While residents of metropolitan areas usually have a lot of internet providers to pick from, the same can't be said about consumers in rural parts of the world. SpaceX launched Starlink as an effective means of providing high-speed internet in such areas. The service has been around for a couple of years now, with the beta going up in late 2020. More recently, Starlink reached a noteworthy milestone by averaging 100 Mbps download speeds in 15 countries. Ookla is now sharing the latest Starlink speed data, highlighting the service's growth around the world since Q1 2021.
Starlink's median download speeds in the US reportedly surged by 38% to 90.55 Mbps in Q1 2022, up from 65.72 Mbps in Q1 2021. Canada witnessed a larger jump in download speeds, as Ookla reports them going from 61.84 Mbps to 97.40 Mbps in 12 months. Meanwhile, latency over Starlink took a bit of a hit, with the median latency going up from 51 ms to 55 ms in Canada and from 40 ms to 43 ms stateside.
Mexico took top honors in North America, enjoying the fastest satellite internet on the continent with a median download speed of 105.91 Mbps. Starlink in Chile was the fastest satellite provider in South America.
Europe fared decently, too, as median download speeds topped 100 Mbps in every market where Starlink was commercially available. Puerto Rico is a new entrant to Ookla's list, and the region's fastest satellite internet speeds — provided by HughesNet — stood out at 20.54 Mbps. By comparison, fixed broadband in Puerto Rico was over three times faster.
Upload speeds in the US saw a steep decline from 16.29 Mbps in Q1 2021 to 9.33 Mbps this year, representing a 33% reduction. The same phenomenon was noticed in Canada, with upload speeds falling by 23% — from 16.29 Mbps to 9.33 Mbps — in the same time frame. Ookla's newly published data is part of an ongoing series that tracks the performance of satellite internet services across several continents, including North America, South America, Europe, and Oceania.
The use of low-earth-orbit satellites, otherwise known as LEOs, have been instrumental in the rapid expansion of Starlink. SpaceX isn't alone with its interest in bringing internet access to underserved areas — Amazon joined the high-speed satellite internet business with Project Kuiper. And while it's since gone under, Google experimented with the idea through Project Loon.