Those of you who live in northern US or southern Canada could be some of the first to trial Elon Musk’s new internet service, Starlink, which leverages a constellation of satellites to bring broadband access to rural and other hard-to-reach areas. Following a successful deployment of 60 Starlink satellites earlier this week, Musk suggested that public tests would begin “soon.”
“Once these satellites reach their target position, we will be able to roll out a fairly wide public beta in northern US & hopefully southern Canada,” Musk tweeted. “Other countries to follow as soon as we receive regulatory approval.”
We previously learned that Starlink should be fast enough for competitive gaming thanks to early tests, which revealed latency as low as 20 ms. Download speeds ranged from 11 Mbps to 60 Mbps, while upload speeds ranged from 5 Mbps to 18 Mbps.
“With performance that far surpasses that of traditional satellite internet, and a global network unbounded by ground infrastructure limitations, Starlink will deliver high speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable,” a blurb on the official site reads.
“Starlink is targeting service in the Northern U.S. and Canada in 2020, rapidly expanding to near global coverage of the populated world by 2021.”
Starlink’s satellites can be tracked in real-time via SATFLARE.
Once these satellites reach their target position, we will be able to roll out a fairly wide public beta in northern US & hopefully southern Canada. Other countries to follow as soon as we receive regulatory approval.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 6, 2020
It will soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 6, 2020