Tag Archives: StarLink

Satellite Update April 2026

There is so much news and activity in the satellite sector that I find myself gathering a pile of news items each month. Here are some of the highlights from April.

Amazon Entering Direct-to-Device Market. Amazon announced it has signed an agreement to buy Globalstar for $10.8 billion. Globalstar is one of the early leaders in developing technology for providing direct-to-device services to smartphones and other devices. Globalstar currently has about two dozen satellites in orbit.

Jeff Bezos Enters the Space Data Center Race. Jeff Bezos’s rocket company Blue Origin has applied to the FCC to launch a data center in space. The application asks for approval to launch 51,600 satellites that would constitute a huge AI data center. The company argues that a data center in space will complement terrestrial data centers and will give the U.S. the edge in machine learning, autonomous systems, and predictive analytics. The satellites would be placed between 300 and 1,100 miles above Earth, with most of them higher than broadband satellites. This announcement follows a proposal from SpaceX and Elon Musk to put a million data center satellites in space.

Growing Feud Between SpaceX and Amazon Leo. We’re seeing a budding regulatory rivalry between the two American broadband satellite companies. It seems that both SpaceX and Amazon Leo file comments about anything filed by its rival at the FCC. Earlier this month, SpaceX filed comments at the FCC complaining that Amazon Leo is violating the FCC’s orbital space debris mitigation plans. SpaceX claims that Amazon Leo placed several satellites 90 kilometers higher than authorized by the FCC. In a similar complaint, Amazon LEO accused SpaceX of placing satellites too low into its authorized space. Both companies have made negative comments on the other’s plans to create a satellite-based AI data center in space.

Will Starlink Honor BEAD? A group of House Democrats sent a letter to the NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth that raises concerns that SpaceX might not meet its BEAD obligations. The letter was prompted by letters sent by SpaceX to various state broadband offices that said the company doesn’t want to comply with various BEAD reporting requirements. The legislators fear that Starlink will walk away from BEAD, leaving locations with no broadband alternative (although these customers can buy satellite broadband regardless of the BEAD grants).

Failed Satellite Launch. A Blue Origin rocket failed to place a satellite for AST Space Mobile into the proper orbit, and the satellite had to be de-orbited. It was expected that insurance would be used to recover the cost of the lost satellite.

Amazon Leo to Launch Service in Mid-2026? The company said earlier this month that it is still planning to begin offering broadband service by mid-2026. That seems like an extraordinary claim since the company still had around 240 satellites in orbit as of the date of this blog. By comparison, Starlink had almost 900 satellites in service when it began beta tests with customers. At the time, the beta test customers described noticeable gaps in coverage between satellites. What’s most interesting about the announcement is that Amazon has asked the FCC for a two-year delay in meeting the full deployment obligation for its first constellation of over 3,200 satellites.

Environmental Protesters. Residents who live close to SpaceX’s Starbase launch site recently protested during a meeting centered on SpaceX’s planned IPO. The residents of the area complained about the repeated vibrations and pollution caused by regular rocket launches, along with concern about possible fires set in the arid South Texas landscape.

Denied Spectrum Sharing. The FCC recently denied requests from multiple satellite companies that wanted to share in spectrum bands already being used by other entities. As an example of the rejection, SpaceX had asked to share in the 1.5 GHz, 1.6/2.4 GHz, and 2 GHz bands. Other satellite companies had asked to share other spectrum bands. The FCC rejection said these requests were premature and that the agency needs to revise the way it allocates spectrum to accommodate direct-to-device service.

Broadband Shorts April 2026

The following are topics I found to be interesting but which didn’t justify an entire blog:

Update on the Telecom Act? Congressman Brett Guthrie (KY-02), Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Congressman Richard Hudson (NC-09), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, announced a hearing titled The Telecommunications Act of 1996: 30 Years Later. The stated purpose of the hearing is to examine the lessons learned from an examination of the Act. The hearing announcement suggests that Congress will see “how Congress can build on those lessons to modernize our laws to promote innovation, strengthen competition, and drive investment in modern communications networks.”

It’s obvious to anybody who follows telecom regulations that a lot of the changes made in the Act were quickly obsolete when broadband products became the predominant products of the telecom industry. Every reform effort has to start somewhere, and maybe this is the first step towards real discussions on updating telecom regulation. But in an industry dominated by regulatory capture from carriers, it seems highly unlikely that Congress has the appetite to take a fresh look at regulating the large carriers.

