It is coming to light that the starlink satellite internet service run by Elon Musk is a poor example for providing internet service, unless there are few users at a time. Basically the conclusion is the more users on the service at a time, the slower it goes, or starts to malfunction.
“There’s an irony with Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service beamed from space: The more popular it becomes, the worse its speeds and reliability tend to get.”
“Those limitations are known, but a new analysis estimates the tipping point at which Starlink connections could bog down: With as few as 419 Starlink customers in an area the size of Tacoma, Washington, service for all users in the area could become unusable.”
“They (internet expert Sascha Meinrath’s group) believe that within the geographic coverage area of a single Starlink satellite – an estimated 62.9 square miles or roughly the area of Tacoma – hitting 419 Starlink customers could become a problem. That’s an average 6.7 Starlink customers per square mile.
“At that level of usage, they estimated that internet speeds for Starlink customers in the area would fall below the government’s definition of modern, reliable internet service for sending data out from your device. Service could be unusable under some conditions, they said.”
Washington Post 7 18 2025
Elon Musk knew this, but kept it secret, and just kept launching more and more rockets with the starlink satellites on board, regardless of pollution in near orbit, or later on how offensive the militarization of space is becoming.
“One wrinkle for Starlink and similar satellite technologies: When many people in one area use them, internet speeds tend to significantly slow.”
“All internet services experience those constraints, but internet experts say they’re more acute with Starlink, particularly for uses like sending images or video calls for which you send data out to the internet.”
Washington Post ibid.
“Ookla reports, based on user-initiated speed tests, were cited by the Federal Communications Commission last month when it rejected Starlink’s application to receive $885.51 million in broadband funding that had been tentatively awarded during then-Chairman Ajit Pai’s tenure. The FCC said it doubts whether Starlink can provide the grant’s required speeds of 100Mbps downloads and 20Mbps uploads.”
“”We observe that Ookla data reported as of July 31, 2022 indicate that Starlink’s speeds have been declining from the last quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2022, including upload speeds that are falling well below 20Mbps,” the FCC said at the time. Ookla, a private company, operates a widely used speed testing service and boasts that its data is often used by government and regulatory bodies.”
Article continues
“Starlink has more than 3,000 satellites in orbit so far. The Internet provider has FCC permission to deploy nearly 12,000 satellites, including those already being operated, and is seeking authorization to launch tens of thousands eventually.”
From link: internet speeds start to significantly slow. see above in Washington Post
See arstechnica here:
Which one has to wonder, what is the real purpose of this exercise? Who benefits from using starlink?
“Wireline broadband is still the best. Overall, fixed broadband services in the US posted median download speeds of 150.1Mbps, uploads of 21.5Mbps, and 14 ms latency, the Q2 Ookla report said.”
“From the beginning, it was clear that Starlink is most appropriate for people who don’t have a solid cable or fiber connection in their homes. The recent data doesn’t change that overall conclusion, but Starlink users who are getting slower-than-expected speeds have good reason to be frustrated.”
Ibid, arstechnica
So clearly not the average person using starlink, at least not in a city, It costs 7 times more than cable internet, and it functions poorly compared to wire internet.
From here we go to Reuters, an article written yesterday about Elon Musk and the war in Ukraine, which his starlink internet service is providing access to for military purposes.
“KYIV – During a pivotal push by Ukraine to retake territory from Russia in late September 2022, Elon Musk gave an order that disrupted the counteroffensive and dented Kyiv’s trust in Starlink, the satellite internet service the billionaire provided early in the war to help Ukraine’s military maintain battlefield connectivity.”
“According to three people familiar with the command, Musk told a senior engineer at the California offices of SpaceX, the Musk venture that controls Starlink, to cut coverage in areas including Kherson, a strategic region north of the Black Sea that Ukraine was trying to reclaim.”
