SpaceX Starlink Passing 4 Million Customers Towards 10 Million in 2025
In May, Nextbigfuture projected that Starlink could reach 3.5 to 5 million customers at the end of 2024 and SpaceX has revealed they are passing 4 million customers this week. 5 million customers is possible for Starlink. 1 million were added from late May to the end of September. Starlink has increased its rate of growth. If the rate of growth increases from 270,000 per month to 340,000 per month then another million could be added in 3 months.
SpaceX will add about 2.7 million in 2024 from the 2.3 million at the end of 2023 and 1 million in 2022.
SpaceX is just short of doubling its subscriber base from the prior year. This should mean about 9-10 million customers at the end of 2025 and 14-18 million at the end of 2026.
<b>BREAKING:</B> The President and Chief Operating Officer of SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell just said that Starlink is going to pass <b>4 million subscribers this week (end of Sept 2024).</b>
In March 2024, the FCC authorized SpaceX to conduct communications in the 71.0-76.0 GHz (spaceto-Earth) and 81.0-86.0 GHz (Earth-to-space) frequency bands (collectively, E-band), with the 7,500 Gen2 Starlink satellites. Starlink using the E-Band increases the bandwidth by four times.
SpaceX second-generation satellites have performed even better than expected so SpaceX has sent a request to the FCC to allow operation at about 350 kilometer instead of 530 kilometers. This would be 68% of the height which would enable 68% latency. This would get latency from 28-35 milliseconds down to 15-20 milliseconds.
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