On Thursday, SpaceX in its filing said that in just four months after entering beta, Aerospace company SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has amassed more than 10,000 users across the world.
In a petition to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), SpaceX said that the service is being used by over 10,000 users in the United States and abroad.
SpaceX, in the petition, has also asked the FCC to be designated an “Eligible Telecommunications Carrier” (ETC). By being an ETC, the company will be eligible for federal cash, including the money from the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunities Fund (RDOF) that it won in December.
In order to spread high-speed internet across America, particularly to rural regions, the $20.4 billion effort RDOF was made.
As a part of the first phase of the RDOF, in the month of December, FCC awarded SpaceX nearly $900 million in order to expand Starlink in the US.
In order to get the money, however, more hurdles must be cleared by SpaceX and a more detailed plan of the same must be provided.
ETC will help the organization to help spread its service quickly to new areas specifically Alabama, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
The space firm won access to those areas under the RDOF, the petition noted.
However many small internet service providers on Thursday was not particularly happy with SpaceX as well as other large firms and demanded the intervention and vetting from FCC. Their rationale behind the same was that these firms were using unproven and must be aggressively vetted.
“Better Than Nothing Beta”, the public beta test of Starlink, now operates in the northern US, Canada, and parts of Europe.
Speed & Costs for the Kit:-
In an email to subscribers when the beta launched, SpaceX said that Speeds vary from 50 Mbps to 150 Mbps. 499$ upfront for a kit with a tripod, a WiFi router, and a terminal to connect to the satellites while the access costs $99 a month.
Via reusable Falcon 9 rocket, the company has till date, launched more than 1,000 working satellites into orbit. In a most recent launch, 60 Starlink satellites were delivered into the orbit by Falcon 9.
By mid 2027, SpaceX wants to launch upto 42000 satellites, to build a high-speed internet service which stretches across the world.
When Will It Launch In India?
Indian government has been suggested by SpaceX to consider updating policies and allowing satellite-based broadband technologies to operate in India.
On August 20, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) issued a the consultation paper on Roadmap to Promote Broadband Connectivity and Enhanced Broadband Speed, and these recommendations were made by SpaceX in a reply to that paper. If TRAI pays heed to these recommendations, SpaceX is planning to launch Starlink in India by 2021.
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