Starlink relies on thousands of small satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), 550 kilometers above the earth, to beam the internet down to ground transceivers, which in turn, broadcast locally or wire directly to your Starlink router. SpaceX plans to deploy up to 30,000 satellites to ensure global internet coverage via Starlink (some figures put the total as high as 42,000).

Elon Musk says Starlink offers the fastest internet speeds on earth, with near-zero latency (delay). However, Starlink's internet speeds in the US have reportedly declined recently. Let's find out why.

Starlink's average download speeds in the US declined from 97.23Mbps to 87.25Mbps in the latter half of 2021, according to Speedtest by Ookla, which measures the speed and performance of their users' internet connections. This is significantly slower than the average download speed for all fixed broadband providers in the US during the same period, which improved from 115.22Mbps to 119.84Mbps.

Related: What Is Starlink and How Does Satellite Internet Work?

However, Starlink remains blazing fast compared to its satellite competitors HughesNet, which lagged significantly behind at 19.30Mbps, and Viasat, which came in a distant third at 18.75Mbps.

space x rocket launches into space

As Ookla notes, the obvious explanation is that Starlink is adding customers. The more customers they have, the slower the speeds will get. This will continue to be the case until Starlink launches more satellites to increase capacity.

Related: Key Facts About Elon Musk's Starlink Internet You Need to Know

Starlink is working hard to do just that. In December 2021, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launched 52 Starlink satellites, bringing the total number of Starlink satellites in Low Earth Orbit close to the 2,000 mark. Thousands more satellites will be launched in 2022 and beyond.

Latency Is Key

The most important metric, though, is latency, which simply refers to the delay between sending and receiving an internet signal, and is measured in milliseconds. High latency has various impacts, including slow website load times, delayed emails, inability to play games, poor video and voice calls, and overall poor application performance.

Starlink continues to perform really well in the latency department, with a low latency of 44ms. This compares well to fixed broadband latency which is 15ms. The other satellite internet providers are doing really badly, with high latency times of 744ms for HughesNet and 629ms for Viasat.

So, if you live in a remote part of the United States without fixed broadband and you are an avid gamer or you work from home, your best bet is a Starlink connection.