Elon Musk's SpaceX aims to spend $30bn on Starlink; eyes 5 lakh users in a year

Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk has said Starlink, SpaceX's ambitious satellite internet network, was on track to provide global internet coverage and has over 70,000 users across 12 countries. He has said SpaceX is ready to spend about $30 billion to expand Starlink to achieve the 5 lakh user-mark in the next 12 months. He claimed that Startlink will provide an internet network "everywhere except the poles", The Financial Times reported.

Startlink uses SpaceX's satellite power in providing broadband internet service. Currently, it uses 1,500 SpaceX satellites in lower orbit but Musk plans to increase the number of satellites to 12,000.

"It's really meant for sparsely-populated regions...we're really getting to parts of the world that are hardest to reach - the most difficult to reach 3 per cent, possibly 5 per cent," Musk said in a video interview for the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, FT reports.

Musk has said SpaceX would invest about $5-10 billion in Starlink before it turns out to be cash positive and that the long-term estimated cost could rise up to $30 billion. As per Musk, Starlink could achieve that revenue target of $30 billion by 2025.

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Starlink is high-speed, low latency broadband internet that is delivering initial beta service both domestically and internationally.

The company currently claims to give data speeds from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s, and latency from 20ms to 40ms in most locations over the next several months. Its satellites are over 60 times closer to Earth than traditional satellites, resulting in lower latency and the ability to support services typically not possible with traditional satellite internet.

Starlink is ideally suited for areas of the globe where connectivity has typically been a challenge. Unbounded by traditional ground infrastructure, Starlink can deliver high-speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable or completely unavailable. The cost of Starlink terminal is $499 plus a monthly subscription of $99 plus the hardware cost.

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