How Elon Musk plans to connect the world

The CEO of companies that leads today’s technology innovation, Elon Musk created Star link. An enterprise that connects the world from rural areas to urban cities by offering internet services. You might have potentially not given a second thought to the subject, because of an assumption that it’s not going to be out in the near future. But what if I tell you there are more than 1,500 Starlink satellites in orbit travelling at 17,000 miles per hour, distributing Wifi to the US, UK, Canada and several more countries.

While it might seem star links primary purpose is to provide worldwide internet, It has another objective to fund its parent company SpaceX. Musk is estimating Starlink could bring in as much as $30 billion a year – or about ten times the annual revenue of its rocket-launching business which will help finance future missions to Mars and other interplanetary voyages. The technology behind Starlinks goal is quite impressive. Starlink’s internet service exceeds 100 megabits per second download speeds, 20 Mbps upload speeds, and latency at or below 31 milliseconds. Latency is the amount of delay in an internet network, defining how much time it takes a signal to travel back and forth from a destination, this is achieved by Starlinks satellites that sit about 342 miles above the Earth’s surface which is four times closer compared to an average satellite due to which there is less distance between the satellite and the internet connection. Each Starlink satellite will interact with four other satellites using high-speed lasers to beam data across the globe at almost the speed of light, a speed that only fibre-optic internet comes close to matching. Once the internet service is purchased a small, well-designed satellite dish is provided. No matter the weather and temperature the dish will maintain perfect signal quality with astonishing consistency.

Currently, rural areas face hurdles when it comes to getting access to the internet because of the extensive cost of infrastructure and a large labour force. That means the cost of digging trenches, laying cable or fibre, and even dealing with property rights disputes. Luckily Starlink bypasses all the obstacles by directly beaming internet signals to a gateway or user terminal on the ground meaning there is little to no infrastructure needed.

With more users joining every day, the hefty price continues to decrease until the day comes when it is affordable by all. Not only is Starlink connecting the world but also funding a larger goal and the dreams of millions.