Comparing Starlink's Average and Peak Speeds Raises Policy Questions: Researcher

SpaceX's Starlink service doesn't consistently meet performance goals for BEAD, the EU's Connecting Europe Broadband Fund program, or Australia's Statutory Infrastructure Provider regime, internet access researcher Isabel Suizo wrote last week in an Internet Society blog post. Suizo, a Carnegie Mellon computer science doctoral candidate, said a sampling of Starlink speeds by a research team at the university showed SpaceX's average download speeds exceeded 100 Mbps 24.7% of the time in the U.S, 13.6% in the EU and 42.2% in Australia. However, when looking at peak throughput measurements, most samples were above 100 Mbps, she noted. That might point to the need for performance goals to be reframed, given that the disparity between peak and average throughput is smaller with fiber connectivity, but low earth orbit networks' connectivity is inherently more volatile.