SpaceX’s Starlink service just hit a new customer milestone

SpaceX has revealed that its internet-from-space Starlink service now has 4 million customers globally.

“Starlink is connecting more than 4M people with high-speed internet across 100+ countries, territories, and many other markets,” the company revealed in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday.

The Elon Musk-led internet endeavor is rapidly gaining new customers, adding 1 million new ones in the last four months alone. The first Starlink customers came online in October 2020 and the service reached its first 1 million subscribers in December 2022.

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

Besides residential 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 a gradual rollout of Starlink for its fleet of aircraft to bring ultra-high-speed internet to its passengers. The service will eventually be rolled out to Air France’s entire fleet, with users required to sign up for and log into the airline’s Flying Blue loyalty program to use the service.

“During the flight, customers will be able to easily stay in touch with friends and family, follow all the world’s news live, play video games online, and, of course, stream TV, films, and series,” Air France said in a release. “The service will be accessible from smartphones, digital tablets, and laptops, and each customer will be able to connect several devices simultaneously.”

But the Starlink initiative has run into some issues along the way, with astronomers, for example, long complaining that light trails from the satellites obscure their view of deep space. Making matters worse is electromagnetic radiation being emitted from Starlink’s new generation of satellites, which is interfering with Earth-based radio telescopes and causing further disruptions to astronomers’ work, the BBC reported.