““We have to do this,” Michael Nicolls, the Starlink engineer, told colleagues upon receiving the order, one of these people said. Staffers complied, the three people told Reuters, deactivating at least a hundred Starlink terminals, their hexagon-shaped cells going dark on an internal map of the company’s coverage. The move also affected other areas seized by Russia, including some of Donetsk province further east.”
“Upon Musk’s order, Ukrainian troops suddenly faced a communications blackout, according to a Ukrainian military official, an advisor to the armed forces, and two others who experienced Starlink failure near the front lines. Soldiers panicked, drones surveilling Russian forces went dark, and long-range artillery units, reliant on Starlink to aim their fire, struggled to hit targets.”
“As a result, the Ukrainian military official and the military advisor said, troops failed to surround a Russian position in the town of Beryslav, east of Kherson, the administrative center of the region of the same name. “The encirclement stalled entirely,” said the military official in an interview. “It failed.””
Reuters 7 25 2025
This is an example of how connected Musk is to Ukraine, and its war with its now capitalist neighbor, Russia. As soon as starlink stopped functioning, everything started to fail.
article continues
“Whatever the reason for Musk’s decision, the shutoff over Kherson and other regions surprised some involved with the Ukraine war – from troops on the ground to U.S. military and foreign policy officials, who after Russia’s full-scale invasion that February had worked to secure Starlink service for Ukrainian forces. Panicked calls by Ukrainian officials during the outage to seek information from Pentagon counterparts, five people familiar with the incident said, were met with few explanations for what could have caused it. “
“As of April 2025, according to Ukrainian government social media posts, Kyiv has received more than 50,000 Starlink terminals. Easily transported and deployed, the pizza-box-sized devices communicate with thousands of SpaceX satellites now circling the globe. An initial batch of terminals was provided to Ukraine by SpaceX itself. Further terminals have arrived from donors including Poland, the United States and Germany.”
“SpaceX is the first company to establish an extensive network of communication satellites in low-Earth orbit, a region of space that is closer to the planet than areas where such satellites historically reside. The proximity of satellites that now make up the company’s constellation allows Starlink to offer space-based wireless connectivity that is faster than any previously available. “
“With more than 7,900 satellites now in orbit, SpaceX has become the world’s largest satellite operator. Its devices, which relay signals among each other to create a network that communicates with the ground, account for about two-thirds of all active satellites in space, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian. “
“Compared to the geostationary satellites historically used for communications, the sheer number of SpaceX satellites helps make Starlink less vulnerable to jamming and attacks. Its far reach makes it valuable in remote and hostile terrain – from battlefields to airspace to high seas. In Ukraine, it has facilitated activities including communications, intelligence and drone piloting. “
Reuters ibid.
“Even before the conflict began, documents reviewed by Reuters show, SpaceX had already been in discussions with the U.S. government about providing Starlink in Ukraine. Rollout began after Russian troops crossed the border on February 24, 2022.”
“Two days later, Mykhailo Fedorov, a deputy prime minister in Ukraine, requested Musk’s help. “We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations,” he wrote on Twitter.”
“Musk responded in 10 hours. “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine,” he tweeted. “More terminals en route.””
“Poland was also instrumental in the early days of the war, shipping thousands of terminals to Ukraine shortly after the invasion. Warsaw this year said it has purchased about 25,000 Starlink terminals for the effort – roughly half the total now in Ukraine – and that it is paying the subscription costs to keep them connected. So far, it has spent about $89 million on Starlink for Ukraine.”
“The equipment has made a critical difference for Ukraine.”
“Day-to-day bureaucracy has also benefited. Early in the conflict, Ukraine stored state data in the cloud and relied on Starlink to access it, helping keep some government operations running. “We wouldn’t be anywhere without Starlink,” said Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain until 2023. “The whole state was preserved.””
“On the battlefield, Ukraine quickly deployed Starlink to enable front-line troops to communicate with commanders. The service also allowed drone operators to transmit surveillance video streams and locate and attack Russian targets. Reuters couldn’t establish just when such attacks may have become a concern for Musk or SpaceX.”
