In summary: SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has surpassed four million subscribers in more than 100 countries around the world. It’s a major milestone for an ISP that has offered a commercial product for less than four years.
Getting to this point didn’t happen overnight. SpaceX’s plans for a constellation of Internet-enabled satellites began to take shape in the mid-2010s, but the actual development phase would not begin until late 2016. The first batch of fully operational Starlink satellites launched in May 2019, and a public beta began the following year. The commercial service began rolling out in 2021 and service availability has been expanding since then.
The growth has occurred quite rapidly. SpaceX spent the one million active subscriber mark by the end of 2022, reached two million subscribers by September 2023 and crossed the three million mark last May. Adding one million subscribers in just four months is certainly striking and demonstrates without a doubt that there is demand for satellite Internet services.
In September 2024, SpaceX has just launched more than 7,000 Starlink satellites, although not all are operational. In July, for example, a batch of satellites was lost due to a rocket failure.
Still, SpaceX has no problem finding customers to sign up for its service. Earlier this month, united airlines announced plans to install Starlink service on its entire aircraft fleet. The launch will take several years and testing is not expected to begin until early 2025. When it arrives, it will be free for all passengers and should allow bandwidth-intensive activities such as watching live TV, gaming and doing streaming while on air.
Earlier this year, market research firm Quilty Space said it expected Starlink to generate 6.6 billion dollars in revenue this year, and that was before the latest subscriber numbers were made public.
Starlink’s success has surprised many. Qulity Space founder Chris Quilty said in May that many industry veterans scoffed when companies like SpaceX and OneWeb announced their mega-constellations years ago.
Image credit: Evgeny Opanasenko, Anirudh
