Starlink Expands Subscribers and Speeds
Elon Musk's satellite company announced 6 million subscribers globally.
WASHINGTON, June 10, 2025– Starlink announced its 6 million subscribers on the social media platform X, heralding a new wave of success following faster internet speeds.
“Starlink is connecting more than 6M people with high-speed internet across 140 countries, territories, and many other markets. Thank you to all our customers around the world!” the post by Starlink on X said.
Starlink had announced 4 million subscribers back in September 2024, when the company only covered 100 countries.
The company’s slogan to “connect the unconnected” is supported by its end-of-2024 report, which revealed it launched 200 satellites last year. Space.com said, “As of May. 30, 2025, there are currently 7,578 Starlink satellites in orbit, of which 7,556 are working.”
An internet connectivity service, Ookla, tracked the speeds of Starlink’s satellites on Tuesday, reporting on drastic changes in internet speeds.
Ookla reported that since 2022, the median download speeds have increased from 53.95 Megabits per second (Mbps) to 104.71 Mbps in 2025.
The Federal Communications Commission defines “served areas” as places where download speeds are more than 100 Mbps, making Starlink a viable competitor for Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program service bidding. The bidding includes states looking for broadband that will cover the most area, while staying within the budget that the BEAD program allocated.
However, Ookla said “only 17.4% of U.S. Starlink Speedtest users nationwide were able to get broadband speeds” in the 100 Mbps threshold.
In the third quarter of 2022, upload speeds were 7.50 Mbps, and then about doubled by the first quarter of 2025 to 14.84 Mbps. This, however, does not meet the FCC's 20 Mbps upload requirement to be considered a “served area.”
Latency, the length of time it takes two devices to transmit data, reported lower numbers. The Ookla report said that the latency speeds were lowest in Washingto, D.C., Arizona, Colorado, and New Jersey, all reported around 38-39 milliseconds (ms) median latency.
The report also said that “Starlink said its goal is to deliver service with just 20 milliseconds (ms) median latency.” Outlying states like Alaska and Hawaii, at 105 ms and 115 ms, respectively, are reporting the slowest speeds.
