Starlink Satellites
One of the key factors in the development of the Starlink project from SpaceX is a grant from the US Federal Communications Commission, which allocated $885.51 million for this. In return, Elon Musk pledged to provide Internet access to 642,925 homes and businesses in remote corners of 35 states of America. Competitors in the face of other providers challenged this decision, arguing that Starlink will not be able to provide the required minimum speed of 100 Mbit/s. Technically, so far it is, but the other day Elon Musk made a revolutionary statement.
Currently, the number of Starlink users has exceeded 10,000, but the project is still officially in beta testing. Therefore, speeds of 50 Mbit / s with a ping of more than 31 ms are considered acceptable, and only in the future it is planned to reach 150 Mbit / s and 20 ms. It was also stated that by the summer of 2021, the ping will decrease to 16-19 ms, and last week Elon Musk wrote a tweet where he promised a speed of as much as 300 Mbit / s by the end of this year and cover most of the Earth with satellite Internet. In order to achieve such characteristics, it was decided to move the Starlink satellites away from large population centers. At the moment, the project's capabilities allow you to cover a large area only if the density of access points is low. It will not be possible to increase the number of satellites earlier than 2022, the network's bandwidth is limited, so it is of little use in areas with a large number of users. And, on the contrary, residents of rural areas will be able to get the most out of Starlink, Musk said.