SpaceX Working with Cloudflare to Speed Up Starlink Service
pace Exploration Technologies, Elon Musk’s rocket company, is working with Cloudflare to boost the performance of SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink, according to a person with direct knowledge of the project.
The two companies are working on a way to increase Starlink’s terrestrial network of mini data centers around the globe—known as points of presence. That, in turn, could help it deliver faster network speeds to its customers, the person said. Such improvements could help overcome one obstacle to Starlink’s long term growth, as future bandwidth-hungry applications become commonplace.
Starlink is SpaceX’s most ambitious new effort after its rocket launch business. But the service, which had 1.5 million subscribers as of May, is still relatively small and, at least in areas with larger populations, faces tough competition from terrestrial internet services.
THE TAKEAWAY
- SpaceX and Cloudflare are working on an effort that could boost the performance of the Starlink satellite internet service.
More specifics of the arrangement between SpaceX and Cloudflare, including its financial terms, couldn’t be learned. SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for comment. A Cloudflare spokesperson had no comment.
Cloudflare, a company that offers network security and content delivery services, has data centers in 300 cities in more than 100 countries, according to its website. That network helps it offer services that speed up internet connections and improve website performance for its customers.
While known for its 4,000 or so satellites circling the globe in low earth orbit, Starlink also relies on earth-bound infrastructure. It uses antenna farms known as ground stations to wire into fiber cables that carry data around the globe. Those fiber connections link to the mini-data centers, which enable Starlink to service larger population centers and increase the speed of service for users.
But the service has historically struggled to provide the same speed of service to dense urban areas where there are more people competing for bandwidth. That makes Starlink unattractive in those areas, particularly as people in major cities typically have lots of choices for high-speed internet services, often at lower cost than what Starlink charges.
Last June, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet that Starlink was working to address some issues with latency—delays in network transmissions—which can affect applications like online videogames. In response, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said that he would be interested in working with Musk to improve Starlink speeds by putting antennas on the roofs of Cloudflare’s data centers. It couldn’t be learned whether that is part of the arrangement between the two companies.
Starlink is known for its ability to provide internet to regions that lack broadband infrastructure, such as rural America and war-torn Ukraine. The service’s satellites communicate with terminals at people’s homes, businesses and in some cases recreational vehicles and boats.
Seizing on SpaceX’s rocket launch business and its aspirations to go to Mars, Cloudflare previously looked into whether it could work with Starlink to create an “inter-planetary cloud” with mini data centers on the moon and Mars, one of the people said. It's unclear whether those discussions have moved forward.
While partnerships are rare at SpaceX, it’s not the first time Musk’s company has tapped into another tech company’s infrastructure. In 2021, Starlink partnered with Google Cloud to install ground stations at Google’s data centers.