Elon Musk has often touted his ambitious Starlink satellite internet service as a game-changer, and the billionaire entrepreneur is willing to put the money where his mouth his.
On Tuesday, Musk said he plans to invest up to USD 30 billion to develop Starlink, which will use thousands of low-orbit satellites to provide high-speed internet to isolated and poorly connected areas.
The company has so far deployed over 1,500 satellites and by August this year, it will be able to provide coverage everywhere in the world except the North and South Poles, Musk told the Mobile World Congress, which is underway in Barcelona, via a video conference.
Musk said Starlink is currently operating in about a dozen countries now and has over 69,000 active users and expects the number to grow at a rapid pace.
“We are on our way to having a few hundred thousand users, possibly over 500,000 users within 12 months,” Musk said.
“There is a need for connectivity in places that don’t have it right now, or where it is very limited.”
SpaceX first rolled out the service with a beta program for select consumers for $99 a month, and in the past year has sought regulatory approval to test the network inflight and expand the service to large moving vehicles, like ships and trucks.
The Tesla chief said he expects to invest “at least five billion dollars, and maybe as much as ten billion” in Starlink before the service has a positive cash flow. “Then, over time, it is going to be a multiple of that, and that would be 20 or 30 billion dollars. It is a lot basically.”
Musk said Starlink could help telecom firms meet rural connectivity requirements contained in licences for the new super´fast 5G cellular networks which are being deployed around the world. He added that Starlink had two partnerships with major company telcos, and was in talks with a number of others, without giving further details.
Musk said latency and download speeds are key measures for any service provider.
“The latency for the Starlink system is similar to latency for ground-based fiber and 5G, so we’re expecting to get latency down under 20 milliseconds,” he added.
