Enlarge / Screenshot from the Starlink order page, with the street address blotted out. (credit: SpaceX Starlink )
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite-broadband service will emerge from beta in October, CEO Elon Musk said last night. Musk provided the answer of ” next month ” in response to a Twitter user who asked when Starlink will come away of beta.
SpaceX began sending email invitations to Starlink’s public beta in October 2020 . The service is far from perfect, as trees can disrupt the line-of-sight connections to satellites and the satellite dishes go into ” thermal shutdown ” in hot areas. But for people in places where wired ISPs have never deployed cable or fiber, Starlink is still a promising alternative, and service should improve as SpaceX launches more satellites and refines its software.
SpaceX has said it is serving over 100, 000 Starlink users in a dozen countries from more than 1, 700 satellites. The company has been taking preorders for post-beta service and said in May that “over half a million people have placed an order or put down a deposit for Starlink. ”
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