Satellite internet provider Viasat has seen its US subscriber base shrink dramatically—by about 83%—since rival Starlink first launched in fall 2020.
On Thursday, Viasat reported its Q3 earnings, revealing it ended the period with approximately 100,000 subscribers for its fixed satellite broadband business in the US.
That’s a huge drop from 2020 Q3, when the company had 603,000 fixed broadband subscribers, following steady increases over the previous year. After Starlink launched in beta in October 2020, however, Viasat’s subscriber base began to drop. By 2024, it had declined by over half, and it has now shed over half a million subscribers since Starlink’s debut.
Viasat is trying to turn its business around after kicking off operations from its new satellite, the Flight 2 (F2), which finally entered service over the Americas. The high-orbiting geostationary satellite is designed to offer download speeds over 100Mbps; Viasat has previously delivered median download rates of 49.12Mbps, according to Ookla. In addition, Viasat’s satellite internet service can suffer from high latency at around 680 milliseconds, compared with 45ms for Starlink.
(Credit: Viasat)
In an earnings call, Viasat attributed the US subscriber decline to “seasonally high churn” during the summer. “Following the successful deployment and residential service launch of ViaSat-3 Flight 2 in early October, we initiated targeted plans to take advantage of Flight 2, which is capable of delivering vastly improved customer experiences,” said CFO Gary Chase. “Our plan is to leverage improved performance to stabilize the business over the next few quarters.”
Last month, the company provided more details about using the F2 to power a new residential internet plan called Viasat Unleashed Max, which offers unlimited data with the “highest network priority.” Users can expect baseline speeds at 80Mbps and burst speeds of up to 200Mbps.
“What really sets Unleashed Max apart is how it handles network priority. During busy periods, when many people are online at the same time, networks can slow down. Unleashed Max is built to handle a higher level of usage before you’d notice any congestion-related slowdown,” the company added. Max also comes with a free installation and no contracts.
(Credit: Viasat)
But on the downside, the company says “moving to a ViaSat-3 service plan requires new equipment and a new professional installation, so it isn’t an automatic switch. That said, the ViaSat-3 Flight 2 launch is good news for current customers either way: as new customers join the expanded VS3 network, capacity frees up on the other satellites.”
The other issue is that Viasat Unleashed Max still seems to have a high latency at 645ms, and usually offers speeds close to 40Mbps during times of network congestion, according to Viasat’s broadband label. In addition, the plan isn’t cheap. It starts at $109.99 per month for the first year, then increases to $179.99, making it more expensive than Starlink’s Residential Max plan, which usually costs $130 per month. SpaceX also has two other plans, Residential 100 Mbps and Residential 200 Mbps, that typically cost $55 and $85 per month, respectively.
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(Credit: Viasat)
Unleashed Max joins Viasat’s two existing plans, Essentials and Unleashed, which start at $39.99 and $69.99 per month, respectively, for the first year and $69.99 and $99.99 thereafter.
The Viasat offerings might not be enough to woo new subscribers, especially since Starlink has started offering deep discounts of 30% to 50% in select areas of the US for its Residential plans, which advertise higher speeds and lower latency compared with their broadband labels.
Deutsche Bank recently estimated that Starlink now has 4.1 million subscribers in the country. Still, SpaceX’s satellite internet service has been facing complaints about price hikes in other parts of the US where Starlink has been in high demand.
About Our Expert
Michael Kan
Principal Reporter
Experience
I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. In 2024 and 2025, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.
I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I’m now following how the AI-driven memory shortage is impacting the entire consumer electronics market. I’m always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.
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