countries currently served by the growing network of low-orbit satellites includes the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand and others. I ran serviceability checks using addresses from California to Connecticut and down south in Alabama and rural Texas and received a response indicating that "Starlink is immediately available" every time. That's the highest coverage percentage of any internet provider, including Hughesnet and Viasat.Īs shown in the map above, there are a few pockets, specifically in southern California, West Virginia and New Mexico, where service is "coming soon." Still, Starlink's coverage is impressive. Hughesnet and Viasat promote “no hard data caps,” but anyone who has had either service knows that data is far from unlimited.Īccording to Federal Communication Commission data from June 2023, Starlink is available to 99.6% of US households. That’s nice, but the real kicker is the unlimited data. Starlink has the potential to offer moderately faster speeds than Hughesnet and Viasat (not to mention other common rural internet services) and significantly lower latency. OK, so it’s satellite internet? Well, yes, but the number of satellites and the distance at which they orbit the earth make for a vastly different product than the satellite internet you may be familiar with from Hughesnet and Viasat. After dozens of successful launches, including a recent deployment of 23 satellites snuck in after a delayed NASA launch, Starlink boasts over 5,900 functional satellites orbiting overhead, and service is, for the most part, fully operational throughout the US. consistently reported a faster connection and even claimed an internet speed that’s faster than I can officially receive over my hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) connection at 1.1Gbps.Starlink, the internet venture from billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, offers broadband connections to almost anyone on the planet through a growing network of low-orbiting satellites. The results were surprisingly consistent, but each service reported things a little differently. Tests were conducted at around 2pm on a boring Tuesday, within a few minutes of each other. To do this, I used an internet connection rated for up to 1Gbps (1000Mbps), connected to a brand-new router via Ethernet connection. I decided to put these three services to the test to demonstrate the variability between them. CloudFlare’s speed testing tool shows far more information and repeats the test several times, plotting your results on a graph. For example, simply shows your download speed until you opt to see more (where you get your upload speed and latency). Some services are vague in their reporting. Distance seems to affect the reported speed, so you might find that servers closer to home report faster speeds (and certainly lower latency). Some might not even have a server within hundreds of miles of your location.īecause there are so many variables involved, different services will give you different results. Some speed test services let you choose a server, others give you no choice. You will encounter some variability when running different tests on the same service, particularly for providers like which use different servers depending on where you are. Your internet service provider might even have its own speed test service. There are plenty of internet speed test services to choose from, with, , and CloudFlare being some of the most well-known options. So how can you know for sure, and does it matter? Different Speed Tests Report Different Results The numbers themselves don't affect your real-world performance.ĭo you know how fast your internet connection is? Depending on which service you use, you could get vastly different results. Ultimately, it doesn't matter which speed test service you use as long as you stick with one for consistent results.Internet speed tests are useful for verifying if you're getting the performance you pay for and finding out if your network hardware is causing bottlenecks.Different speed test services give different results due to variables like the servers used and their distance from your location.
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