Introduction to Starlink
Starlink is a huge satellite internet constellation made by SpaceX, an aerospace company owned by Elon Musk. Here, the weight of every satellite is 500 to 573 pounds(227 to 260 kg) maybe the size of a table. They are flat and after placing 60 such satellites in the Falcon 9 rockets of SpaceX, they are put in an orbit to get a large solar array. For internet transmission, they have 4 antennas. This orbit is closer to Earth’s surface at 550 km while conventional satellites are at over 2,000 km to 35,000 or beyond. This proximity of the satellites provides fair latency and interference.
Starlink in India
Elon Musk, a billionaire as well as the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX have already stepped into the automobile and space sector for improving internet services. SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet services are expected to arrive in India in 2022. For now, Starlink is available for a limited number of users according to the area of coverage. SpaceX had already written to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India(TRAI) for the allowance of internet access in remote areas and now Starlink has started pre-bookings for Indian addresses. Orders will be fulfilled on the basis of First Come First Serve(FCFS) and it may take 2 to 4 weeks depending on the position in the queue. However, orders in areas that will be serviced later this year will get timely notifications from the team and the one will also receive an email notification before the shipment.
Paying for it in India
Currently, the price in India is set to
$99(approximately Rs. 7,300) towards a deposit for the Starlink equipment to be
installed at the specific address. Once paid, the priority gets reserved in the
customer’s location. However, the order can be canceled at any time in the
Customer Account Portal and the customer can return the kit within 30 days of
shipment for a full refund of the hardware payment. This refund can be
initiated by logging into the Customer Account Portal and requesting the
same.
The current speed is promised to be 50 to 150 Mbps which can be doubled up to 300 Mbps by the end of this year. The fastest speed recorded till now is 215 Mbps.
Information needed
Information of the customers collected by the
website is consists of Identity data, Financial data, contact data, profile
data, transaction data, website technical data, customer technical data. This
information can be used to manage payments, to process and deliver customer
orders, to understand the interests of the customer, and much more. This
personal information is not sold by them but they may share it with
Organizations involved in Business Transfers, Government Agencies, Regulators
and Professional Advisors as well as their Service Providers.
As a measure to protect this personal information, they encrypt the information sent via Starlink services to and from the customer’s equipment of the same. Though they try hard to protect the information, still they cannot guarantee to protect it from every unauthorized attempt to access personal information.
Other such candidates
·
Bharti Group-backed UK-based ‘OneWeb also has some similar ideas
that launched 36 new satellites in December 2020 built at its Airbus Joint
Venture Assembly plant in Florida, USA.
·
The E-Commerce giant ‘Amazon’ will be launching more than
3000 satellites into the Earth’s orbit and they have even got approval from
The US Federal Communications Commission(FCC).
·
‘Google’s
project Loon’ which
is balloon-based aimed to provide internet connectivity to some of the hardest
to reach parts of the Earth will be shutting down soon. Google did not find it
to be commercially viable.
·
‘Facebook’s
Aquila solar-powered internet plane’ was found impractical and was shut down too
early. The idea here was to beam the internet via laser.
· Skylo is to introduce the world’s first ‘satellite-based narrow-band IoT network’. This will be done in partnership with BSNL and this made-in India solution will provide PAN-India coverage including Indian seas.
Conclusion
Some parts have blazing-fast internet connections with 100% uptime. Some parts include the users with poor infrastructure and they are not even interested in making it better. The remaining parts may have an internet connection as a boon then whatever the speed of the internet connection may be. The parts from the first category may not take much interest in Satellite-based internet connectivity but the others may find it to be a life-changing experience. Starlink is one of the companies that want to provide fast internet connectivity to the parts on Earth irrespective of their physical locations.
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