Elon Musk's Starlink Satellite Internet Service Now Has Over 2.3M Customers

SpaceX‘s Starlink segment on Thursday announced the successful crossing of a new milestone in customer base expansion.

What Happened: Starlink now has over 2.3 million customers worldwide. These customers are spread across 70 countries, it said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Starlink touched about a million active subscribers by the end of 2022 and over two million in September earlier this year, rapidly expanding its user base. After launching demo satellites in 2018, SpaceX launched the first batch of operational Starlink satellites in 2019. To date, over 5000 satellites have been launched. It ultimately aims to provide high-speed internet across the globe using this network of satellites in low-Earth orbit.

In early November, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk revealed that Starlink had achieved breakeven cash flow, sparking speculation about a potential IPO for the segment.

Why It Matters: To give you more context, AT&T had over 15 million broadband internet subscribers in the U.S. alone as of the end of 2022. Verizon, meanwhile, had over 7 million, according to data from Statista.

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reaffirmed that it will deny Starlink $885.5 million in rural broadband subsidies claiming that it failed to meet basic program requirements. Starlink could not demonstrate that it could deliver the service it promised in 2020, the agency said. Starlink had agreed to provide high-speed internet to 642,000 rural premises by the end of 2025.

Republican FCC Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington dissented against the decision, claiming it to be part of the ‘regulatory harassment’ of Musk and his businesses on the instructions of President Joe Biden.

Musk, too, voiced his disagreement saying that Starlink is the only company ‘actually solving’ rural broadband at scale.

Created with artificial intelligence on MidJourney and Official SpaceX Photos on Flickr

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