Elon gave the keynote speech for the Mobile World Congress 2021 in Barcelona. Main topic was the current state and future development of SpaceX's low-earth orbit constellation.
WATCH: Elon Musk discuss Starlink Internet at MWC 2021 - Livestream
Notes:
- Motivation for Starlink: provide connectivity in remote areas of the world. Filling the gaps of 5G and fiber. Useful to telecommunications companies for providing mandatory services in remote areas, but at a cheaper price point than installing infrastructure. Already two partnerships in place and more in the works.
- Around 70k customers currently, at €99 per month. Same price around the world for dish and monthly rates.
- The terminal currently costs SpaceX $1000 to produce, but is sold for $500. Medium term goal for terminal cost is $250 to $300.
- Goal of having over 500k users within 12 months (June 2022).
- Expects to invest between $5 and $10 billion until Starlink generates positive cash flow. And maybe even up to $30 billion over the long term.
- Operational in 12 countries - adding new ones all the time.
- Latency is around 20 ms because the satellites are in a low-earth orbit (500 km).
Elon has become famous for "Elon Time" because many of his predictions, especially regarding Tesla, have been delayed significantly. That means his timeline predictions have to be taken with a few grains of salt. Starlink is a rare exception. Deployment has been freakishly timely until now.
Linus Tech Tips with the most important benchmark test: Gaming on STARLINK!!
Now You Know shows how convenient the setup is: We Test Elon’s $99 Mobile Internet | In Depth
Starlink: SpaceX
Background information about previous SpaceX launches: Wikipedia
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