Starlink speeds could someday reach speeds of 2 gigabits per second, according to SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell.
“The next generation will have smaller beams, more capacity per beam, lower latency,” Shotwell said Friday at the Annual Baron Investment Conference.
Shotwell didn’t put a specific timeframe on these improvements, but 2-gig speeds are about 25 times faster than what users are currently experiencing in the US.
Ookla’s most recent speed test data, from a year ago, shows that US Starlink users received 79Mbps download and 10Mbps upload speeds on average. (Disclosure: Ookla is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)
Shotwell said that Starlink users could already get gig speeds (1,000Mbps) — if they purchased multiple dishes. Starlink’s satellite dishes are currently available for $349 each.
“What we’ll do is, instead of people having to have multiple dishes, we’ll just improve the satellite signal and the receive signal, and you’ll have gigabit, 2 gigabit per second speeds,” she explained.
Shotwell didn’t get too deep into a technical explanation for how the company would achieve such a dramatic speed boost — at one point she said Starlink’s transmitting and receiving antenna “seems a little magic to me” — but she compared Starlink’s cycle of increased capacity to Moore’s Law, which observed that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles every two years.
That rapid growth has certainly been true of Starlink’s user base, which went from 2 million to 4 million in the past year. But its speeds haven’t risen at the same pace. In the US, Starlink’s download speeds only grew from 66 to 79Mbps between November 2022 and 2023 — well below the Federal Communication Commission’s definition of minimum broadband speeds.
Starlink’s average download speeds in the US increased by 13Mbps from November 2022 to 2023.
It will also become more difficult to increase speeds as more users sign up for the service.
“Starlink can correctly claim that it covers a broad area, but spectrum constraints mean that Starlink cannot serve all the locations in that area,” Blair Levin, a former chief of staff at the FCC and a telecom industry analyst at New Street Research, wrote in a recent note to investors.
Starlink is more confident in its ability to reach gig speeds after its successful test flight last month of the Starship, a flight craft that can launch larger Starlink satellites into orbit. An open question is whether existing Starlink dishes will be able to access these improved speeds or if customers will have to buy new equipment.
Watch this: SpaceX Starship Launch 5: Everything That Happened in 5 Minutes
“I would not be surprised if we fly 400 Starship launches in the next four years,” Shotwell said at the conference. “We want to fly it a lot. I have a lot of satellites to fly.”
Starlink wants to increase its satellites in orbit from around 6,600 currently in orbit to nearly 30,000. In an FCC filing last month, the company requested that the FCC open up new radio bands for Starlink’s use and allow satellites to orbit closer to Earth, both of which could help improve speeds. With Donald Trump’s victory and the appointment of Republican Brendan Carr as FCC chair, those requests are now likely to be approved.
“If you look at Musk’s various efforts to improve his spectrum position, whatever his batting average is, it’s not hot,” Levin told CNET last month. “It’s going to be a lot higher [after the Trump victory]. And that’s a very significant win.”
Starlink did not respond to CNET’s request for comment.
