Elon Musk’s Starlink to provide internet connectivity nearly worldwide by August

Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday said its satellite network Starlink will provide broadband internet everywhere in the world except polar regions by August and expects fast-paced growth in the year ahead.

“We are on our way to having a few hundred thousand users, possibly over 500,000 users within 12 months,” and is operational in around a dozen countries with more “being added every month,” Musk said in a virtual keynote at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

On Saturday, Musk tweeted, “Starlink simultaneously active users just exceeded the strategically important threshold of 69,420 last night!” which increased from 10,000 users when the company started its beta program.

Starlink is a SpaceX project which has launched over 1,500 satellites into orbit so far to build an interconnected network, which is now the world’s largest satellite constellation, for providing high-speed internet to consumers anywhere on the planet.

Musk estimated Starlink may cost SpaceX between $5 billion and $10 billion to become fully operational and then as much as $20 billion to $30 billion in long term investment, as the firm continues to provide improvements and stay competitive against advancements in cellular technology, he said.

The company currently sells the Starlink kit for $499, which includes a user terminal and a small dish antenna to connect to the satellites, and charges $99 a month for the service.

“To be totally frank, we are losing money on that terminal right now,” Musk said. “That terminal costs us more than $1,000, so obviously, I’m subsidizing the cost of the terminal.”

Musk announced that SpaceX is working on a next-gen terminal capable of providing the same capability with a lower production cost.

SpaceX aims to offer broadband to about 5% of the world’s population where people don’t have any wired or wireless connectivity. Last year, it sought regulatory approval for inflight network tests and to expand the service to large moving vehicles, like trucks and ships.

“We have two quite significant partnerships with major country [telecommunications companies], that I’d like to be able to announce now, but obviously we defer to our partners to make any announcement,” Musk said. “And we are in discussions with a number of other [telecommunications companies] to provide Starlink access.”

The company is also planning to launch satellite version 1.5, which will have laser inter-satellite links to provide uninterrupted connectivity over high-latitude and polar regions. By next year, SpaceX will launch version 2, “which will be significantly more capable.”

On Saturday, Musk tweeted that he expects Starlink to cover the polar regions in another six months.

SpaceX has also filed an approval request to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for flying Starlink terminals on its spacecraft to “demonstrate high data rate communications” between Starship and the ground throughout the mission.

Picture Credit: The Indian Express