Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet access service, has exceeded the average of 100 Mbps in download in fifteen of its main markets… including France.
Starlink satellite internet access is a serious option for anyone who is not lucky enough to have a good connection at home. Areas not covered, if only by 4G, are more frequent than you might think, especially of course in the mountains and in rural areas.
An average that exceeds the terrestrial flow
Elon Musk, the originator of this initiative, promised download speeds between 50 and 250 Mbps, and latency between 20 and 40 ms. According to the speedtests carried out by Ookla in the fourth quarter of 2021, these promises are generally kept in fifteen countries, including the United States, Germany, Belgium… and France, where the service was launched commercially last May.
The study thus indicates that Starlink reached an average download speed of 121.21 Mbps: a higher throughput than in the third quarter (102.15 Mbps), and also well above the average for Internet access. classic which reached 90.88 Mbps at the end of last year. On the other hand, latency is higher with Starlink (51 ms) than with “terrestrial” ISPs (12 ms), while the upload is still largely perfectible: 17.30 Mbps against 69.49 Mbps.
Starlink does much better than its competitor SES, which peaks at 14.88 Mbps download, 1.83 Mbps upload and 649 ms ping. Ookla concludes that SpaceX’s offer is a good option for customers living in poorly covered areas. These results improve in every way the first tests carried out in August 2020.
And the download speed will go much faster thanks to the new premium formula, which will offer speeds of up to 500 Mbps! But beware of the bill, it will cost much more: $2,500 for the equipment (dish and modem) and $500 per month subscription, compared to €499 for the equipment and €99 per month for the standard formula.