Elon Musk Wants to Blanket the Globe with Satellite Internet

At this point, you probably shouldn’t be surprised to see Elon Musk’s name associated with yet another quasi-futuristic technology.

I say “quasi” because the idea of satellite Internet isn’t entirely new, with (failed) ventures as far back as the ‘90s, and the first Internet-ready satellite for consumers in 2003. “Starlink,” a division of SpaceX, won’t even be the only mega-corporation with atmospheric aspirations – Amazon also plans to launch 1,000 net-ready satellites.

But something about Elon Musk’s name – and his propensity for throwing stupid amounts of money at new projects – demands your attention when he enters a new arena.

In fact, Starlink is already fully operational … in a relatively limited fashion. Their first test satellites launched back in 2018, they received $885.5 million in grant funds from the Federal Communications Commission in 2020, and at present, they have about 1,300 satellites in orbit.

They currently boast around 10,000 customers, mostly rural users, with 100/20Mbps internet speeds or above.

According to Starlink, “Users can expect to see data speeds vary from 50 to 150 megabits per second and latency from 20 to 40 milliseconds in most locations over the next several months,” and Elon Musk is promising to double their top speeds to 300Mbps by the end of this year.

And if you can believe it, Starlink wants to provide full global satellite internet coverage by 2022.

It sounds ambitious, but pass or fail, Elon Musk will see it through to the end, and the tech is anything but blue skies.

“Starlink’s performance is not theoretical or experimental ... [and] is rapidly accelerating in real time as part of its public beta program,” the company wrote in a filing with the FCC after hitting their 10K customer milestone.

Check out more about the service here and an in-house customer review here.