Starlink is taking more and more shape. There are already more than 1,550 active satellites in orbit , where more than half a million people already have the operational service or have requested the equipment for when it is available in their country. The best speeds seen so far were slightly over 200 Mbps, but now they have practically tripled that number in Europe.
Specifically, a Reddit user residing in Kassel (Germany) has published a speed test on Reddit with a spectacular download figure of 560 Mbps , with a more modest upload speed of 38.78 Mbps . The user published three tests, in which the latency was 9, 10 and 13 ms, a spectacular figure and even better than that achieved in fiber optics in some areas of southern Spain with respect to servers located in Madrid, although Starlink’s latency is probably somewhat more unstable.
560 Mbps downstream – fiber throughput
Also, the test user was only 50 km from the data center where he was doing the latency test with the satellite right above it. The theoretical minimum achievable latency is 7.3 ms, so 9 ms is practically close to ideal.
Reaching these speeds depends on several factors, where the weather influences, the number of users connected in the area, the location of the satellite to which we are connected, if there is an Earth base station nearby, etc. However, it is really curious that it has managed to triple the speed with respect to what could be achieved until now.
The agreement with Google is beginning to be noticed
The second generation of Starlink satellites will seek to minimize the number of base stations required to communicate with Earth, since the satellites can communicate with each other through the use of lasers . This is useful in very isolated areas, such as Alaska . In addition, on the ground, Starlink has signed an agreement with Google to use its data centers as ground stations, as well as to use its private fiber optic network to connect data centers, reducing latency and being able to take advantage of the large capacity with which it Google account.
In fact, in the user test, the connections appear to come from Google, which is quite curious since the tests were done before the announcement, which shows that Starlink has been deploying its antennas and base stations in data centers for a while. of Google.
Thus, if we add Google’s data centers and the laser connection between satellites to reach the destination, we have to reach speeds of 1 Gbps because satellite Internet is getting closer and closer, where two years ago it sounded like science fiction.
Some users are even starting to get creative, signing up for two Starlink connections at once to get twice the speed. One of them claims to have reached 890 Mbps with 54 ms latency. Another user, in Frankfurt, published a speed test with 522 Mbps, so it seems that Germany is where the service currently works best.
