Starlink showed its fourth-generation router in early September 2026, and the headline everywhere was the same. Wi-Fi 7 at last. The equipment authorisation SpaceX filed with the FCC tells a more specific story, and it is public. The Starlink Router 4 carries an 802.11be radio, but the grant covers no 6 GHz spectrum at all, and the widest channel the test reports show in the ordinary 5 GHz band is 80 MHz. This guide walks through what the filing authorises, which Wi-Fi 7 features are listed as unsupported, and whether any of it matters at Starlink speeds.
What Starlink has published, and what it has not
Starlink announced Router 4 on 9 September 2026, claiming coverage of up to 3,500 square feet, which is about 325 square metres, and support for up to 510 connected devices. Those are Starlink's own figures, not independent measurements.
As of 12 September 2026, Starlink's public specification page for the Standard kit still lists Router 3 in the box. No price and no release date have been published. The company's wording was that the hardware will be available soon in select areas.
What the FCC grant actually covers
The filing is straightforward to check. SpaceX applied under FCC ID 2AWHPR261, model R261, also written as UTR-261 in the test documents. The final action date on the application is 13 August 2026, and Bureau Veritas in Taoyuan ran the testing.
The authorised frequency ranges are the part worth reading slowly:
| Band | Authorised range in the grant | Rule part |
|---|---|---|
| 2.4 GHz | 2412 to 2462 MHz | 15C |
| 5 GHz, U-NII-1 | 5180 to 5250 MHz | 15E |
| 5 GHz, U-NII-3 | 5745 to 5825 MHz | 15E |
| 5.9 GHz, U-NII-4 | 5815, 5835, 5845, 5855 and 5865 to 5885 MHz | 15E |
Nothing in that list touches 5925 to 7125 MHz, which is the 6 GHz range that Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 clients use. A device cannot legally transmit in a band its authorisation does not cover, so for the United States market the conclusion is firm. There is no 6 GHz radio here.
Two other gaps stand out. The grant skips U-NII-2A and U-NII-2C, the DFS channels between 5250 and 5725 MHz. Those are the channels a busy neighbourhood often falls back on, and this router will not use them.
Why the missing 6 GHz band caps channel width
Wi-Fi 7's marquee number is the 320 MHz channel, and that number only exists in 6 GHz. The reason is arithmetic. The unlicensed 5 GHz allocation in the United States adds up to roughly 580 MHz, split across four separate segments and broken up by radar-sharing rules. A single contiguous 320 MHz block does not fit cleanly. The 6 GHz band opened 1200 MHz in one stretch, from 5925 to 7125 MHz, which is why 320 MHz channels live there and nowhere else.
The test reports match that logic. In the 2.4 GHz band the device was tested in 802.11be EHT20 and EHT40 modes only, meaning 20 and 40 MHz channels. In the ordinary 5 GHz band the reports add EHT80, with the 80 MHz channels sitting on channel 42 and channel 155. If you want to check where a channel sits, the centre frequency in this band is 5000 MHz plus five times the channel number, so channel 155 centres on 5775 MHz.
The 5.9 GHz radio is the unusual part
U-NII-4 is the slice from 5850 to 5895 MHz that the FCC opened to unlicensed use, and very few home routers touch it. Starlink's filing includes a separate test report for it, listing an operating range of 5.815 to 5.885 GHz and a maximum EIRP of 2264.947 mW, which is 33.55 dBm.
That report is also the only place in the filing where a 160 MHz mode appears. It lists EHT20, EHT40, EHT80 and EHT160 among the tested modes. Useful capacity, in theory. The catch is client support, because a phone or laptop has to be able to use U-NII-4 before any of it helps, and most cannot. Treat the 5.9 GHz radio as headroom for later rather than throughput you will see on day one.
Two Wi-Fi 7 features the filing lists as unsupported
Buried in the equipment description of both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz test reports are two lines that rarely make it into coverage. Channel puncturing: not support. Partial RU mode: not support.
Channel puncturing is the Wi-Fi 7 trick that lets a wide channel carry on working when a slice of it is occupied, by blanking the busy part instead of dropping to a narrower channel. Losing it matters most in dense housing, which is not where most Starlink customers live. Still, it is a real difference between this router and a full Wi-Fi 7 implementation. A tri-band router such as the TP-Link Archer BE550 keeps 6 GHz, 320 MHz channels and multi-link operation, and it shows what the complete feature set looks like at a modest price.
The filing does not state whether multi-link operation is supported, so I cannot confirm that either way.
Radio chains and the stated rates
The reports do give concrete configuration data. In 2.4 GHz the device runs four transmit and four receive chains, with a stated 802.11be rate of up to 1376.5 Mbps. In the ordinary 5 GHz band it runs five transmit and five receive chains, with a stated rate of up to 2594.1 Mbps. The 5.9 GHz report lists five chains as well, with a stated 802.11be figure of up to 5188.2 Mbps.
Those are theoretical link rates between the router and a client, not internet speeds. They also assume a client with matching capability, which in practice means fewer streams and lower numbers.
Does any of this matter on Starlink?
Here is the reality check that decides it for most households. Starlink's own network update stated that as of July 2025, the median download speed across more than two million active United States customers during peak hours was nearly 200 Mbps. An 80 MHz Wi-Fi 7 link clears that by a wide margin, and so did Wi-Fi 6 before it.
So the missing 6 GHz band will not throttle your satellite connection. What it changes is everything that happens inside the house. Moving a large file between a laptop and a NAS, or streaming to a headset, runs over the local radio rather than the dish, and that is where a 6 GHz channel earns its keep.
What to do if you want the full feature set
Put your own router behind the Starlink hardware. Starlink offers a bypass mode on its current routers, switched on in the app, which turns off the built-in Wi-Fi and hands network duties to a third-party router. That also clears the double NAT problem that breaks some VPNs and games. Whether Router 4 keeps bypass mode is not yet documented, so I cannot confirm it for the new hardware.
Anyone who mainly wants faster general browsing can stop worrying. The Router 4 looks like a sensible upgrade over Wi-Fi 6 hardware for that job, and the extra spatial streams should help in a house with many devices.
What is still unknown
Several things remain genuinely unconfirmed. SpaceX requested confidentiality on the user manual, the internal and external photographs and the operational description, with those documents scheduled to become available on 8 February 2027. Price, launch date and regional versions are unpublished. An FCC grant also describes the modes submitted for testing in the United States, so a version sold elsewhere could differ.
The bands, the tested channel widths and the two unsupported features are on the public record now. Everything else deserves a wait.