“That month (September 2022), in a statement to the United Nations, Russia noted the use of “elements of civilian, including commercial, infrastructure in outer space for military purposes.” It warned that “quasi-civilian infrastructure may become a legitimate target for retaliation.””
“It isn’t clear whether Russia has tried to attack any Starlink facilities. Musk has said, however, that Moscow has repeatedly sought to block its connectivity. “SpaceX is spending significant resources combating Russian jamming efforts,” Musk wrote on X last year. “This is a tough problem.””
“Ukrainian drone specialists and Prystaiko, the former ambassador to Britain, said some attack devices, including maritime and bomber drones, now have Starlink antennas fitted to them. The antennas, in the case of sea drones, help operators guide the devices and view video feeds to classify targets, said Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow at Royal United Services Institute, a London-based defense think tank.”
“Musk himself has boasted of Starlink’s importance to Kyiv. “My Starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army,” he wrote on X in March. “Their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off.””
Reuters ibid.
So here we see what starlink was really designed for; internet service communications in war zones where many users, civilians, etc. along side military users would overload the system. It may hardly provide for civilian internet service, but it seems to work when NATO and their proxies are attacking a de populationed region. Clearly this militarization of outer space is exactly what Musk knew he was doing, when he launched all those satellites into near earth orbit.
There is still no way to return satellites to earth; they just break apart and make near earth orbit space stations vulnerable to space garbage, which damage for example fuel cells for returning to Earth. It also precludes any carbon based life being able to get near the planet without shielding of some sort. Fortunately we have been lucky enough not to have been visited by anything recently, up to this point this sounds like science fiction.
Musk’s system is being used to guide drones and missiles into Russia, some of which are targeting Moscow. It has allowed capitalists there to attempt to join NATO, to leave behind the past attempt to rectify the contradiction between wage labour and bourgeois. Ukraine preferred the material results of capitalism more than the quality of labor emancipated from production for surplus value. In exchange for weapons, luxury items, and modest gains in wages, capitalism returned full force to Ukraine.
Part of this was due to the failure of eastern communism to make the shift to ecological socialism.
Nuclear energy remains an export from capitalist Russia. The reactors built by GE and Hitachi in Japan, at Fukushima. melted down too. Japan has had to release hundreds of millions of liters of tritium polluted water into the ocean. Neighboring countries refuse to buy Japanese fish, or serve it in restaurants.
In Ukraine the largest nuclear reactors in Europe, the Zaporizhyzhia generation facilities, were never shut down, even after Chernobyl melted down. They are now in a war zone, shut down, for how long it is unknown. Clearly the return to capitalism by Ukraine did not have ecological goals.
Musk’s starlink service is the main weapon in the war in Ukraine. It is for communications and targeting of drones and missiles, designed to conquer Russia. What Musk told us about starlink being practical as a service for areas with little internet service seems to only work if you keep your connection a secret to your neighbors. The minute people start to use the starlink in numbers, it fails. But in Ukraine, in a depopulated area where the army uses starlink, it works fine. It is just that it is not really for civilian usage, like it was promised by Musk when he began launching massive amounts of satellites into orbit.
The satellites are essentially military satellites, it should be of no surprise Trump started a military wing called the “Space Force” when he was in office. Although he may not be getting along so well with Elon now, the fact remains he contributed about 275 million dollars to Trump’s campaign to get reelected. Space Force is really militarising space, and passing off starlink as a civilian organization.
Without Musk, no war in Ukraine. Unless you want to pay top dollar for crappy internet service somewhere in America without cable or telephone lines, starlink is not for you. But give it to capitalists in a war zone, it is essential. Musk even said before the war broke out he would deploy starlink for the military in Ukraine. Well there it is, in full glory bombing Moscow from Ukraine.
Nicholas Jay Boyes
Milwaukee Wisconsin
American Democratic Republic
revised 9 18 2025
Ecological Era 