Elon Musk’s Starlink to enter India: What internet speeds does it offer? Explained

Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s internet service Starlink is all set to make a debut in the Indian market, with big telecom players such as Airtel and Reliance Jio partnering with SpaceX.

In a statement on Wednesday, Reliance Jio announced its agreement with SpaceX to offer Starlink’s broadband internet services to its customers in India. The agreement is still subject to SpaceX receiving its own authorisations to sell Starlink in India.

Reliance Jio said it will not only offer Starlink equipment in its retail outlets but will establish a mechanism to support customer service installation and activation.

This came just a day after Bharti Airtel announced a similar partnership with SpaceX to bring Starlink to India on Tuesday. The statement said that was the first agreement to be signed in India.

For a long time, Starlink’s entry in India has faced multiple regulatory hurdles, while it’s already present in over 100 countries across the world. However, with these potential partnerships in pipeline, Starlink is poised to enter one of the largest internet markets in the world.

What is Starlink?

Starlink is the world’s first and largest satellite constellation and uses a low Earth orbit to deliver broadband internet. Starlink delivers high-speed, low-latency internet across the world by “leveraging advanced satellites and user hardware coupled with our deep experience with both spacecraft and on-orbit operations.”

What makes Starlink faster?

According to Starlink, most satellite internet services come from single geostationary satellites that orbit the planet at 35,786 km, making the latency high. Latency refers to the round-trip data time between the user and satellite. This makes supporting high-data-rate activities such as streaming, online gaming, video calls, and more “nearly impossible.”

However, Starlink’s satellites orbit the Earth at a much lesser distance, around 550 km, and cover almost the entire globe. This helps to bring down the latency significantly – around 25 ms vs 600+ ms.

Starlink internet speed

Starlink, which boasts of being a high-speed internet service provider, says that its users typically experience download speeds between 25 and 220 Mbps, with a majority of users experiencing speeds over 100 Mbps. As for uploads, speeds typically vary between 5 and 20 Mbps.

However, the performance also depends on location, time of day and the precedence Starlink gives your data in the network based on your service plan.

Uninterrupted use of the services is not guaranteed and actual speeds may be lower than expected speeds during times of high usage, according to Starink.