A Starlink user terminal installed on the roof of a building in Canada.
SpaceX
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the company’s Starlink satellite Internet service will “double the speed for customers” later this year as the global consumer network continues to expand.
“The speed will double to ~ 300 Mbit / s and the latency will drop to ~ 20 ms later this year,” Musk said in a tweet on Monday, replying to a user who showed speed tests between 77 and 130 Mbit / s.
Latency is the delay in an Internet network that defines how much time it takes for a signal to travel back and forth from a destination. Latency and download speed are important measures for an Internet service provider.
In a subsequent tweet, Musk added that Starlink will reach customers around the world by the end of 2021 and expects full global coverage “by next year”.
He stressed that Starlink, like other broadband satellite services, is intended for customers in “low to medium density” areas.
“Cellular will always have the edge in dense urban areas,” Musk said.
Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and managing director of Tesla Inc., is coming to the Axel Springer awards ceremony in Berlin on December 1st, 2020.
Liesa Johannssen-Koppitz | Bloomberg | Getty Images
To date, SpaceX has launched more than 1,000 satellites for Starlink. In October, SpaceX began rolling out an early service in a public beta for customers in the US, Canada and the UK. The service costs $ 99 per month plus a $ 499 upfront cost for the hardware needed to connect to the network.
The company recently expanded the scope of this public beta to allow potential users to place pre-orders for the Starlink service. SpaceX announced in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission earlier this month that Starlink has “over 10,000 US and international users” in just over three months since the public beta began.
SpaceX stated in the FCC announcement that the Starlink service “has reached and exceeded 100/20 megabits per second (” Mbps “) throughput for individual users, while most users experience latency” at or below 31 milliseconds “saw.
SpaceX deploys 60 Starlink satellites in orbit.
SpaceX
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