Starlink internet speed from space is faster than 95 percent of all U.S. internet service providers 

Last week, we wrote about Starlink after Elon Musk’s SpaceX company announced the prices of its new satellite internet service. In an email to select customers who had expressed interest in signing up for the service, SpaceX priced the initial Starlink service at $99 a month at data speeds that vary between 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s and latency from 20ms to 40ms. The monthly excludes a $499 upfront cost to order the Starlink Kit.

Dubbed “Better Than Nothing” test, SpaceX said the service is still a beta version of Starlink’s eventual capabilities. Now, after one week of use, one of Starlink’s beta tester is sharing his experience. In a post on Reddit, Starlink customer “FourthEchelon19” said he’s getting 161 megabits/second download and 23 megabits/second upload speed in rural Montana. That speed is good enough to stream 4K YouTube videos with zero buffering. And it’s making people with hard-wired “high-speed” internet jealous.

FourthEchelon19 said:

“Way out in rural Montana where our alternative is to pay by the gig. Starlink will forever change the game.”

“I love how you’re getting a better speed from f-ing space than I am with a hardline connection from Spectrum at 80 dollars a month,” one Reddit users responded.

Below is a screenshot of the download

Below is a video of how Starlink delivers internet across the globe.

How Elon Musk's Starlink will deliver internet across the globe pic.twitter.com/IgxMihs7Gs

— Seeker by The Verge (@Seeker) October 23, 2020

SpaceX said it has plans to deploy nearly 12,000 satellites in three orbital shells by the mid-2020s, with each satellite weighing about 500 pounds (227 kilograms), making this the heaviest payload flew on a Falcon 9.

The emails, sent to an unspecified number of users, marks the launch of SpaceX’s public beta test of the emerging internet service. For the last few months, SpaceX has conducted a limited private beta test with employees – which the company has said showed strong results in both latency and download speeds, key measures for an internet service provider.

The total cost of the decade-long project to design, build, and deploy such a network is estimated at nearly US$10 billion. In 2019 alone, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has raised over $1 billion this year as its internet satellite production ramps up, the company said in an SEC filing released earlier today. As a sign of investors’ interest in the direction of the company, SpaceX said it raised more funding than previously thought. SpaceX venture brought in $1.02 billion since the beginning of the year, more than SpaceX was seeking.