Starlink Beats EE, Three and Vodafone in Rural UK

Image: Starlink

Starlink is now the fastest and most consistent home internet option in rural parts of the UK, beating the 5G and 4G home broadband services from EE, Three and Vodafone. That’s according to a new Opensignal study comparing fixed wireless access and Starlink across 14 European markets, using data collected between April and June 2026.

In the UK, Starlink users averaged 80.8 Mbps downloads, well ahead of Three’s 32.4 Mbps, the best rural result among the mobile carriers. Starlink also scored 68.1% on Opensignal‘s Consistent Quality measure, which tracks how often a connection is good enough for things like video calls and gaming, topping EE’s 62.1% in rural areas.

Across all 14 markets, Starlink was the fastest rural option everywhere, averaging 82 Mbps, or more than twice the rural fixed wireless average. The picture flips in cities, though, where the best carriers still beat Starlink on consistency in most countries, and the UK is no exception.

The result caps a long run for Starlink in Britain, which started in late 2020 when Ofcom handed SpaceX a £200-a-year Earth station network license that let it sell dishes in the country. Beta invites went out in January 2021, when early UK customers paid £439 for the kit, an £89 monthly fee and £54 for shipping, according to CNBC. SpaceX followed up with a ground station push that year, and Ofcom later approved more gateway sites to add capacity.

Prices have since come down, with the Standard unlimited plan now starting at £75 a month and the hardware free in most areas, according to ISPreview. In a 2026 statement on satellite gateway fees, Ofcom said Starlink serves more than 110,000 UK subscribers through six gateway sites, and the regulator has also given SpaceX temporary access to E band spectrum at gateways in Hampshire, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire after the company flagged capacity constraints on its UK network.

The government has leaned on satellites for the hardest cases, too. Its £5 billion Project Gigabit program is built around fiber, but in December 2022 it launched trials using Starlink equipment at very hard to reach sites like Rievaulx Abbey and mountain rescue bases in Snowdonia, later finding satellites could deliver up to 200 Mbps where copper lines struggle. It also set aside £8 million in grants for up to 35,000 of the most remote premises in the country.

Starlink is spreading to phones as well. Virgin Media O2 switched on O2 Satellite in February, following the O2 partnership announced last fall, using Starlink Direct to Cell to push its coverage of the UK’s landmass from 89% to 95% for a £3 monthly add-on. British officials have also looked at Starlink to help fix the long-delayed Emergency Services Network that is meant to replace the Airwave police radio system used by police, fire and ambulance crews.

If you live somewhere rural, would you pick Starlink over a 5G home plan?