SpaceX has provided tens of thousands of Starlink kits to Ukraine following Russia’s invasion of the country. The Starlink equipment started arriving in late February, and within a few months Ukrainians were using the service to the tune of more than 7,000GB every day by May.
The statistics on Starlink data usage in Ukraine was provided by CEO Elon Musk, after Ukraine’s vice prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov confirmed that Starlink had allowed his country to quickly restore communications capability after over 100 cruise missiles took out critical infrastructure.
According to the stats, Starlink usage was naturally quite low in the first few weeks as more citizens gained access to the satellite internet service.
By April the amount of data downloaded reached 3,000GB every day, steadily growing to reach over 7,000GB daily towards the end of May.
If the graph continued on its trend line the amount of data being downloaded every day could be well over 16,000GB in October.
Starlink data usage growth in Ukraine pic.twitter.com/c4IWNwKwLR
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 13, 2022
Based on the stats, we also have an idea of the total amount of data downloaded by Ukrainians since SpaceX turned on the service. With a high of over 7,000GB daily to a low of around 100GB, a rough estimate puts the total at over 300 terabytes.
As of the last estimate from Fedorov in early September, over 20,000 Starlink terminals were active in the country.
The high need for a reliable internet connection led to the Starlink app becoming the number one downloaded app in the country in March.
