In less than a year, Elon Musk’s space startup SpaceX has gone from having launched 242 Starlink satellites to exceeding 1,000 as it builds its constellation of satellites dedicated to providing broadband internet access back on Earth, particularly for people who might lack other good options.
Those 1,025 “smallsats” sent to space (962 remain in orbit, as tracked by astronomer Jonathan McDowell) have given rise to something new on the ground: testimony from early Starlink customers about SpaceX’s low-Earth-orbit broadband.
Since the October opening of Starlink’s “Better Than Nothing Beta” to early adopters willing to pay $499 for receiver hardware and $99 per month for the service, reports have been bubbling up in such online forums as Reddit’s r/Starlink.
They generally agree that Starlink’s satellites, around 340 miles up, easily beat the previous options in much of the target rural market: aging DSL connections that might be no faster than 3G wireless speeds, and…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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