Starlink: declining performance in the United States and France

01/12/2022 By gifsauce 636 Views

Benjamin Logerot December 21, 2021 at 11:15:32 am©Ookla

The end of the year is approaching and the expansion of satellite internet, dominated by Space X and its Starlink network, is only progressing. The company Ookla has unveiled a study of network performance including Starlink in several countries around the world. The observation is clear: in France and the United States, if the network is more solid than fixed lines, its performance drops between the second and third quarters of 2021.

This study conducted by Ookla, which owns the famous site SpeedTest.net, points to declining performance due to an increase in demand, but the figures, which are generally higher than landlines, tend to be reassuring.

Starlink victim of its success?

With its more than 1,600 satellites positioned in low orbit around the Earth, Starlink is one of the leaders in satellite internet. Ookla therefore regularly monitors the performance offered by this service, which aims in particular to open up the most remote areas that lack reliable internet access.

Starlink: from declining performance to United States and France

In France in the second quarter of this year, the downlink speed of the Starlink network was 139.39 Mbps but, according to Ookla, this increased to 102.15 Mbps in the third quarter. A drop due, according to the company, to stronger demand. This is still well above the country's landline average, estimated at 75.47 Mbps. Upstream speed, on the other hand, is well below fixed lines in the third quarter with 19.84 Mbps against 56.66 Mbps.

In the United States, it's the same observation, with slightly more precise data which show huge differences of sometimes more than 100 Mbps depending on the geographical area. Downstream throughput increased from 97.23 Mbps in Q2 to 87.25 Mbps in Q3. The upstream speed remains stable, however, with 13.54 Mbps in Q3 against 13.89 Mbps in Q2. Santa Fe County in New Mexico recorded the highest download speed with 146.58 Mbps while Drummond Township (Michigan) had the lowest with 46.92 Mbps.

Source: Ookla

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