Starlink is a satellite-based Internet service managed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Its main mission is to provide good internet coverage to rural regions and other areas that have poor services or no services today. SpaceX has been continuously launching satellites since 2018, and the ultimate goal is to have a constellation of tens of thousands of small and attractive spacecraft in orbit, providing an almost global service.
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Above: Example of a Starlink user terminal installed on the roof of a building in Canada (Source: SpaceX)
At the moment, Starlink has more than 1,000 active satellites and the service is in a semi-public beta phase. Where is the service currently available and what are early users saying?
Ookla Speedtest (via PCMag) created a map of Starlink’s current beta testers. He estimates that the service already has more than 10,000 users, who are achieving connection speeds of up to 170 Mbps, with no data limit.
So far, most Starlink customers are in the northwest – Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana – with a handful of users in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Maine, as well as a few groupings around Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. The Starlink service is primarily aimed at low-density regions that currently have few high-speed Internet service options. However, Ookla found a substantial number of users in urban and suburban areas, such as Chicago, Seattle and Minneapolis.
Starlink plans to add services in more locations in the U.S. over the course of this year.
Starlink is also available in certain parts of the United Kingdom, and Science Focus recently published some of the impressions of the first users of the service.
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Aaron Wilkes, who lives in Kent, southeastern England, told the PA news agency that his existing British Telecom fixed-line service, which is advertised at just 20 Mbps, generally offers much slower speeds, making it impractical to stream movies. Using Starlink, he has seen an average of 175 Mbps, and sometimes up to 215 Mbps. “The ability to download content so quickly compared to our standard BT line is incredible,” said Wilkes.
The Starlink service is not cheap – UK users are paying £ 439 for hardware and a monthly fee of £ 89. In the US, it costs $ 99 a month plus $ 499 for hardware. This is significantly higher than cable or telephone companies’ alternatives, but for corporate users in underserved areas, it may be worth paying more for higher speeds.
“If you need connectivity to run a business and you need connectivity for communication, especially in the COVID era, £ 90 a month is quite justified,” said Martin Langmaid to PA. He noted, however, that Starlink suffers from periodic outages, so he is also maintaining his existing fixed-line service for now. “I think a lot of people will do something similar, where they will leave their DSL in place at the moment, combine it with Starlink. Interruptions should end up disappearing once coverage is in place, so I think people are starting to cancel things like DSL and 4G dongles. “
Elon Musk recently said that Starlink plans to double its connection speed to about 300 Mbps and extend its coverage area to “most of the Earth” by the end of the year, and to the entire beach ball in 2022.
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Written by: Charles Morris; Sources: PCMag, Science Focus