A couple of tweets about Starlink’s speeds last week point to a significant advancement in their mobile community gateway capabilities. On July 17, Vice President of Engineering Michael Nicholls tweeted an Ookla Speedtest result that showed its technology achieved 8.1 Gbps download and 2.8 Gbps upload speeds.
CEO Elon Musk retweeted, adding, “For large commercial or community users, the Starlink Gateway terminal provides over 8Gbps of downlink and soon over 8Gbps uplink too.” Starlink, a satellite internet constellation, is a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX.
The 25-year-old tech website, Tweaktown, provided some specifics. Its story on the Starlink speeds stated that the technology is intended to be used on ships and in airplanes, in addition to commercial use.
Starlink reaches a wide swath of user segments. The faster Starlink speeds cited in the tweets clearly point to an emphasis on non-residential use. That also was the case with the announcement last month that the low earth orbit (LEO) platform will be used by Comcast Business’ enterprise customers in remote areas.
It’s not all about commercial users. Earlier this month, the company said that the Starlink Mini had become available to everyone in the United States. The device, which is built to be highly mobile — even fitting in a backpack — provides speeds of 5 Mbps to 50 Mbps and has setup time of about two minutes, the company described. The base hardware is $499, with service starting at $50 per month. Buyers get 50 GB of data.
People like what Starlink is offering. In January, CableTV.com found that the company had a satisfaction rating of 87%. It was only outranked by Lumen’s Quantum Fiber service, which had a satisfaction rate of 89%.
