Tesla founder Elon Musk launches the Internet of the future – that’s how much it costs

Elon Musk’s satellite internet starts: the price is high

With the Starlink project, Elon Musk wants to build a world-wide internet available via satellite network. To this end, his SpaceX company has so far launched about 900 satellites into space. Although there should be up to 42,000 satellites at some point, the current number appears to be sufficient for an extended beta test.

SpaceX has now started sending invitation links to people who have expressed interest in the service in the past few months. Among them, users can sign up for the service for a price of $ 99 per month. There is also a one-time fee of $ 499 for a starter kit. You need it in order to use Starlink. This includes a user terminal, a mounting tripod and a W-LAN router.

“Better than nothing”

The first tests are now mainly in rural areas of the United States and Canada, where the internet is barely or not at all available. Emergency services would also be a priority, Musk said. In Canada, SpaceX has already received approval as an international telecommunications provider, reports the CBC news site. By September, SpaceX had already hit speeds of over 100 megabits per second with Starlink in internal tests with such a short latency period that it was possible to stream several HD movies simultaneously.

At this point, speeds of approximately 50 to 150 megabits per second should be achieved. Latency is specified from 20 to 40 milliseconds. However, there will be periods in the coming months when the signal will be completely cut off. To dampen expectations, SpaceX jokingly calls the subscription “Better than Nothing”.

For the time being, Starlink will only be launched in the United States and Canada. When the network is stable enough, expansion to the rest of the world will begin. If SpaceX has its way, it should be as early as 2021.

Microsoft relies on Starlink for its cloud

Since May 2019, SpaceX has been sending a rocket into space every two months, equipped with 60 satellites for Starlink. An official Starlink app that has popped up in Apple’s app store also shows that things are moving forward. The screenshots give an idea of ​​how the Starlink setup and installation process is handled.

Other parties are also very interested in Starlink’s success. Microsoft announced a collaboration with SpaceX about a week ago. Microsoft would like to distribute its cloud services via Starlink under the name Azure Space. So compute capacity should be made possible via the cloud in otherwise underdeveloped areas. The target group is companies, but also the military.

The latter may have something completely different in mind with Starlink. A University of Texas study showed that Starlink could also be used for highly accurate determination of location data. Thanks to the predicted density of satellites, Starlink would be even more accurate than GPS. The study was not commissioned by Musk or SpaceX, but by the US military. At present, however, the result has yet to be verified by independent experts. (pls)