Will Starlink Bail on BEAD? A group of twenty House Democrats wrote a letter to Arielle Roth, head of NTIA, expressing concern that Starlink will walk away from the BEAD grants. The concerns come because of requests made by Starlink to state broadband offices for waivers of some of the ongoing reporting requirements that apply to all grant winners. For example, Starlink asked to be excused from conducting speed tests or providing ongoing financial reporting. NTIA has already told state broadband offices that states don’t have the authority to relax any BEAD reporting requirements. Perhaps the House members are worried that NTIA will issue a nationwide waiver for Starlink.

Arielle Roth said recently that states would have to reconsider the awards to Starlink if the company defaults. This has the industry wondering if defaults could result in an invitation for ISPs who want to build fiber or fixed wireless networks to rebid to serve such areas. In most states, there is still a lot of unspent grant funds that could be used for this purpose.

Copper Thefts by Organized Crime? AT&T published a blog that speculates that the magnitude of the theft of telephone copper wires is a lot higher than what might be attributed to random acts of crime. Rahdeese Alcutt, the lead investigator for AT&T Global Security, speculates that thefts in places like Southern California are likely coming from organized crime. The blog points out that it’s not just telephone copper wires being stolen, but anything made of copper, like material in railroads and transit systems, power utilities, HVAC systems, and city lighting systems. He says there are now days with hundreds of thefts of copper. Alcutt thinks this is an organized effort because it involves the use of heavy equipment and a well-coordinated effort to avoid law enforcement.

Fear of the Kessler Syndrome? LeoLabs, a company that monitors satellites in low-earth orbit reported that a Starlink satellite suffered an “anomaly” and broke apart into space debris. LeoLabs believes the likely cause was an “internal energetic source” and not due to a collision with another satellite. This is a concern because of the Kessler Syndrome, which predicts that there is some level of space debris that will result in a spreading cloud of debris that will destroy other satellites and result in a circling cloud of debris around the Earth that would be a barrier to space travel.

This risk increases as the number of satellites in orbit increases. The announced plans of current satellite companies could result in hundreds of thousands of satellites in low-earth orbit within a decade. The more satellites, the higher the chance of having catastrophic collisions. LeoLabs is not predicting that this anomaly will be a problem, but nobody knows what it might take to initiate the cloud of debris.

FCC Suspends Lifeline Providers. The FCC has always investigated fraud in the Universal Service Fund. The agency recently blocked seven individuals from ever participating in USF again after they were convicted of fraud. All of the convictions involved E-Rate reimbursement for broadband at schools and libraries. The fraud covered a range of bad behavior. A few individuals embezzled money that was legitimately paid to school systems. A few submitted fraudulent invoices to the E-Rate program or hired unsavory E-Rate partners.

Filling the Sky with Satellites

The skies are quickly filling with communications satellites. Following is a short list of the many ventures that have or will soon be launching large numbers of broadband satellites.

Starlink now has over 10,000 operational satellites in orbit, with the ultimate announced goal of reaching 42,000 satellites. The company is not sitting still and will be introducing its new V3 satellites sometime this year, that promises to provide 10 times the download and 24 times the upload capacity of the current V2 satellites. That should mean a big boost in the capacity of the Starlink constellation and faster speeds. Starlink is likely to maintain a major advantage over competitors through its use of the reusable Starship rocket.

Amazon Leo (formerly Project Kuiper) currently has around 212 satellites in orbit. The company was recently granted a two-year delay by the FCC of its original commitment to have an operational network by this summer. The company also recently got approval from the FCC to increase the constellation size to 7,700 satellites. The company is working to accelerate satellite launches and launched 32 satellites in February using the Ariane 64 rocket. Amazon Leo has contracted for 18 additional launches with Arianespace.

Eutelsat OneWeb is currently operating a 648 satellite constellation in twelve polar planes that is providing broadband to enterprise, government, and maritime customers. Its key markets today are in places like Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan. The company has ordered over 300 additional generation 2 satellites that should start being deployed later this year.

Blue Origin, a rocket company, plans to launch a constellation of 5,408 TeraWave satellites starting at the end of 2027. The company is promising speeds up to 6 Tbps. The constellation will be comprised of optically connected satellites using both low Earth orbit (LEO) and medium Earth orbit (MEO). The satellites will be interconnected using optical lasers. The target market for Blue Origin will be enterprise, data center, and government customers who need a reliable primary or secondary broadband connection. They think their primary market will be in remote, rural, and suburban areas around the world, where the cost of providing diverse fiber paths is too expensive.

