Starlink speeds surpass local wired broadband networks in multiple countries, Ookla finds
Starlink’s low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite-based broadband service can provide download speeds faster than average wired broadband in a number of countries, new numbers from Ookla show — although its upload speeds and latency still don’t perform as well as the ones available on wired networks.
In the U.S., however, wireline speeds (Ookla looked at this on the basis of speed combined across all providers) are still better than what Starlink can offer — though it’s closer than you might expect. In looking at the performance of Starlink as well as traditional satellite providers HughesNet and Viasat, Ookla concluded that Starlink was “the only satellite internet provider in the United States with fixed-broadband-like latency figures, and median download speeds fast enough to handle most of the needs of modern online life.” Starlink’s median download speed was 97.23 Mbps during the second quarter of 2021, up from 65.72 Mbps in the first quarter of this year.
The other two satellite providers’ speeds were a fraction of Starlink’s performance: HughesNet at 19.73 Mbps (up from 15.07 Mbps in the first quarter) and Viasat at 18.13 Mbps (compared to 1767 Mbps in the first quarter).
Comparatively, Ookla pegged the median download speed for all fixed broadband providers in the United States at 115.22 Mbps during the ssame time period.
The gap between Starlink’s median upload speed and that of fixed service was much smaller. Starlink’s upload speed was 13.89 Mbps, compared to fixed broadband upload speeds of 17.18 Mbps. Both Viasat and HughesNet were recorded at median download speeds of less than 3.5 Mbps. In terms of latency, fixed networks also performed better, with a median latency of 14 milliseconds, compared to Starlink’s 45 ms, Viasat’s 630 ms and HughesNet’s 724 ms.
Interestingly, Ookla’s data also showed fluctuations in satellite speeds that the benchmarking and analysis company said could be related to seasonal weather patterns — which satellites are vulnerable to in a way that wired networks generally are not. Satellite networks also can have speed fluctuations due to changes in technologies and adding more users, the company noted.
Ookla was able to get sufficient data samples to analyze Starlink’s performance in 458 U.S. counties, where it found a roughly 100 Mbps difference in Starlink’s performance between the fastest and the slowest counties: Morgan County, Alabama had Starlink median download speeds of 168.3 Mbps, while Madison County, Indiana saw only 64.51 Mbps. That’s still well above the minimum 25 Mbps that federal regulators consider to be broadband-level speeds.
In addition, Ookla also looked at how those three satellite providers performed comparative to wired networks in other countries around the world. In Brazil, Viasat had an average download speed of a whopping 60.30 Mbps (more than three times its median speeds in the U.S.), fast enough to be “very close” to the median download speed for fixed networks. However, its uplink was much slower and latency much longer than wireline services.
In Canada, Starlink was a strong competitor to fixed networks, serving up median download speeds of 86.92 Mbps, compared to 84.24 Mbps on Canadian fixed networks. Latency was slightly longer (55 ms compared to 12 on wired networks), but Ookla pointed out that “many customers in remote areas would gladly accept a latency in that range in exchange for having access to internet service.”
The fastest Starlink speeds were seen in France, where a median download speed of nearly 140 Mbps was roughly twice the speed available across fixed broadband networks, which was about 71 Mbps. Starlink also had faster speeds than local fixed networks in Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Read all the details in Ookla’s blog post.
