Internet satellite is creating headlines in the global news, especially after the Starlink project and Viasat’s plan to acquire Inmarsat. The famous speed measurement platform Speedtest has conducted satellite speed tests in 12 countries and regions, including the United States, Canada, and France.
Speedtest has revealed that the American users of Starlink satellite internet will get the same performance in the third quarter of 2021 as the performance in the first quarter of 2021. However, the median download speed of Starlink was 97.23 Mbps in the second quarter, and in the third quarter of 2021, that download speed has dropped down to 87.25 Mbps. For HughesNet, the company has revealed that it has a speed of 19.30 Mbps which was 19.73 Mbps in the second quarter of 2021. Viasat ranked third in the speed test with 18.75 Mbps, whereas in the second quarter of 2021, it was 18.13 Mbps. SpeedTest has revealed that the median download speed of all the fixed broadband providers inside the United States was 119.84 Mbps.
The median upload speed of Starlink is 13.54 Mbps, with Viasat in second place (2.96 Mbps, and HughesNet in third place (2.54 Mbps). In the second quarter of 2021, Viasat’s median upload speed was at 3.38 Mbps, and for HughesNet, it was 2.43 Mbps. Interestingly Starlink is the only satellite internet provider that uses low earth orbit satellites, whereas both Viasat and HughesNet use higher “geosynchronous” orbits.
An online report explains, “Although there are about 100 Mbps between the county with the fastest median download speed (Santa Fe County, New Mexico, 146.58 Mbps) and the county with the slowest median download speed (Drummond Town, Michigan, 46.63 Mbps). The performance is different, even the low-end speed is much higher than the FCC’s baseline performance level with the download speed of at least 25 Mbps.”