Telesat’s Lightspeed satellite business got its start in December 2026 with the launch of its first two satellites. It plans are to launch 157 satellites by the end of 2027, with an ultimate goal of 298. The first 156 satellites will focus on support for NATO and allied nations. After that, the company hopes to be able to provide global coverage for enterprise customers, including the aviation, maritime, energy, and government sectors.

China’s Guowang (the National Network) has launched 164 satellites and has plans to launch 12,992 satellites to compete with Starlink. The company plans to launch 310 satellites in 2026, 900 in 2027, and 3,600 per year starting in 2028. There will be two separate constellations, one at 500 to 600 kilometers and a second around 1,145 km.

Quinfan (also known as Spacesail or G60) is being developed by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST). The company currently has 108 satellites in polar orbit as part of its first constellation of 648 satellites. The company has announced long-term plans to reach over 15,000 satellites.

Meanwhile, there is another space race happening for companies wanting to provide direct-to-device cellular service. The key players are Lynk Global, Skylo, a partnership between SpaceX and T-Mobile, a partnership between AST SpaceMobile and AT&T/Verizon, and a partnership between Globalstar and Apple.

The Human Touch

Fierce Network recently had an interesting article about Consumer Cellular. This is a cellular MVNO that you might not have heard of. For those not familiar with the term, an MVNO is a cellular company that buys wholesale minutes and data from one of the large cellular carriers and markets the cellular product under its own brand name. Consumer Cellular operates on the AT&T network.

The company was founded over thirty years ago, aligns with AARP, and has always marketed to older cellular customers. Consumer Cellular stresses affordable cell plans, and its average revenue per customer is around $30 per month. The most interesting thing about the company is that it is growing while many other MNVOs are shrinking. The company has grown to over 4.4 million customers and is still seeing continued customer growth.

Consumer Cellular credits its success to the fact that it doesn’t use AI chatbots to answer online customer inquiries, as is being done with most other cellular companies. Consumer Cellular answers all customer calls with a live person.

The company is also rapidly expanding retail stores at a time when some of the bigger companies have been closing retail stores. Consumer Cellular opened its first retail store in Florida in 2022 and now has over 70 locations. The company has plans to expand to between 200 and 300 stores. The company sees big benefits from the retail stores. Customers who enroll at the stores have lower churn. The company says that people who visit a store also tend to buy higher-end phones and subscribe to larger monthly plans after they can see the options in person compared to online.

Most ISPs can’t duplicate Consumer Cellular’s success. The company is unique because of its older demographic. Consumer Cellular has embraced something that many smaller ISPs have known for years. Small ISPs universally tell me that one of the key secrets to success is that they know their customers. Smaller ISPs have thrived on having customer service calls answered live and having knowledgeable technicians. I know ISPs competing against big cable companies who say their live and responsive customer service is one of their primary advantages when competing against a big cable company.

However, this is changing, even for many smaller ISPs. Not all customers want to talk to a person. Consumer Cellular is unique because of its older demographic, but ISPs serve customers of all ages. Many customers would rather communicate using chat, text, social media, or email. I see many of my clients expanding the ways that customers can communicate with them. The ultimate customer service platform would give each customer the choice of how to communicate. But that can be expensive for ISPs that don’t have a lot of customers.

At least one big ISP went to the opposite extreme. For a long time, Starlink had no live customer service reps, and customers were expected to interface through an AI chatbot. The web is full of reviews from Starlink customers who got frustrated because they couldn’t talk to a person and walked away from the company. However, the company now has some live customer service reps based in Latin America that can be reached after customers start with a chatbot. Starlink has an unusual customer service challenge since it operates worldwide across a huge range of languages.

Some of the biggest ISPs are already experimenting with AI bots on customer service websites, meaning customers are chatting with a computer instead of a person. If they are not already being approached, I expect smaller ISPs will be seeing salespeople offering to integrate AI into their processes. I would caution smaller companies about taking this plunge. There is a lot of rumbling from large companies that AI customer service isn’t acting the way they were hoping for. The AI industry is still young, and there is likely going to be a shakeout at some point where a lot of the companies offering services using somebody else’s AI platform could disappear overnight. Small ISPs should think hard before giving up their local advantage and letting computers talk to their customers.

