SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said the company plans to roll out a public beta of its Starlink broadband service soon.
Musk said on Twitter that a “fairly wide” beta version of the service will be ready for action as soon as the latest satellites “reach their target position.”
Musk said the service will provide internet to the northern United States and “hopefully” southern Canada.
SpaceX is building a constellation of satellites to beam internet service around the world. Musk has said Starlink will require about 12,000 satellites to reach that scale. SpaceX tweeted earlier this month that initial tests of Starlink show speeds capable of streaming “multiple HD movies at once and still have bandwidth to spare.”
SpaceX has grown the Starlink constellation to around 800 satellites to date, including 60 that were delivered Tuesday in the 13th Starlink mission to date.
A tweet last week from Washington state’s Military Department and Emergency Management Division revealed the first known application of the service. Starlink was employed to provide service to emergency responders battling wildfires in Washington state. SpaceX Chief Executive Musk replied, saying the company is “prioritizing emergency responders & locations with no Internet connectivity at all.”
Photo: SpaceX