5 ms·
Huston estimates 2.3M Starlink users worldwide while SpaceX reports 8M customers. That's a massive difference.
by wmf 11mo ago
Huston estimates 2.3M Starlink users worldwide while SpaceX reports 8M customers. That's a massive difference.
- wkat4242 11mo agoPossibly a lot of those missing ones are military ones that don't want to be counted for security reasons? Just thinking
- RealityVoid 11mo agoOr, perhaps SpaceX fudged the nunbers so they look as if they have more users. Don't want to be a hater in this, I love what SpaceX is doing, but Musk has been known to play PR games, so he's an unreliable narrator at best.
- gunalx 11mo agoWouldnt be suprised if they said, we have about 2M users, lets estimate a common household per user, to inflate the numbers.
- inemesitaffia 11mo agoHere's a public enumeration of CPE's on the network from last year https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.18243 https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.18243.
- Onavo 11mo agoThey are not evenly distributed though, so the density differences isn't that big for the purposes of regional geolocation.
- CamperBob2 11mo agoNot really. A lot of Starlink installations, like mine, are strictly for emergency backup purposes. My account stays suspended 99% of the time, but it's reasonable for them to count me as a "customer."
- plugger 11mo agoI'm a Starlink user technically, but haven't had my service enabled for over 3 years. People like me might help account for this discrepancy.
- renewiltord 11mo agoStarlink is a very flexible and consumer friendly ISP. I’ve stopped service and started service many times from the app. Right now I’m on a rare-use plan. So two months ago I was a user but wouldn’t have shown up on the internet. Right now I’m paying but you probably won’t see me.
- inemesitaffia 11mo agoHis estimate is 3.1 million