Elon Musk took to Twitter yesterday to answer some questions about SpaceX’s Starlink broadband service. Musk said that private beta testing for the service will begin in around three months, with public beta testing beginning in about six months.
Private beta begins in ~3 months, public beta in ~6 months, starting with high latitudes
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2020
The private beta “will almost certainly be reserved for SpaceX and Tesla employees and their families,” reported Teslarati. “Just like Tesla currently trials early software builds on employee cars, those customers would serve as much more regimented guinea pigs, likely offering detailed feedback throughout their trial of Starlink internet.”
In early 2019, SpaceX received approval to launch 12,000 satellites into space to build a low earth orbit network of satellites, enabling the company to sell home Internet. After another successful launch of 60 satellites yesterday, there are now 422 Starlink satellites in orbit. SpaceX filed with the FCC last week to lower the altitude for some of the remaining satellites and reduce the number of satellites launched.
How much will SpaceX Internet service cost? We still don’t know for sure, but Musk said it will be “low cost.” Exactly how low is unknown, but it has been reported that the company wants to make it a competitive option.
How fast will it be? “It will be a pretty good experience because it’ll be very low latency,” Elon Musk at a conference earlier this year, when asked about using Starlink for gaming. “We’re targeting latency below 20 milliseconds, so somebody could play a fast-response video game at a competitive level, like that’s the threshold for the latency.”
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