After tons of hype and anticipation, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet has been finally made available in the Philippines.
The Elon Musk-owned company utilizes low-Earth orbit satellites scattered in space to beam internet connectivity directly to users on land. Such technology poised great potential, especially in archipelagos like the Philippines.
But now that it’s here, how does it actually perform? Well, network and connectivity analytics firm Ookla has some good and bad news.
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As per the data for the first quarter of 2023, Starlink’s download speeds are much faster than all fixed-broadband providers in the Philippines.
The satellite service managed to pull median download speeds of 110.78Mbps, versus the 89.57Mbps that PLDT, Globe Fiber, Converge ICT, and Sky Broadband offer.
While it may have dominated download speeds, Starlink lags behind in both upload and latency categories. Its medium uploads are only at 13.69Mbps, which is substantially slower than the 88.14Mbps that fixed broadband offers.
The latency difference is quite significant, too. Starlink’s ping is at 162ms while local competition is only at 22ms.
Will the latency and upload speeds improve? Only time will tell.