Billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX space company is one step away from the official launch of the high-speed satellite Internet service Starlink for the mass consumer … or at least for the American ones. This is broadband access via satellites located in a very low orbit around the Earth. It is comparable in terms of speed, capacity and low signal delay with the online cable service. The unprecedented thing is that it can provide quality internet not only in extremely isolated locations without the necessary infrastructure in other cases, but even on board ships and planes, very far from land, or on high-speed trains. According to SpaceX’s forecast, the revolutionary service in question should generate at least $ 30 billion in revenue by 2025, with which the company intends to subsidize its more advanced and high-risk projects related to deep space flights beyond Earth orbit. Also, according to a new study by researchers from Ohio State University, Starlink will be able to be used for satellite navigation, an alternative to the GPS system supported by the US military, as well as the European Galileo and the Russian GLONASS.
The birth pangs of the “star” broadband
Over the past year or so, Starlink has been in the beta phase, involving about 100,000 selected customers around the world. SpaceX’s promise is that initially the data transfer during download will vary between 50 and 150 megabits, and the signal delay will be between 20 and 40 milliseconds. Subsequently, when several thousand satellites are launched into orbit, Musk promises an Internet with gigabit capacity. Although it is an experimental service, testers currently pay a high price for it – $ 499 initial fee for a satellite terminal and $ 99 each month. However, so far consumers from 17 countries have taken part in the tests, and the closest of them to Bulgaria at the moment are the Czech Republic and Italy. SpaceX has also submitted licensing documents to Starlink to the Greek telecom regulator, whose island geography makes it an excellent potential customer of the service.
About a week ago, Elon Musk confirmed in his Twitter post that the Starlink Internet will be officially launched in the United States by the end of October. “It should be operational throughout the country by the end of the month. Keep in mind that it will be limited to a certain maximum number of users in a given region. The situation will improve once more satellites are launched,” the billionaire wrote in his post of 7 October. So far, SpaceX has launched about 1,800 satellites into orbit, with at least 1,660 of them estimated to be operational. This allows the company to cover with a signal (at least theoretically) almost the entire inhabited territory of the planet and to provide fast online access to places where the installation of terrestrial or underwater communication infrastructure is impossible, difficult to achieve or economically impractical. However, analytical data from Ookla, a world leader in measuring Internet access, shows that there are still too wide gaps in Starlink’s coverage.
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