As many of us expected, Starlink speeds have slowed over the past several months. As the service has added more users, the Starlink network is starting to show traffic congestion.
There are two parts to the Starlink network: satellites and ground stations. The low earth orbit satellites connect to customer dishes, and also connect to Starlink ground stations, where customer traffic gets placed onto the terrestial Internet. Network performance can be improved by adding more satellites (each satellite can handle only so much traffic) and/or adding more ground stations.
Starlink says it is adding both satellites and ground stations, but the popularity of the network has created the slow downs. How bad is it? Starlink is still an excellent alternative to DSL, dial up, and most terrestial wireless, with current users indicating average download speeds of 62 Meg and average upload speeds of about 7 Meg.