2022 has been a year of strong growth for Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet network. The company’s traffic increased 15 times between January and December.
Faster implementation
Starlink’s goal is to deploy a constellation of several thousand low-orbit satellites to deliver a high-speed Internet network to the most remote areas of the world. SpaceX completed its first launches in 2019, and now has more than 3,000 working units in orbit. The pace of these launches is impressive, so much so that every year, the company breaks records in the frequency of its starts.
Originally Starlink was available in the US and Canada, but it now covers many countries around the world, including Ukraine, where Elon Musk deployed it to help the country fight the Russian armed forces. As a result, the adoption of the network is becoming faster and faster, and 2022 is a proof of this, since, according to the American company, it has increased 15 times during the year. Cloudflare. If the company claimed 700,000 users in September, it counts more than 1 million to date..
In France, Starlink now has around 10,000 users compared to 6,500 in September. The speed offered by the service varies between 20 and 100 mbs/s, which is much better than a traditional ADSL network. The tariffs operated by SpaceX are nevertheless high: a subscription of 50 euros per month as well as a dish to buy for 450 euros. However, they can be changed.
Starlink now has more than 1,000,000 active subscribers – thanks to all customers and members of the Starlink team who contributed to this milestone ❤️💫🌎 https://t.co/5suNxFvtEH pic.twitter.com/E1ojYarcEA
—SpaceX (@SpaceX) 19 December 2022
A varied offer
Now Starlink’s growth is like that the company has decided to review its plans for its Gen2 satellites. They are more impressive than their predecessors and have ten times the capacity compared to the latter. Their deployment was originally supposed to be via the ultra-heavy Starship launcher, which is still at the prototype stage, but SpaceX finally made the decision to upgrade them to adapt their launch via a Falcon 9. should also take place very soon.
The growth of Starlink is explained, in addition to its spread in other countries, by the diversity of the offer. SpaceX has actually extended it to airplanes, RVs, and even boats. This diversification policy seems to satisfy the company, which recently announced the launch of a service specifically dedicated to governments and dubbed Starshield.