Tesla boss Elon Musk is also storming SpaceX. His space company aims to develop Mars in the long term with the new Starship rocket system, but before that it will also use its expertise to develop the Starlink service, which will provide worldwide Internet coverage with thousands of satellites. The proposal, which is still in beta stage, is growing rapidly – according to Musk, the 100,000th recipient terminal has just been dispatched. One of these many clients is teslamag.de which has its editorial office in Hanover. After a day of testing, we can report that the hi-tech system is easy to set up and works well. But we don’t want to keep it.
Starlink Internet now in 14 countries
In late June, Musk announced that Starlink had “strategically reached 69,420 active users,” and it has apparently been moving in leaps and bounds since then. SpaceX reported at the end of July According to a report by CNBC Nearly 90,000 Starlink users, and on Monday the CEO himself gave the latest number: Meanwhile, more than 100,000 units of the Dish McFlatface satellite receiver have been dispatched, he wrote on Twitter. If business has stagnated, it could be According to their earlier statements, Starlink went public like Tesla Walk.
The service is currently offered in 14 countries, SpaceX and Tesla bosses also announced on Twitter on Monday by showing their flags as symbols. This is already two more than the information received from the end of July, and in this regard too, according to Musk, things should move quickly: applications for Starlink approval have already been submitted in several other countries. and hopes to be able to serve the entire world soon, he wrote.
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Starlink can be ordered soon Launch of beta program known as “better than nothing” Also in Germany in autumn 2020. This January it reached out on Twitter to favorite customers like Musk’s confidante and the construction site of the German Gigafactory. But SpaceX also responded to Starlink’s order from teslamag.de in July: The big gray package arrived with a satellite dish and WiFi router, following prior notification by email.
Then, despite great curiosity, it stood for a while – which already shows that teslamag.de is not the target group targeted by Starlink. According to Musk, the service is primarily aimed at people and regions that have no way of getting fast Internet access at a reasonable cost. They still exist in Germany: after a meeting between Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer and Musk at the site of the emerging German Tesla factory, his ministry confirmed that Vouchers are planned for families with insufficient internet coverage Perhaps. A subsidy of up to 500 euros should be given on the purchase of the necessary technology – for which not only Starlink, but also it, comes into question.
Starlink works almost automatically
The receiver kit costs 499 euros in Germany and 99 euros for monthly use. If you don’t have access to the Internet at all or only with considerable technical effort, this should be an attractive proposition. This is even more true because SpaceX has made it really easy to use. The bowl in the gray box is inserted into the stand and automatically aligns itself with the sky as soon as it has power. The Starlink app helps to find a location with the best possible view upwards (see photo). The package also includes a wireless router that connects to the Dish McFlatface with a long cable.
The rest really goes on its own, and this post was researched and produced using Starlink Connections for example. The service is sometimes said to be too unstable for video conferences, but text and video calls can be made without any problems. Every few minutes the Starlink app shows “view blocked” for less than a second, which was not noticeable when using the internet. Contemporary tests showed download rates above 100 megabits per second and uploads of 20 megabits per second. The signal runtime (“ping”) was between 20 and 40 milliseconds.
SpaceX COO: 600,000 Pre-Orders
All this is more than enough for simple office use, but in the middle of Hanover, unlike anywhere else in Germany and the rest of the world, there is a good selection of wired Internet offers, of which teslamag.de already uses two. – And its total cost was once only half that of Starlink. So the order was only meant as a test from the start. This can be considered a success, and we are now curious whether the cost reimbursement of the kit promised in the FAQ still works after it is returned. In any case, there should be enough new buyers, as there are still 600,000 more Starlink pre-orders, according to current statements from SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell.
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