Starlink's Massive Growth Results in Congestion, Slow Speeds for Some Users
Starlink has received praise for delivering high-speed broadband to rural areas across the world. But this past week, Wisconsin resident Lindsay Bernhagen decided to “rage quit” SpaceX’s satellite internet system out of sheer frustration.
The reason? Her Starlink internet service has slowed to a crawl, making it difficult to get any work done. “It was really fast for the first few months, and then it got predictably bad every single day,” said Bernhagen, who decided to switch back to her previous internet provider.
“I was lagging so much I couldn’t participate in the video meetings,” she said. Download speeds would drop to 8 to 10Mbps in the afternoon. “It was at the point I couldn’t be functional at my job.”
Bernhagen isn’t alone. Hundreds of miles south near Leonard, Texas, John Lawyer has encountered download rates on his Starlink dish that can dive as low as 1Mbps, especially during the evenings.
Speeds "are absolutely getting worse,” he said. Lawyer and his wife could make do with a download rate as slow as 30Mbps. "But we aren’t getting even that with any kind of useable consistency," he added.
These experiences are surprising since Starlink is supposed to offer download rates ranging from 50Mbps to as high as 200Mbps, making it possible to stream movies, hold video calls, and even play computer games online, without much lag. But in recent weeks, some customers in various locations across North America have encountered drastically reduced internet quality with Starlink, a service they had hoped would fix their broadband problems for good.
The slow speeds are causing some affected customers to wonder if Starlink is facing a congestion problem due to its popularity. In other words, has SpaceX oversold its
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