Do you know what people take for granted now more than anything? The internet. The average internet speed is 25 Mbps in large cities. However, depending on your internet service, it is probably much faster than that.

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If you are interested in these new satellite internet companies, you should know that they are optimal for people in rural areas and the developing world. Especially those who struggle with sub-average or non-existent access to the internet. The fastest internet speeds in some rural areas of America are as slow as 4Mbps. 

Meanwhile, over 37% of people globally have never used the internet. More specifically, one out of every three people in the world has never used the internet. 

Service

Starlink is a satellite internet service that offers consumers affordable access to internet services. The company has been launching low-Earth-orbit satellites for years now. Starlink customers receive a small satellite dish that self-orients itself to align with Starlink’s low-Earth-orbit satellite.

Unlike a traditional satellite dish, which only receives signals beaming from a high-Earth-orbit satellite, Starlink dishes and their accompanying satellites both transmit and receive signals from each other.

Starlink’s satellite internet service is fast, reliable, and accessible from almost anywhere. That’s because its satellite constellation is in low Earth orbit and the accompanying Earth-bound Starlink dishes constantly beam data back and forth.  

After setting up the extremely user-friendly Starlink satellite dish, it will automatically align itself and point to its accompanying low-earth-orbit satellites in the sky.

Latency

Latency is the amount of time it takes for a signal command sent from your computer or device to travel to a network server and then relay the requested command back to you. This process is also known as electronic pinging.

Electronic signal latency is measured in milliseconds. The lower the latency, the better your service. In other words, there won’t be a long lag or pause between your requested internet command and the result. 

Market

Starlink caters to consumers who live in remote and rural areas where internet service is woefully slow, inadequate, or non-existent. Starlink is also expanding to the developing world which will become an emerging internet market in the coming years and decades. 

After all, it will be easier to offer satellite internet to these areas than building millions of miles of new fiber optic cable infrastructures in new continents.

As previously mentioned, over 37% of people in the world have never used the internet. And over 96% of the people who have never used the internet live in impoverished and developing countries. That is an emerging market and demographic and market that Starlink can cater to in the future.

Satellite internet technology can also be used by governments and military agencies for their own purposes. In October 2022, Elon Musk announced that Starlink would no longer be made available for free to the Ukraine government, which has depended on the service in its war with Russia. Musk reversed his statement, but the incident illustrated that Starlink already has military applications.

Constellation Ambitions

A constellation is a star chart of the position of the stars in the visible sky. Depending on where you are situated on Earth, like in the northern or southern hemisphere, the constellations in the sky differ.

In other words, the more low-Earth-orbit internet satellites in the sky, then the more uninterrupted internet service reliability can be offered to subscribers. It’s easier to compare constellations of low-Earth-orbit internet satellites in the sky to fiber optic cables in the ground; the more of them that you have in a network, then the more reliable and faster the service.

Starlink has currently launched about 3,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites. Additionally, Starlink was given permission by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to launch 12,000 internet satellite constellations in the coming years. Starlink plans to launch over 42,000 internet satellite constellations in the coming years to offer internet coverage to the entire world.

Availability

Starlink is slowly expanding its availability to consumers. As previously mentioned, Starlink is currently available to over 400,000 subscribers globally. Starlink’s low-Earth-Orbit satellite internet services are available in 40 countries and counting. Currently, the best and most consistent is available in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

Starlink claims that it will begin testing its service in Africa, starting in Mozambique and Nigeria, by the end of 2022. The U.S National Science Foundation contracted Starlink to begin testing its services in Antarctica in September 2022.

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