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SpaceX now plans for 5 million Starlink customers in US, up from 1 million:
SpaceX has asked the US for permission to deploy up to 5 million user terminals for its Starlink satellite-broadband network in the US after nearly 700,000 people in the country registered interest in the service.
SpaceX in March received a Federal Communications Commission license for up to 1 million user terminals (i.e. satellite dishes) in the United States. That would allow for 1 million homes to receive the service, but SpaceX now wants to quintuple that number.
"SpaceX Services requests this increase in authorized units due to the extraordinary demand for access to the Starlink non-geostationary orbit satellite system," the company told the FCC in a license-change request on Friday. "Despite the fact that SpaceX has yet to formally advertise this system's services, nearly 700,000 individuals represented in all 50 states signed up over a matter of just days to register their interest in said services at www.starlink.com. To ensure that SpaceX is able to accommodate the apparent demand for its broadband Internet access service, SpaceX Services requests a substantial increase in the number of authorized units."
[...] SpaceX has FCC permission to launch nearly 12,000 satellites in low-Earth orbits that will allow for much lower latencies than traditional satellite services. SpaceX has launched 540 Starlink satellites so far, with its next launch set to increase that number to about 600.
Amazon last week received US approval to launch 3,236 low-Earth orbit satellites for its similar "Project Kuiper" broadband service.
(Score: 2) by tizan on Tuesday August 04 2020, @08:28PM (1 child)
Now in rural areas a few companies are popping up to connect remote places with wifi to fibre ...some of them are even using the same towers as cell towers !
Wonder what is going to be cheaper ...this or going to space and back ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @11:25PM
Too much dominance, then local wireless/fiber will be competitive.
Once Starlink and its competitors take off? Good luck. Most of the costs are up-front costs for the satellites and the number of ground stations compared to the number of people served and the distance between them will provide a much higher profit ratio and also a much higher barrier to entry for competitors. I am sure there will still be areas where people will choose to go with the local provider, particularly in regards to technical support (easier when the guy only lives 50-100 miles from you, than when they work out of silicon valley, the yuppie parts of texas, etc. But for many people they will go with the newer cheaper satellite alternative and slowly tie themselves more and more to big corporations over smaller local or regional businesses where the money stays in their community.