SpaceX Starlink Is One Of Europe’s Favorite Internet Service & Speeds Are Improving

SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet constellation continues to be one of the most loved internet services among users in Europe and Oceania, according to data from Speedtest Intelligence. Over the course of a handful of years, Starlink has built the world's largest satellite constellation and rolled out the service to dozens of countries spread out all over the world. It has benefited from the ability to rapidly launch satellites courtesy of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. As the constellation rolls into its second generation build, users from the U.K., New Zealand, France, Italy and Germany continue to rate it higher than broadband internet providers.

Starlink Manages To Stabilize Internet Speeds In Europe & Remains Fastest Satellite Internet Provider

Speedtest Intelligence gauges user sentiment about their internet service providers by asking them how likely they are to recommend the service to others after they have finished taking an internet speed test. These scores are then aggregated and dubbed as 'Net Promoter Scores' and used to determine whether users see their internet service favorably or otherwise.

A positive score indicates a propensity to recommend the service, and no country part of Speedtest's latest data saw users recommend their broadband service to others. It shows that the tendency to recommend internet seems to be influenced by country. For instance, Germany's NPS scores for broadband internet and Starlink stood at -30 and 38. These are the lowest for both kinds of internet, and the gap between broadband and Starlink's rating is also the lowest. German median broadband speeds are also lower than their median Starlink speeds.

On the other end of the spectrum is France, which has the highest promoter scores for both broadband and Starlink. Perhaps this is because French median download speeds of 165 Mbps are the highest in the set of countries, which is also quite higher than the median Starlink download speeds in France of 107 Mbps.

Speediest Intelligence's data of Starlink median download speeds and rating in Europe and New Zealand. Image: Speediest Intelligence

Moving towards internet speeds, they appear to have stabilized in Europe after dipping late last year. Speedtest's data covers 27 European countries and shows that during the second quarter of 2023, in 14 countries, the speeds were higher than 100 Mbps. The fastest median download speeds were in Switzerland, where they stood at 122 Mbps during Q2 2023.

Annually, between Q2 2023 and the previous quarter, speeds improved or remained the same in 15 out of the 27 countries. They dropped by more than 5% in eight countries, and the data also shows that Starlink managed to maintain one of its key selling points in several European countries. Its median speeds were faster than broadband speeds in 11 countries, including the U.K., Greece, Ireland and Italy.

Three out of the 27 countries saw median Starlink download speeds stay lower than 70 Mbps, but despite this, Starlink was the fastest satellite internet provider among all the countries surveyed by a wide margin. Looking at the other side of internet performance, namely upload speeds, these have dropped annually for all the countries surveyed except the U.K. However, this trend appears to be reversing as the speeds improved in the second quarter of 2023 compared to the first quarter.

Finally, median download speeds in Australia and New Zealand stood at 113 Mbps and 104 Mbps, respectively, in Q2. These mark annual increases for both countries and upload speeds for both have also improved. Data for the third quarter will be interesting to analyze as Starlink might have lost more than two hundred satellites over the past two months, so whether this translates into service quality or not is yet to be determined.

Written by Ramish Zafar