Starlink, Elon Musk's satellite Internet company, appears to have hit its speed ceiling, according to data collected by one of the Internet's largest speed-testing sites.

According to Ookla, known for operating SpeedTest.net, Starlink's speeds did not increase in the third quarter of this year. Speeds began to drop in some areas.

According to Ookla, median speeds dropped from 97.23 Mbps to 87.25 Mbps between Q2 and Q3 2021; Ookla speculates that this may be a symptom of Starlink adding new customers to its satellite network and eating up available bandwidth. Ookla speculates that this may be a symptom of Starlink adding new customers to its satellite network and eating up available bandwidth.

At the very least, median upload speeds remained nearly flat between Q2 and Q3 2021, from 13.89 to 13.54.

According to Ookla data, Starlink speeds still vary widely by county. In Santa Fe County, New Mexico, the fastest median download speed was 146.58 Mbps, while the slowest median download speed was 46.63 Mpbs in Drummond Township, Michigan.

Still, Starlink's poor performance must be viewed in the context of the overall satellite Internet market. The median download speeds of competitors HughesNet and Viasat were 19.30 and 18.75 Mbps, respectively. This means that even Starlink's slowest speed is more than twice the median of HughesNet and Viasat. For rural communities, speeds approaching 100 Mbps are a great relief.

Away from the U.S., in Australia, where Internet infrastructure is middling, Starlink significantly outperformed fixed Internet. Starlink's median download speed of 138.12 Mbps was well above the 51.17 Mbps of traditional Internet service providers.

Starlink customers experiencing slower transmission speeds need not worry. SpaceX recently launched 52 satellites from its base in California. Currently, the Low Earth Orbit Satellite Internet Constellation consists of a little over 1,600 satellites. This is a lot, but still far from the 12,000 satellites that SpaceX is planning. The more satellites in orbit, the better the Internet should be.