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Don't you just love it when you buy a product that doesn't solve the problem it says it's going to?

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That was sarcasm. That's what many folks are experiencing with Starlink,

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the satellite internet project from Elon Musk that was supposed to revolutionize internet access

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in areas with bad infrastructure. But this past July, customers were reporting speeds

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of less than one megabit per second. What is this, 2002?

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Where are all the frosted tips? And yes, satellite internet has traditionally

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been notoriously slow, especially for the prices you pay.

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But Starlink was touted as a solution to this, as it uses a constellation of satellites

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that are much closer to Earth than the satellites used by legacy providers like Viasat and HughesNet.

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Starlink has advertised speeds between 100 and 200 megabits per second

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with latency as low as 20 milliseconds. Fast enough for gaming and video calls,

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which are applications that often sputter to the point of being unusable

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over a typical satellite connection. Our own testing we did in early 2021

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showed that Starlink did indeed deliver a usable gaming experience.

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So why are so many people now reporting problems?

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See, it's like this. Starlink currently has over 3,000 satellites

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in low Earth orbit. And that sounds like a lot, especially when you consider Viasat and HughesNet

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only use 12 satellites combined. But SpaceX is planning to one day

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have tens of thousands of satellites in the sky. Why in the world do they need so many

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when their competitors make do with just a handful? Well, because they're so close to the Earth,

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their line of sight to the ground is much more limited than far away satellites.

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To provide truly worldwide coverage, Starlink may need as many as 42,000 satellites at some point.

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The current lack of coverage combined with the fact that these satellites themselves are quite small,

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only about one-fifth the weight of a Honda Civic, means that they simply don't have the aggregate capacity yet

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to deal with a growing customer base. But just how bad has it gotten in terms of speed?

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From the first quarter to the second quarter of 2022,

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download speeds for Starlink customers in the United States dropped nearly 30 megabits per second,

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going from about 91 down to around 63

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if we're considering medians. Upload speeds and latency also suffered

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from more modest yet still noticeable performance losses.

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Several customers in rural areas complained that the falling speeds

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meant that they couldn't work effectively at their jobs. And this is after paying 110 bucks a month for the service

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on top of a $600 charge for the initial hardware setup.

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Yikes. These setbacks were not only frustrating for customers,

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but they also caught the attention of the US Federal Communications Commission,

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which used Starlink's declining performance as a reason to refuse to give the company a grant

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of nearly $900 million. To be fair, Elon Musk did say

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that the network would have capacity limits initially, but he indicated the issues would be primarily centered

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around urban areas, not the rural ones where people have suffered

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from unacceptably slow performance. However, the good news is that Starlink is indeed

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continuing to actively launch more satellites and does have approval from the FCC

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to launch up to a total of around 12,000 of them. And it's not like Starlink is unusable for everyone

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since they're still significantly faster than legacy satellite internet services.

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But still, with the amount of money Starlink charges every month, let's hope that it doesn't scare too many people away

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before they complete their network. There's still a few spots in the upper atmosphere.

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I'd hate to see them go to waste. Thanks for watching this video so much.

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Like the video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it. Check out our other videos

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and comment below with video suggestions. Don't forget though to subscribe and follow.

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Sometimes you guys do the other thing, but you don't do that one and it really pisses me off.