Wednesday, March 31, 2021

What Is Starlink? SpaceX's Much-Hyped Satellite Internet Service Explained - Michael Kan, PC Mag

If you live in a city or a big suburb, you probably enjoy fast internet speeds, maybe at 1Gbps or beyond. But imagine enduring internet speeds at 20Mbps, or even as low as 0.8Mbps, every day. What’s worse, your home only has one or two internet service providers to choose from, leaving you stranded with crummy service. Unfortunately, millions of people across the US, and the globe, are stuck in this very situation. Installing fiber in a city, and bringing Gigabit broadband to million of customers is certainly lucrative, but not so much in a rural area home to only a few hundred people. Enter Starlink. The satellite internet system from SpaceX is capable of delivering 150Mbps internet speeds to theoretically any place on the planet. All the customer needs is a clear view of the sky. Last fall, the system began serving its first users, many of whom were based in remote or rural regions of America—and the response has so far been ecstatic.

https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/what-is-starlink-spacex-satellite-internet-service-explained