Starlink, SpaceX's satellite Internet service, will go out of beta status next October . This has been indicated by the company's CEO, Elon Musk, in a response to a Twitter user.
The end of the testing phase is an important step towards the general availability of the service, until now limited to a small number of users in a dozen countries including the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Elon Musk's recent promise coincides with statements by President Gwynne Shotwell, who announced in June that Starlink's 1,800 satellites would reach operational orbit in September.
By then, Starlink will have enough satellites to cover the entire world – except for the poles. The satellite swarm will also be able to communicate with each other.
However, these are the first steps in an ambitious plan to reach a constellation of 12,000 satellites in orbit during this decade with the aim of continuing to expand the service's capabilities.
“As we launch more satellites, install more ground stations and improve our network software, data speed, latency and uptime will improve significantly,” they say from Starlink.
Currently, Starlink, through its 'Better than Nothing Beta' program, offers speeds of 50Mb / s to 150Mb / s and latencies of 20ms to 40ms. However, Elon Musk hopes to double download speeds and lower latency to below 20ms.
Starlink global rollout
Credit: SpaceX The company has registered subsidiaries in Spain, Mexico, Italy, Argentina, Chile and other countries. In the case of Spain, it is possible to reserve a place for 99 euros for when the Starlink Internet officially arrives “at the end of 2021”.
But for the service to work you need an installation kit that includes a terminal, a Wi-Fi router and the satellite antenna whose cost is 499 euros . To that must be added 60 euros of the shipping and 99 euros per month of the service.
As you can see, these are higher prices than those usually offered by lifelong operators. However, Starlink can be a good option for rural areas with little or no connectivity.
