A Second Look at Geolocation and Starlink

Summary

The ISP Column A column on various things Internet Other Formats: A Second Look at Geolocation and Starlink November 2025 Geoff Huston In September 2025 I wrote an article on Starlink and geolocation. This work was prompted by a question relating to the makeup of ISPs in the country of Yemen, where the data analysis point to a result where Starlink had some 6 million users in that country, or some 60% of the estimated user population of that country. This result was easily classified as "dubious." There were just too many Starlink users in a county of some 40M people with just 10M users and a relatively modest GDP per capita of USD $500. Analysis of ISP market share in other countries gave results that matched conventional assumptions (and matched reasonably well available data, in the few instances where good data on this topic of ISP market share is publicly available), which meant that I started looking for other factors that may have impacted the Yemen result. The factors I speculated about in that article included: Starlink use by shipping, where crews use Starlink on a global roaming services and aircraft in flight using Starlink for inflight Internet server of passengers. Starlink publish a map assign every IP address they use into a country, and that includes any IP addresses that are used by ships and aircraft where the ship or aircraft is located in international realms during its voyage. However, the anomaly was large enough that this factor could not account for an extra 4 – 5 million Starlink users that popped up in Yemen. Potential cross border global roaming, noting that in Yemen's case neighbouring Saudi Arabia has not reached any agreement with Starlink for the provision of services in Saudi Arabia. Starlink does permit roaming, through its roaming service plan, but if you roam to a location where Starlink is not authorised for use, Starlink may not provide any service, or may terminate the service after a period of two months. The text of the servi...