Elon Musk: half a million users for Starlink satellites within one year

During a session of the Mobile World Congress 2021 in Barcelona Elon Musk, participating in videoconference, he shared his first impressions after the launch of the open beta of Starlink, the satellite connectivity service provided by SpaceX. “We are on course for a few hundred thousand users, possibly 500 thousand users within 12 months, ”Musk commented.
Starlink is the satellite connectivity service that allows users and businesses to connect to the internet without needing to be connected to the network infrastructure on the ground or in the air, such as fiber optics or 5G. With Starlink, in fact, it is possible to connect in any part of the world covered by the range of one of the satellites to receive the signal. The satellites are built and launched by SpaceX, which is another of Musk’s feats.

Activation is not exactly easy, and requires the installation of one parabola that automatically points to the nearest satellite, positioned to have a clear and unobstructed view, such as trees or other buildings. The most obvious use case, in fact, is that of a ‘dwelling in a rural or urban area with a low density of buildings. The cost for the solution, at this stage, is 499€ for activation (including satellite dish and Wi-Fi router) and € 99 per month of subscription: certainly very expensive by Italian standards, but in line with other prices in the United States and in many other countries where the infrastructure network is not advanced or there is little supply for consumers. To date, the tests on the Starlink network are contradictory, with some users reporting speeds in line with the company’s statements, i.e. around the 100 Mbps in download and 20 in download with ping around 20-40 ms, and others that instead report much lower performance.

Continuing in the session, Elon Musk then added that the data achieved so far bodes well: more than 1700 satellites since the first launch in 2018, and have surpassed the 69420 users, result considered strategically relevant by the company. The service is now on 12 countries and an expansion is planned to reach Musk’s reported 500,000 users, including the launch of a large portion of the remaining satellites by August of this year and a reduction in initial installation costs.

If the installation costs 499 euros to the end user, Musk has stated that instead it costs more 1.000 dollari a SpaceX. The goal is therefore to reduce the cost to a few hundred dollars “within the next two or three years”, to paraphrase a comment from the SpaceX president. Gwyne Shotwell in April.

Meanwhile, SpaceX’s total investment in the Starlink project will amount to approximately 20-30 billion dollars, before the business is profitable. Once it is self-sufficient, according to Musk Starlink it will be able permanently detach from SpaceX and go public with an IPO (Initial Public Offering). SpaceX will use the proceeds from the IPO to raise funds for the development of the sistema Starship which will lead to the Moon and Mars in the next years.