Cloudflare, which sees a large fraction of the world’s web traffic, publishes a year-in-review each December, and its 2024 edition has one number that stands out: traffic from Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, more than tripled during the year. For a network that did not exist five years ago, and that serves places where the alternative is nothing, that is a growth curve without precedent in telecoms.
The constellation
As of November Starlink had 6,764 active satellites, by far the largest constellation ever flown; SpaceX launched 1,866 in 2023 and continued at a rate of several launches a month through 2024, each carrying twenty or more. The newer satellites talk to each other by laser, which lets the network route traffic across oceans without a ground station, and the second-generation models are larger and carry more capacity. Cloudflare’s data also shows median speeds rising through the year as capacity grew faster than subscribers.
New countries, and the sky
Service opened in 2024 in Chad, Mongolia, Argentina and a dozen other markets, taking Starlink past 100 countries. The more visible expansion was in aviation. Hawaiian Airlines switched on free Starlink Wi-Fi across its fleet; Qatar Airways began installing it on its long-haul aircraft; and United Airlines signed to equip its entire fleet from 2025, the largest airline deal so far. Cruise lines have followed. A plane at 900 km/h over the Pacific with gigabit connectivity is the demonstration that ends the argument about whether satellite internet is real.
The Mini
In June SpaceX released Starlink Mini, a dish the size of a laptop with the router built in, drawing 25–40 watts — it runs from a car socket or a large power bank. It is designed for vans, boats and backpacks, and it is the version that matters for disaster response: a Mini and a solar panel restore a village’s connectivity in the time it takes to unfold them.
Bangladesh
Starlink is not licensed here, and after the July shutdown the previous government’s position was that it never would be. That has changed. Since August, receivers have been demonstrated in Dhaka, and the interim government has said it wants satellite internet as a guarantee against future shutdowns; BTRC is drafting the guidelines under which a foreign operator could sell service. The obstacles are the usual ones — a licence fee, a requirement to route through a local gateway, and the price, which at roughly $100 a month for the standard kit is beyond most households but not beyond a coastal union, a char village or a tea garden that currently has nothing. 2024 was the year Starlink became ordinary elsewhere. 2025 is the year Bangladesh decides.
What “Bangladesh decides” actually involves
The decision is not a yes or no to the service; it is a set of licence conditions, and the same three come up in every country that has taken this long.
A local gateway. Regulators generally require that traffic from a national subscriber land at a station inside the country rather than routing straight to a foreign gateway. Without it, the operator sits outside the legal framework that applies to every other ISP: lawful-interception obligations, content blocking and the ability to shut service down are all exercised at that landing point. This is the real sticking point, and it is a sovereignty question rather than a technical one.
Revenue and tax. A foreign operator billing a Bangladeshi customer in dollars on a foreign card pays no VAT and no revenue share, which the existing licensed operators — who pay both — will point out loudly and correctly.
Spectrum. The Ku and Ka bands Starlink uses have to be assigned and coordinated so they do not interfere with existing satellite and microwave links.
None of these are objections to satellite internet. They are the terms, and the time they take is mostly the time it takes to agree who collects what.
Source: Business Insider, via Prothom Alo.
