Musk Says Starlink Will Carry Most of Earth’s Internet Traffic

Elon Musk said Sunday that Starlink will likely carry most of Earth’s internet traffic over the long term, and that at that point everything else would connect to Starlink.

Musk was replying to investor Aaron Burnett, who posted a bandwidth estimate showing how much capacity V3 Starlink satellites could add to orbit. Burnett calculated a base case of 8 petabits per second, or 8,000 terabits per second, in orbit by 2028.

That figure would more than 10x Starlink’s bandwidth today and roughly equal all global internet traffic demand from 2025, Burnett said. He said it would take 151 Starship launches, or about one launch every two days.

Burnett’s estimate was itself a quote of a post from Shay Boloor, who noted that Starship Flight 14 has FAA approval for Monday and will carry 26 V3 Starlink satellites. Boloor said it will be Starship’s first revenue-generating mission.

Musk agreed with the broader trajectory in his reply and went further. He said it is increasingly probable that Starlink will carry a majority of Earth’s IP traffic long term, and that at that point Starlink would de facto become the internet.

The comments fit SpaceX’s push to deploy much larger and more capable V3 satellites on Starship. Musk has said each Gen3 satellite will deliver about 10 terabits per second of throughput.

SpaceX’s plans go well beyond one launch. Starlink now serves more than 12 million active users in 160 countries, and Musk has set an aggressive target of $1 trillion in annual Starlink revenue by 2030.

Whether Starlink truly becomes the backbone of the internet remains to be seen, but Musk’s comment shows where SpaceX is aiming. The next Starship launches will test whether the company can hit the launch cadence its bandwidth math depends on.