Musk says Starlink now delivers 10 Gbps speeds worldwide

Elon Musk declared on Thursday that SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service can now provide reliable 10-gigabit-per-second symmetric upload and download connectivity anywhere on Earth, a claim that marks a dramatic leap for satellite-based broadband but arrives alongside growing scientific alarm over the company's orbital ambitions.

From Arctic Proof to Global Promise

The announcement followed a Starlink demonstration in Utqiagvik, Alaska — the northernmost city in the United States, situated 320 miles above the Arctic Circle with no road access to the rest of the country. Starlink posted on X on July 9 that it was delivering peak speeds of up to 10 Gbps symmetric in the remote community. Musk then confirmed on X that the capability now extends worldwide, writing that "Starlink can now provide reliable 10 Gbps symmetric send/receive connectivity anywhere in the world".benzinga+2

Starlink added that bonded gateways can provide up to 20 Gbps symmetric service for remote and extreme environments. No additional hardware requirements or consumer pricing details accompanied the announcement. The milestone builds on SpaceX's deployment of V3 satellites, which Musk had previously said would deliver ten times the bandwidth of V2 units — up to 1 terabit per second per satellite. As of early July, SpaceX had deployed more than 10,400 Starlink satellites in orbit and reported over 12 million subscribers.basenor+5

Astronomers Sound the Alarm

The speed breakthrough arrives in the shadow of a study published in late June by the European Southern Observatory warning that plans to launch more than 1.7 million satellites — with SpaceX alone seeking approval for one million — would have "devastating consequences" for ground-based astronomy. The research found that for ESO's Very Large Telescope at Paranal Observatory in Chile, images taken two hours after dark could lose up to 28 percent of their field of view to satellite trails.eso+3

Lead researcher Olivier Hainaut called for a hard cap of 100,000 satellites in orbit, all below naked-eye visibility, to preserve the science. According to Fast Company, the proliferation of orbital hardware could also brighten the night sky three to four times over, washing out observations of faint galaxies, exoplanets, and potentially hazardous asteroids.fastcompany+2

Speed vs. Sky

Starlink's technical achievement underscores the tension between expanding global connectivity and protecting scientific infrastructure. SpaceX has previously worked with astronomers on brightness-reduction measures, but the ESO study suggests those efforts will be insufficient at the scale Musk envisions. Whether regulators will impose the satellite caps researchers are requesting remains an open question as the constellation continues to grow at a pace of more than 1,600 launches in the first half of 2026 alone.facebook