Broadband Shorts February 2026

The following are a few interesting stories that don’t warrant a standalone blog, but that I found interesting.

Amazon One Delays. Amazon asked the FCC for a two-year delay in meeting its commitment to launch half of its promised constellation of 3,236 satellites. The deadline for having more than 1,600 satellites in orbit was July 30 of this year. As of the date of writing this blog, the company only has 212 satellites in orbit. Amazon says it has contracted for ten additional 10 SpaceX launches to speed up its process.

This is bad news for homes where Amazon One was the BEAD winner, like a number of counties where I live in Western North Carolina. If Amazon follows the historical path of Starlink, it will need at least 1,600 satellites in orbit to provide reasonable service, and more is better. With no additional delays, the service likely won’t be available until at least late summer 2028.

In related news, the FCC granted Amazon One the ability to add 4,500 satellites to its broadband constellation. This increase would result in the following: 3,232 Generation 1 satellites, 3,212 second-generation satellites, and 1,292 satellites in a polar orbit.

NTIA Opposes Relaxation of BEAD Compliance Requirements. Starlink sent a request to numerous states asking for relaxed BEAD implementation rules, which included a request that Starlink would not have to conduct speed tests for BEAD-funded customers. NTIA quickly added a new item to its Frequently Asked Questions that states that, “no BEAD statutory requirements or other program rules may be altered by a BEAD subgrant agreement”.

Charter Grows Cable Subscribers. Charter surprisingly grew cable customers in the fourth quarter of 2025 after losing customers every quarter for years. I laughed when I read that, because I know how they did this since I am one of their new cable subscribers. We called and asked about upgrading to gigabit broadband and were offered a lower price than what we pay today for 500 Mbps, but only if we agreed to take cable TV. I am now a phantom Charter cable customer who will never watch any of the content. Like many millions of households, I am no longer interested in linear TV that forces me to surf through channels I don’t want to watch.

This is not the first time this has happened to me. Twelve years ago, I was forced to take cable TV from Comcast in order to get broadband. The settop box went into the closet the first day and was never plugged in. I have to assume both Comcast and Charter paid programmers on my behalf, which is an odd and expensive financial choice.

Rural Backhaul. WISPA, the trade association for wireless ISPs, complained to the FCC that Charter is refusing to renew contracts to provide backhaul to many of its WISP members. WISPs are reliant on having at least some of the towers in a network connected by fiber, and if companies like Charter stop selling backhaul, some WISP networks will be degraded or could even go dark.

Buying rural backhaul has always been a challenge in many parts of the country due to the small number of companies with fiber that are willing to sell bandwidth to other ISPs. Many rural ISPs are forced to pay far more per gigabyte to buy rural backhaul from telcos and cable companies. It’s hard to speculate why Charter would do this. The company might want to focus its sales and marketing efforts elsewhere. But it could also be for a more sinister reason if Charter is doing this to eliminate or cripple rural competition.

Comcast Class-Action Settlement. Comcast settled a class-action lawsuit and agreed to pay $117.5 million as a result of a data breach that released sensitive customer data. That may sound like a lot, but the settlement covers 31.7 million customers and works out to a settlement of $3.70 per customer before subtracting out the amount that will go to lawyers. This settlement doesn’t place much value on customer privacy and data.

Starlink Adds Tiered Pricing

Starlink is in the industry news so often that it feels like I ought to have a recurring blog just for Starlink updates. The company recently made an interesting announcement that should make waves in the broadband industry. The company announced tiered pricing, with prices varying by speed, and starting at $50 per month in some selected markets.

This is something Starlink has always been able to do, and perhaps they are doing this because the company is profitable and has landed 2 million U.S. customers with its standard $120 price. It’s clear that the company’s network is gaining capacity at a steady pace as the company launches additional and better satellites. At the beginning of February, the company had over 9,300 working satellites in orbit out of 9,600 total satellites. The company is on track to reach its first constellation goal of having 12,000 satellites in orbit by the end of this year. The company will soon be introducing its next generation of satellites which will have significantly greater broadband capacity.

The new products announced by Starlink include:

  • Residential 100 Mbps. $50 per month. Speeds up to 100 Mbps.
  • Residential 200 Mbps. $80 per month. Speeds up to 200 Mbps.
  • Residential Max. $120 per month. New customers also get a mini kit that can be used for traveling or camping.

