Better GSO Broadband Still Lags Starlink: Ookla
While HughesNet's latency has been decreasing in recent years and is now essentially tied with Viasat, neither geostationary orbit (GSO) operator comes close to competing with SpaceX on latency, Ookla said Tuesday. It said their download speeds are increasing but…
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also remain well below Starlink's. Citing its Speedtest data, Ookla said HughesNet more than doubled its median download speeds from 20.87 Mbps in Q1 2022 to 47.79 Mbps in Q1 2025, while Viasat went from 25.18 Mbps to 49.12 Mbps. However, U.S. Speedtest users on SpaceX's Starlink network saw their median download speeds nearly double from 53.95 Mbps in Q3 2022 to 104.71 Mbps in Q1 2025, according to Ookla. It said the GSO operators also struggle to compete with Starlink in upload speeds. HughesNet's median upload speed grew from 2.87 Mbps in Q1 2022 to 4.44 Mbps in Q1 2025 -- still far lower than Starlink's median upload speed of 14.84 Mbps in Q1 2025. It said Viasat's median upload speed has been declining, from 3.06 Mbps in Q1 2022 to 1.08 Mbps in Q1 2025.