SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet constellation remains one of the most popular internet services among users in Europe and Oceania, according to Speedtest Intelligence. In just a few years, Starlink has built the world's largest satellite constellation and provides services to dozens of countries around the world. This is due to the ability of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket to quickly launch satellites. As the constellation enters its second generation of construction, users from the UK, New Zealand, France, Italy and Germany continue to rate it higher than broadband internet providers.
SpeedtestIntelligence measures users' opinions of Internet service providers by asking them how likely they would recommend the service to others after completing an internet speed test. These scores, when aggregated, are called the "Net Promoter Score" and are used to determine how users rate an Internet service.
New data from Speedtest shows that the tendency to recommend the internet appears to be influenced by country. For example, German Broadband Internet and Starlink have NPS scores of -30 and 38 respectively. Both types of Internet have the lowest scores, and the score gap between Broadband and Starlink is also the lowest. The median broadband speed in Germany is also lower than the median Starlink speed.
At the other end of the spectrum is France, which has the highest promoter scores for both broadband and interstellar links. This may be because France’s median download speed is 165Mbps, which is the highest of all countries and is much higher than France’s Starlink median download speed of 107Mbps.
In terms of internet speeds, Europe’s Starlink internet speeds appear to have stabilized after declining at the end of last year. Speedtest data covers 27 European countries and shows that in the second quarter of 2023, 14 countries had internet speeds higher than 100Mbps. The fastest median download speed was in Switzerland, at 122Mbps in the second quarter of 2023.
In the second quarter of 2023 compared with the previous quarter, 15 out of 27 countries experienced an increase in speed or remained unchanged. The data also shows that Starlink has successfully maintained one of its main selling points in some European countries. In 11 countries including the UK, Greece, Ireland and Italy, Starlink's median speed is faster than broadband speeds.
Three of the 27 countries had median Starlink download speeds below 70Mbps, but despite this, Starlink still emerged as the fastest satellite internet provider by a wide margin across all countries surveyed. Looking at another aspect of internet performance, namely upload speeds, upload speeds are declining year-on-year in all countries surveyed except the UK. This trend appears to be reversing, however, as upload speeds improved in the second quarter of 2023 compared to the first quarter.
Finally, the median download speeds in Australia and New Zealand in the second quarter were 113Mbps and 104Mbps respectively. This marks an increase in annual growth rates and upload speeds in both countries. Q3 data analysis will be very interesting as Starlink may have lost over 200 satellites over the past two months, so whether this will impact service quality remains to be determined.