The 100 Mbps product comes with a warning that it’s not available everywhere, so we’ll have to wait for feedback from the public to see what that means. Having a $50 broadband product everywhere would be a big deal.

It will be interesting to see the actual speeds delivered for each product. Each of the three products is being advertised as ‘up to’ speeds. Starlink recently issued a report to customers that said that its average download speed at the end of 2025 was 170 Mbps, so it will be interesting to see the speeds that are delivered to subscribers of the 200 Mbps tier. Ookla issued a report last year that said that Starlink’s median speed was 104.7 Mbps at the end of the first quarter of 2025, meaning half of the speeds were faster, and half were slower than that number. There is no mention by Starlink in its announcement about upload speeds. The Ookla report showed that the median upload speed was 14.8 Mbps at the end of the first quarter of 2025.

I work in a lot of rural areas where many people either can’t or won’t pay $120 per month for broadband. Starlink could get huge market traction with a $50 product. A $50 price for 100 Mbps broadband would put huge pressure on WISPs, which generally have rates higher than that. A $50 product would also be an affordable alternative to the many rural fiber networks being built by grants.

A $50 rate also would play well in cities. That rate competes well against the low-cost options in cities from DSL or FWA wireless. Most big telcos have raised DSL rates to the range of $65 per month. The FWA carriers have list rates of around $60, but customers can get it for less by bundling with a cellphone plan and agreeing to autopay. I can’t see Starlink cleaning up in cities with a $50 rate, but it would get a lot more customers than it has today in those markets.

In other pricing news, Starlink increased the monthly data cap on its Roam product to 100 gigabytes per month. This product is also $50 per month and is aimed at RVs and hikers. The average U.S. home uses around 700 gigabytes, but this will be attractive to homes that aren’t big broadband users. Starlink significantly chokes speeds after the monthly cap is reached.

Starlink Flexing Its Market Power

In a short period of time, Starlink has taken three actions that demonstrates the company’s growing market power. The companies market power will be strengthened with the impending merger between SpaceX and Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI. Analysts have estimated the combined companies could garner a market value over $1 trillion.

The first move from Starlink came on January 15 when the company updated its user Privacy Policy. The revised terms say that, unless a customer opts out, Starlink can use user data “to train our machine learning or artificial intelligence models”, and that user data could be shared with third-party collaborators without providing more details to customers.

This should be disturbing to customers, because this doesn’t just mean sharing details of emails. In today’s broadband world, it could mean sharing video images, voice prints, and the giant amount of private information that an ISP can learn about its customers if it is looking.

Starlink’s second big move came when it sent a document to State Broadband Offices where Starlink is a tentative winner of BEAD grants. Starlink asked that LEO providers be excused from many of the BEAD obligations that will apply to other grant winners. The Starlink communication included a veiled threat that the company could pull out of BEAD if SBOs don’t meet its suggested terms.

Among the suggested changes, Starlink payments would not be linked to adding subscribers, and it would get 50% of BEAD funding up front and the rest over a specified schedule. Starlink would not have to provide financial reporting or provide any documentation about how it spends the grant funding. Starlink wants to be excused from speed test requirements since it can’t guarantee that subscribers have installed the satellite receiver properly. Starlink also wants to be excused from insurance and labor requirements.

On January 30, SpaceX asked the FCC for the ability to launch 1 million new satellites to create a giant orbital data center for AI. These satellites would be placed between 310 and 1,240 miles above Earth, in narrow 30-mile bands that would leave room to deconflict with other companies with similar goals. SpaceX says the giant satellite constellation is needed as the first step for humanity to become a Kardashev II-level civilization that fully harnesses the Sun’s power, while also providing enough AI capacity to serve billions of people. FYI, a Kardashev II-level civilization is one that fully harnesses the total energy output from its parent star. SpaceX says putting data centers in space is the most efficient way to meet the growing energy demands of AI data centers.

The constellation would use laser communications between satellites and would communicate back to Earth using Starlink’s current broadband constellation.  SpaceX says it could launch the data center satellites at a rapid pace using its new Starship launch vehicle.

Announcing these three things within a month shows a company that is feeling emboldened enough by market power to act as it wishes. If a terrestrial ISP openly said it will use customer data to train AI, it would risk being shunned in the market, but Starlink operates in many places where there are no other competitive options. I wonder how safe Starlink customers will feel about their data even if they opt out of sharing it with Starlink.

