SpaceX’s Starlink has revealed that it expects to be able to provide global internet coverage by around September of this year.
Reuters reports that Starlink president Gwynne Shotwel said the company has “successfully deployed 1,800 or so satellites and once all those satellites reach their operational orbit, we will have continuous global coverage, so that should be like September timeframe.”
Shotwel made the statement during a technology conference on Tuesday. She went on to note that “then we have regulatory work to go into every country and get approved to provide telecoms services.”
The company has plans to deploy 12,000 satellites in total. Starlink is currently available as a beta service in 11 countries, including Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.
As of February, SpaceX had more than 10,000 users in its initial public beta test. Once Starlink opened up pre-orders on a first come first serve basis, Elon Musk revealed that Starlink received over 500,000 orders.
The service is currently available in parts of Canada. The hardware for Starlink is priced at $649, shipping costs $65, taxes come to $92 and the service costs $129 per month. These charges bring the startup cost to a total of $806.
You can learn more about Starlink in Canada via MobileSyrup’s guide here.
Source: Reuters
