Starlink satellite internet service gains 1 million new subscribers in four months

SpaceX has revealed that its Starlink internet service now has 4 million customers worldwide.

“Starlink connects more than 4 million people to high-speed internet across more than 100 countries, regions, and many other markets,” the company revealed in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday.

Elon Musk’s internet initiative is rapidly gaining new customers, with a million new customers signing up in the past four months alone. The first Starlink customers came online in October 2020 and the service reached its first million subscribers in December 2022.

Starlink has come a long way since SpaceX deployed its first batch of 60 satellites into low Earth orbit in 2019. The constellation is now believed to have 6,300 satellites and is still growing as SpaceX seeks to build out its service with faster, more reliable and broader coverage.

In addition to individual customers, Starlink also serves a growing number of enterprise customers such as cruise lines and airlines. News of this latest customer milestone came on the same day that Air France announced that starting next summer, it will begin gradually rolling out Starlink to its fleet to provide ultra-fast internet to its passengers.

But the Starlink initiative has run into some problems along the way. For example, astronomers have long complained that light trails from the satellites block their view of deep space. Making matters worse is the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the new generation of Starlink satellites, which interferes with radio telescopes on Earth and further disrupts astronomers’ work, the BBC reported.