It’s going to be interesting to see how State Broadband Offices react to the Starlink demand for easier BEAD terms. Many of the SBOs didn’t want to make big awards to LEO satellite providers, and were coerced by  NTIA to do so with the Benefit of the Bargain rules. It’s not unimaginable that some States will outright reject Starlink’s request, which could lead to some interesting fights between States and NTIA.

The request to launch 1 million satellites could be a stunt to boost interest in the upcoming IPO and merger. Or it could be real. This FCC clearly favors satellite technology, but even for them, a request to launch 1 million satellites has to be an extreme request.

Broadband Shorts January 2026

This blog covers topics that I found interesting but which don’t warrant an entire blog.

Indoor CBRS. Federated Wireless announced a new product and a system that allows cellular carriers to use CBRS spectrum inside large buildings like hotels, malls, office buildings, and sports venues. The system places CBRS antennas throughout a building to provide the needed coverage. The concept behind the deployment is to let the carriers use free CBRS spectrum inside buildings to preserve licensed spectrum for outdoors. Currently, big crowds, like at a sporting event, can use licensed spectrum that reduces the coverage in the immediately surrounding areas. All except really old cellphones are capable of using CBRS spectrum.

Map of Data Centers by State. I found this map that shows the number of existing data centers in each state to be interesting.

Customer Interest in Satellite Cellular. A report published by GSMA Intelligence showed that 56% of the U.S. respondents to a survey said they would pay extra each month to be able to connect to satellite cellular. One of the interesting statistics from the survey is that 23% of cellular customers reported that they were unable to use basic texting at least 5 times per month. That’s not surprising to anybody who has studied rural cellular coverage, and who understands that the typical city has numerous dead zones for a given carrier.

While this finding is clearly encouraging for the companies busy deploying satellites for cell service, the 60% finding is likely overstated for now and will probably decrease once the public understands the limits of satellite cellular. It doesn’t work well indoors and is a challenge from a moving vehicle. It seems likely that satellite cellular will be far less robust in terms of data capabilities. I suspect over time that the fledgling industry will tackle these shortcomings, and this could eventually become popular product for anybody who  lives or routinely works in areas with poor cell coverage.

Starlink Approved for More Satellites. The FCC recently authorized Starlink to operate an additional 7,500 next-generation satellites. This order doubles Starlink’s authorized next-generation satellites to 15,000, still only half of its request for 30,000 additional satellites. The FCC deferred any decision on the remaining 14,988 Starlink requests to use orbits above 600 kilometers. This order also allows Starlink to expand the use of spectrum in the Ku- and Ka-bands for links to customers, and the V-, E-, and W-bands for connections to earth station gateways.

CommScope Cancels Fiber Factory Expansion. On the day that CommScope was renamed as Vistance Networks, the company announced it is cancelling plans to expand its fiber manufacturing facility in Catawba, North Carolina. In doing so, the company will be foregoing a $2 million economic development grant that would have covered some of the $60 million expansion cost. The expansion was going to create 250 additional jobs.

One reason for the change is a recent transaction where CommScope spun off much of its manufacturing capacity to Amphenol.  The announcement also said part of the change was due to the smaller amount of fiber being constructed with BEAD grants. While there is a lot of current discussion about a short-term supply chain issue with obtaining fiber, it’s likely that the company also looked out at fiber demand five and ten years from now.

Starlink Update

Starlink did something new and recently issued an update discussing the recent history and the outlook for the company. Perhaps the company will update this kind of report periodically.

Coverage and Customers. Starlink says it became available in 42 new countries around the world during 2025. The company says it has over 6 million customers, which includes over 2 million customers in the U.S. The most impressive statistic is that the company added 2.7 million customers worldwide over the past year, an annual growth rate of 82%.

Constellation. SpaceX had more than 100 missions during the year to add 2,300 Starlink satellites to the constellation. At the end of the year, there were more than 9,400 satellites in orbit, including about 100 satellites that are inactive and in the process of deorbiting. Starlink’s target for the first constellation is 12,000 satellites, and the company should be getting close to that goal by the end of 2026.

The company has begun to launch a series of satellites with a polar orbit that will provide coverage to Alaska and other northern areas. The goal was to have 400 satellites in a polar orbit by the end of 2025.

Starlink says that it has over 100 ground station gateway sites in the U.S. that are comprised of over 1,500 antennas for communicating with satellites, with all of the gateway antennas manufactured in Redmond, Washington.

