Drastic Starlink speed gains bolster SpaceX before IPO to question FCC funding

SpaceX's Starlink can feel somewhat vindicated after the FCC pulled its rural Internet provider funding under the pretext that it doesn't deliver the required download speeds.

According to the latest Speedtest data set, the median U.S. download speeds climbed from 100 Mbps in Q1 2025 to 132 Mbps by Q4. This trend has left some rural Internet providers like Shentel nervous as it has started to affect their business by increasing subscriber churn.

Starlink download speeds and coverage

Furthermore, nearly 45 percent of Starlink users hit the FCC's minimum broadband benchmark of 100 Mbps downloads and 20 Mbps uplink speed in Q4 2025, up from just 17 percent at the start of the year. According to the Internet testing company, this figure is the threshold that turns Starlink from a niche rural workaround into a legitimate broadband competitor.

The reason behind that drastic 30% increase in median Starlink download speeds in the span of just a year is the sheer orbital mass that SpaceX launched in 2025. SpaceX conducted over 120 Falcon 9 missions to expand the active Starlink constellation to nearly 10,000 satellites, enabling tighter, more powerful beams and more capacity per square mile. The Starlink speeds are set to increase even more dramatically as SpaceX starts launching its massive V3 satellites with the Starship 3 rocket later this year, bringing gigabit speeds to dish owners and Starlink Mobile 5G services to people's cell phones directly.

Just back in December 2023, the FCC denied Starlink's $886 million Rural Digital Opportunity Fund subsidy with the argumentation that SpaceX had failed to demonstrate it could deliver the required speeds of 100/20 Mbps. True, at the time Starlink's median U.S. download speed sat at a rather pedestrian 64 Mbps, so the federal regulators had a point.

The FCC treated that as a permanent ceiling rather than a growth curve, though, even though its $42.5 billion BEAD fiber rollout program didn’t connect any rural homes since being signed into law in 2021, and its completion is now projected for 2030.

Starlink is the cash cow of SpaceX, delivering the vast majority of its revenue ahead of what would be the biggest IPO of all time, and the record 2025 speed tests underscore the massive investments that SpaceX makes to keep Starlink customers happy ahead of said IPO.

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