Starlink hits 9 million customers in five years – ready to compete with Amazon Leo in 2026

The pace of change is often startling when it comes to technology, and while many might see Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service as an established provider of high-speed internet across the world, their 2025 “Progress Report” paints a fascinating picture of a business with significant growth, change and readiness for what’s not written – competition.

Starlink’s report doesn’t mention competition at all, but with Amazon Leo launching this year it’s hard not to assume the company’s focus is on to stay as the number one with the market lead they have.

As far as timelines go, this is one pretty much any company would be happy with:

After 300 launches of the SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket to deploy Starlink satellites into low-earth-orbit there are now over 9,000 active Starlink satellites orbiting the earth.

Connecting to them are 9 million customers in 155 countries.

But then add to that planes and cruise ships and Starlink connected an additional 41 million people to the internet.

Aviation will be a huge growth market for Starlink, in 2025 alone over 1,400 commercial aircraft were equipped with Starlink – four times more than the year before. With regulatory approval to now expand their installations across 737’s, 787’s and a huge range of other jets, you can imagine 2026 to be a massive year.

Of the 9,000 satellites currently servicing Starlink, over 600 of them are their latest generation which work direct to mobile phones. Currently Telstra offers SMS services anywhere in Australia with this service, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

While not available in Australia yet, in some markets Starlink Direct to Cell offers data services on apps optimised for the system. Regulatory issues and approvals aside, this is a ridiculously crazy potential for the future.

These numbers are staggering, and going forward SpaceX plans to use the new Starship Booster and rocket for launches, and they have a third generation satellite in development which will offer even faster speeds.