Opensignal, a company that measures mobile and broadband performance using crowdsourced data from its app, has compared 4G and 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) home broadband with Starlink’s low-Earth-orbit satellite internet service across 14 European markets, including the United Kingdom. The study, reported by ISPreview UK on 13 October 2026, found Starlink was the fastest rural broadband option in all 14 markets, while the leading FWA providers beat it on consistency.
Key facts
- Opensignal measured two things: Download Speed and Consistent Quality (CQ), using data from users of its app in 14 European markets.
- Starlink users measured twice the speed of the average FWA provider, at 82Mbps, according to Opensignal.
- In the UK, Three UK was the fastest FWA provider in urban areas at 81.2Mbps and also led rural FWA at 32.4Mbps; Starlink measured 80.8Mbps in both urban and rural areas.
- On CQ, Three UK led urban areas at 68.8 percent and EE led rural FWA at 62.1 percent, against Starlink’s 68.1 percent in both.
- Starlink’s UK prices start at £40 per month, while Three UK and Vodafone sell 5G home broadband from £18 a month, ISPreview reports.
- Separately, Ookla data reported by Telecom Lead shows the share of US Starlink Speedtest users getting at least 100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload rose from 18.9 percent in the first half of 2025 to 40 percent in the first half of 2026.
Speed versus consistency
Opensignal separates the two measures deliberately. “Speed shows the network capacity of the service, while Consistent Quality shows how often it is good enough during everyday use,” the firm said in comments carried by ISPreview UK.
On that second measure the picture flips. The leading FWA providers outperformed Starlink on Consistent Quality across urban and rural areas of most markets, Opensignal found. In the UK specifically, Starlink’s CQ score was on par with urban FWA and better than rural FWA, which ISPreview notes is Starlink’s primary focus.
Opensignal’s explanation for the rural speed gap is structural: rural FWA speeds are limited by the number of mobile sites in an area and by the spectrum available, and both take years of investment to expand. On that basis the firm concludes FWA is unlikely to match Starlink’s rural speed in the near term, and it found rural FWA significantly weaker than Starlink in the UK and Poland. In the United States, AT&T chief executive John Stankey argues fibre still beats everything else, while analysts tracking the operator say the real competitive pressure is on wireless services.
Plan caps and price
Part of the speed gap comes from how the plans are sold rather than from the radio technology, according to the study. ISPreview points to Vodafone’s 5G-based home broadband, which caps the maximum speed of its plans at 50Mbps and 150Mbps. Starlink also caps speeds, but offers more at entry level, with 100Mbps on its first residential plan. The trade-off is monthly cost, where the 5G packages start at less than half the Starlink price.
What this means for buyers
On the UK figures, the choice turns on address rather than technology. In urban areas Three UK edged Starlink on both measures while selling from under half the price, so the satellite internet premium buys nothing an urban FWA customer does not already get. In rural areas the arithmetic reverses: Starlink costs about £22 a month more than the cheapest 5G home broadband, roughly £264 a year, and returns about two and a half times the fastest rural FWA download Opensignal recorded in the UK — plus a higher Consistent Quality score, so the usual argument for buying FWA over satellite does not hold outside the towns.
That makes the premium worth paying for rural households running simultaneous video calls, large uploads or several streams at once. For light rural use on a single device, the cheaper 5G plan still clears everyday needs at a third of the monthly cost — and Vodafone’s 50Mbps and 150Mbps caps, rather than the rural FWA speeds Opensignal measured, are what a buyer is actually choosing between at that price.
The US picture
A second dataset, Ookla Speedtest Intelligence figures reported by Telecom Lead on 15 September 2026, measures Starlink against the US Federal Communications Commission’s 100/20Mbps broadband benchmark. No US state saw half of its Starlink users clear that bar in the first half of 2025; five did in the second half of 2025, and 17 did in the first half of 2026. Starlink still trails fixed lines nationally: Connecticut led all US states for fixed broadband, with 74.7 percent of Speedtest users hitting 100/20Mbps.
Some buyers take both
Not every customer treats the two as alternatives. On 29 September 2026, Bigleaf Networks announced a partnership with CTS Mobility, in a statement distributed via Business Wire and carried by Yahoo Finance, that lets business customers bond fibre, broadband, 5G, fixed wireless and Starlink circuits together with traffic steered by real-time network conditions. Bigleaf chief executive Greg Davis and CTS Mobility president Andrew Brady framed the aim as resiliency and faster site turn-ups — paying for satellite capacity on top of a 5G link rather than in place of it. Separately, European operators push for more satellite-capable spectrum in the 2GHz band.
Frequently Asked Questions
Were all four UK mobile operators included in the Opensignal comparison?
No. ISPreview UK notes that O2 was excluded from the Opensignal results because it does not sell an FWA-style home broadband plan. The UK operators that do appear in the findings are Three UK, EE and Vodafone.
Did Starlink beat urban 5G fixed wireless speeds in every European market studied?
No. According to Opensignal, as reported by ISPreview UK, Starlink matched or beat urban FWA speeds in half of the 14 markets analysed. Opensignal says urban areas are where mobile operators normally have good coverage and plenty of spectrum.
Which US states show the best and worst Starlink performance?
Ookla Speedtest Intelligence data reported by Telecom Lead puts South Dakota first, with 58.2 percent of Starlink Speedtest users hitting at least 100/20 Mbps in the first half of 2026, followed by Nebraska at 57 percent and Colorado at 56.7 percent. Alaska was lowest at 24.6 percent, while California reached 42.8 percent, Texas 31.4 percent and Florida 30.9 percent.
What did Ookla link the US Starlink improvement to?
Telecom Lead reports that the improvement coincides with SpaceX’s expansion of its Generation 2 satellite infrastructure, including its V2 Mini satellites. Ookla’s Sue Marek also noted that the states with the largest Starlink Speedtest sample volumes indicate greater subscriber loads and therefore greater potential for network congestion.
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