There are very few people in today's world who haven't heard of Elon Musk. One of the charismatic entrepreneur's companies is called Starlink - a division of his SpaceX enterprise. The goal of Starlink is to create a constellation of low orbiting satellites to cover the Earth and provide Internet services. So, in a nutshell, you could say that Starlink is a satellite Internet system.

Starlink's aim is to sell high-speed, low latency broadband Internet access to those who need it. This includes, but is not limited to:

• remote and rural areas - a definite improvement if we think of the current speeds available to people living in these areas - see here some stats from the US.
• vehicles moving in the air, on ground and on sea - airplanes, trains, trucks, cargo ships, etc.

Being a satellite Internet service provider, Starlink is technically similar to others such as HughesNet or Viasat. In order to get access to the Internet, you have to buy and set up a small satellite dish at your home. The satellite signal gets passed to the router (included in the setup kit) to which you will connect your devices: computers, smartphones, tablets, etc.

The satellite Internet system being rolled out by Starlink is comprised of three main elements:

• satellites - planned to be deployed over 42,000 in the next few decades.
• dedicated ground stations (relays), which are linked between them through optical fiber connections
• user terminals.

The data being sent and received over the Internet by Starlink users goes through all these elements. The goal is to have a connection with the lowest possible latency and the highest available bandwidth. So - the more satellites deployed in the constellation, the better, as they will be able to communicate directly between them as an alternative to using the ground stations.

Once a critical mass of the constellation is deployed, according to the initial project, satellites will be able to communicate between them directly using lasers, thus needing fewer dedicated ground relays. This is very important for minimizing the latency of the Starlink Internet connection and maximizing the speeds. As you know, one of the pitfalls of satellite Internet connections has always been high latency times.

If you're interested in seeing the coverage by Starlink satellites (not the actual Internet service provided!), check out https://satellitemap.space/ or https://orbitalindex.com/feature/starlink-coverage/.

Current status as of April 2025: Starlink has deployed more than 6,750 satellites into orbit. The service is available in Australia, North America, most of South America, most of Europe, some countries in Asia and some in Africa. Many others are set to be available soon.

What are some Internet speeds you can expect when using the Starlink service? And, most important, since it's not only the Internet speed that's important - reliability is key as well. 

This website, unaffiliated with Starlink, centralizes community based Starlink stats from around the world. Here are some interesting numbers, as of April 2025:

• average ping: ~33 ms
• average download speeds: 152 Mbps
• average upload speeds: 18 Mbps

Starlink is launched as a service and includes multiple tiers of service and pricing. As of April 2025, these include:

• Starlink Residential, for connecting at home
• Starlink Roam, for connecting while traveling anywhere
• Starlink Local Priority, for connectivity throughout your country, for businesses
• Starlink Global Priority, for connectivity on land and ocean around the world, for businesses.

If you live in a city or suburb, it's probably not. And that's because you most likely have faster and more cost effective alternatives, starting from cable to fiber optic connections.

But if you're in a remote area with poor coverage from broadband Internet, then you should definitely consider Starlink. You should also take into account Starlink if you're a digital nomad, always on the move, RV-ing around the country.

And don't worry about bandwidth intensive and latency sensitive activities, such as live streaming or gaming. There are plenty of users doing that while running on Starlink Internet. Here's just an example:

Of course, you should consider also the possibility of a Starlink Internet outage, as mentioned specifically on their website. So, if you get into such activities, be prepared - read below.

We all know the symptoms for connectivity problems. It all starts with slower Internet speeds. Then, it can become unreliable, disconnecting randomly. This is best seen when streaming video or live streaming to your audience - the video will start stuttering, then it goes into "buffering mode". The last stage is disconnecting altogether.

Before we dig into the potential causes and solutions - we are assuming that current Starlink users are situated within coverage of the satellite constellation. Here are some potential causes for Starlink connection issues, together with some suggested solutions:

It's always a good idea to have a second connection available, in case you have any Starlink connection issues. This can be the cellular data on your smartphone or external USB dongle, a nearby public Wi-Fi connection or any type of connection you might have around.

The problem with using a backup connection is that you'll break your current session. Even if you keep the second connection active on your computer or smartphone, that device will not use both Starlink and the backup connection together at once. If you're doing a bandwidth intensive latency sensitive activity such as live streaming video or gaming, you can kiss that session goodbye. You'll have to reconnect using your backup Internet. And then, when Starlink is working, reconnect to it again.

We've got a solution for this too: using a link aggregation / channel bonding VPN like Speedify.