Elon Musk's SpaceX announced it had reached the million "active subscribers" milestone, up from 250,000 in March.
"Starlink
now has more than 1,000,000 active subscribers — thank you to all
customers and members of the Starlink team who contributed to this
milestone," SpaceX tweeted on Monday.
Starlink now has more than 1,000,000 active subscribers – thank you to all customers and members of the Starlink team who contributed to this milestone ❤️💫🌎 https://t.co/5suNxFvtEH pic.twitter.com/E1ojYarcEA
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) December 19, 2022
Over two years and dozens of successful launches later, SpaceX has more than 3,600 Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit. The Federal Communications Commission on Dec. 1 granted Starlink partial approval to operate 7,500 of the nearly 30,000 planned satellites. In a Dec. 16 regulatory filing with the FCC, SpaceX said it "anticipates that it will begin launching Gen2 satellites [second-generation Starlink satellites] before the end of December 2022."
Starlink's significant jump in subscribers sounds impressive, but it has come at the cost of slower speeds. A recent report via Ookla shows that Starlink download speeds have continued to slide as new users come online.
In addition to adding Gen2 satellites to increase capacity for expanding Starlink's customer base, the company plans direct-to-smartphone services with T-Mobile next year.
As for now, there's still a long waitlist to receive a Starlink in some regions, though people have opted for the RV Starlink [available almost immediately] that can be transported to different locations. With RV Starlink, customers don't get priority on the network (meaning slower speeds).