The company says that new satellites are all equipped with lasers that can be used to communicate between satellites.

Speeds and Latency. The report includes a chart of the average speed and latency since early 2022. Starlink measures the performance of the constellation every 15 seconds. The chart shows the average download speed in 2022 was around 23 Mbps, and has grown to over 170 Mbps by late 2025. Latency has improved significantly, starting at 44 milliseconds in 2022, down to around 24 milliseconds in late 2025. Starlink says it is approaching its goal of a stable 20 millisecond latency.

Network Capacity. Probably the major reason for the improved speeds and latency is the constant increase in the overall capacity of the constellation coming from new and better satellites. The report includes a graph showing the overall capacity of the network. At the end of 2022, the constellation had about 40 terabytes of capacity. Near the end of 2025, capacity grew to around 445 terabytes, with a growth curve that is still on a steep climb. The company says it is adding about 5 terabytes of capacity to the network per week with new launches.

Network capacity is going to get a big boost when the new third-generation satellites are launched, sometime in the first half of this year. Each new satellite will have over 1 terabit of download speed capacity and 200 gigabits of upload.

Future Satellite Competition

I’ve been thinking about the long-term trajectory for satellite broadband in rural areas. I saw a recent estimate that Starlink has around 2.6 million customers in the U.S. and is still growing. I have to think that most of these customers live in places that don’t have a fast broadband alternative to satellite broadband.

I got to thinking about satellite after a recent conversation with an Uber driver. She lives in a small rural town in my county, and she and most of her neighbors use Starlink today. She says that it works adequately well for the way her family uses broadband, but that it’s far too expensive. She expects to be changing to fiber in 2026 when Frontier builds fiber in her area. She said she already knows people nearby who changed to Frontier fiber that was built in 2025. I researched her neighborhood, and Frontier is building fiber with the help of a broadband grant funded by the State of North Carolina.

There has already been a lot of rural fiber built with grant funding. There are fiber construction projects underway from CAF II, RDOF, ReConnect, NTIA Tribal, and EA-CAM. States awarded a huge amount of grants from the Capital Project Funds, from ARPA, and from State general funds. My best estimate is that these various programs will fund the construction of fiber to around 8 million rural fiber passings. My estimates are that there are still 2.2 million passings to be built from these programs in 2026 and another 1.2 million passings in 2027. On top of these programs, it looks like there will be roughly another 2.5 million rural fiber passings coming from the BEAD grants that have been tentatively announced.

I don’t have a good estimate for the coming passings from rural fixed wireless construction, but there is still construction of WISP networks being funded by RDOF and other grant programs. It looks like BEAD has tentatively awarded grants for fixed wireless to a little less than half a million new passings. WISPs are building networks with speed capabilities in the range of 500 Mbps download, which is a lot faster than what is being delivered by Starlink today.

These various grant programs are going to cover a lot of rural America with fast broadband, and that is going to eat into the potential market for Starlink and Amazon LEO. Starlink faces the issue of having a price that is significantly higher than the large majority of ISPs that are building grant-funded networks. That’s something that the company can fix by lowering rates. But even with lower rates, Starlink will not match the speeds of the grant-funded networks, at least with current satellite technology.

We have no real ideas about the pricing and speed capabilities of Amazon LEO. There is a lot of speculation that the company will create interesting bundles for satellite broadband with Amazon video and shopping.

The bottom line of my speculation is that the U.S. households that will be interested in satellite broadband will be shrinking over the next few years as millions of rural homes get faster broadband alternatives from fiber or fixed wireless.

It’s also likely that there will be serious competition between Starlink and Amazon LEO as they each try to lock down a share of the U.S. market. Will the two companies collude to keep prices high, or will they devolve into the kind of fierce competition we see in the cellular industry today?

On a worldwide basis, both U.S. satellite providers are going to see significant competition from the Guowang (the National Network) from China and the Quinfan (Thousand Sails) constellation from Shanghai. My best guess is that these two companies will undercut the prices of the U.S. providers to try to corner the markets in Asia, Africa, and South America.

Starlink has a unique market opportunity today since it brings the only fast broadband option to huge numbers of homes. But in North America and Europe, those opportunities will decrease as faster terrestrial networks are constructed. Starlink’s unique monopoly disappears when Amazon LEO enters the market, and possibly gets really competitive when other worldwide constellations come online.