According to Musk, Starlink now has 100,000 customers – and we tested it> teslamag.de

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also hacking SpaceX. His space company will develop Mars in the long term using the new Starship rocket system, but before that it will also use its expertise to develop the Starlink service, which will provide global Internet coverage with thousands of satellites. The offer, which is still in the beta phase, is growing rapidly – according to Musk, the 100,000th received device was sent to acquire it. One of these many clients is teslamag.de with the editorial office in Hannover. After a day of testing, we can report that the high-tech system is easy to set up and works well. But we don’t want to keep it.

Starlink Internet is now available in 14 countries

In late June, Musk announced that Starlink had “strategically reached 69,420 active users”, and it appears to have been on the upswing ever since. SpaceX reported at the end of July According to a CNBC report About 90 thousand Starlink users, and on Monday, the CEO himself provided the latest figure: Meanwhile, more than 100,000 units of the Dishi Mac Flatface satellite receiver have been sent, he wrote on Twitter. If the business stabilizes, it can Starlink has become as public as Tesla, according to earlier statements from him he goes.

The service is currently offered in 14 countries, the head of SpaceX and Tesla announced on Monday by displaying their flags as icons on Twitter. This is already more than twice according to the information received at the end of July, and in this regard, according to Musk, things should move quickly: applications for approval of Starlink have already been submitted in many other countries, and he hopes to be able to. To serve the whole world soon, he wrote.

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Starlink can be ordered shortly Launch of the beta program known as “Better Than Nothing” In the fall of 2020, also in Germany. This past January, I reached out to client favorites like a Musk confidant on Twitter and the construction site for German Gigafactory. But SpaceX also answered Starlink’s request from teslamag.de in July: after advance notice by email, the big gray package with the satellite dish and WiFi router arrived.

Then, despite great curiosity, I stood up for a while – which already shows that teslamag.de is not the target group Starlink is targeting. According to Musk, the service is primarily aimed at people and regions who have no other way to access the Internet at a reasonable cost. They are still in Germany: after a meeting between Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer and Musk at the site of the emerging German factory Tesla, his ministry confirmed this Voucher designed for families with insufficient internet coverage Could. The purchase of the necessary technology must be supported by up to 500 euros – which raises questions not only about Starlink, but also.

Starlink works almost on its own

The receiver costs 499 euros in Germany and 99 euros for monthly use. If you can’t get to the internet quickly at all or only with great technical effort, this should be an attractive proposition. This is just right as SpaceX has made it really easy to use. The bowl in the gray box is inserted into the stand and automatically aligns to the sky as soon as power is available. The Starlink app helps to find a site with the best possible top view (see image). The package also includes a wireless router that connects to Dishy McFlatface with a long cable.

The rest goes by itself and, for example, this post was researched and produced using Starlink Connection. The service is sometimes said to be too shaky for video conferencing, but texts and videos can be called up without any problems. Every few minutes, the Starlink app showed a “blocked view” for less than a second, which was not noticeable when using the Internet. Occasional tests showed download rates above 100Mbps and uploads of 20Mbps. The signal playback time (“ping”) was between 20 and 40 milliseconds.

SpaceX COO: 600,000 pre-orders

All this is more than enough for simple office use, but in the center of Hanover, unlike anywhere else in Germany and the rest of the world, there is a good selection of wired Internet offers, two of which teslamag.de already uses – and together they cost half the cost of Starlink once Just. So it was only intended as a test from the start. This can be considered a success, and now we are curious to see if the set payment promised in the FAQ works well after it is returned. In any case, there should be enough new buyers, because according to current data from SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell, there are still 600,000 additional Starlink pre-orders.