SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service now has more than 2 million US subscribers, the company revealed in a post detailing updates to its network. It also said its global subscriber base has grown to more than 6 million -- up from 4.6 million at the end of 2024.
In a report filed with the Federal Communications Commission in August 2024, Starlink said it had grown to around 1.4 million subscribers in the US since its debut in 2021. That only makes up about 1% of all internet connections in the country, but it's been a godsend for people in rural areas.Â
"People buy a house out here and they assume that there's internet, and then they find out there's not," Edwin Walker, a retired electrical engineer in Chattaroy, Washington, told CNET. "There's literally a couple hundred people close to us who have Starlink."
Locating local internet providers
2024 was a year of rapid growth for the satellite internet company. It started the year with 2.3 million customers globally and ended with 4.6 million.Â
Last November, Starlink started putting customers on a waitlist in US cities like Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego and Austin. It also added a one-time "congestion fee" of $100 for customers in high-usage areas.
Locating local internet providers
There's been some concern about whether Starlink can keep up with increasing service demand. The FCC defines broadband as 100 megabits per second download and 20Mbps upload. That's a bar Starlink has never reached in the US.Â
The most recent data from Ookla in June found that Starlink users in the US receive median speeds of 105/15Mbps, with 45 milliseconds of latency. (Disclosure: Ookla is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.) That's a huge improvement from previous years, but Ookla says only 17% of Starlink users are meeting the FCC's minimum. In its five years of collecting speed test data on Starlink, the company has never reached the benchmark set by the FCC.
Read more: Inside the Rise of 7,000 Starlink Satellites – and Their Inevitable Downfall
In 2022, Starlink was denied nearly $900 million in broadband grants through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) because it couldn't meet the FCC's speed requirements. Elon Musk wrote on X in January 2024 that the idea that Starlink had failed to reach these speeds was "utterly false" and that "Starlink exceeds that right now."Â
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said it was unlikely the commission could revisit the RDOF subsidies for Starlink but told Politico in October that he believes "it would be fair to get [Starlink] back" into the FCC's broadband program.