Starlink’s LEO Satellite Broadband Service to Exit Beta in October

The CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, has announced that the Starlink service, which delivers ultrafast low latency broadband across the world via a mega constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), will finally leave its long-running beta phase and get a full commercial launch in October 2021. But don’t expect too many changes, yet.

At present Starlink has already launched around 1,800 LEOs into space (over 1,600 are active) and their initial plan is to deploy a total of 4,425 by 2024, which could then be followed by as many as 12,000 at a later date (possibly late 2026). The service has already gone live in the USA, Canada, the UK and is now extending into other parts of the world, but until now it was still a beta product (albeit a beta taken by c.100,000 customers).

Beta customers in the UK typically pay a hefty £89 a month for the service, plus £54 for shipping and £439 ($499) for the kit (dish, router etc.). But for that the operator claims you can expect to receive unlimited usage, fast latency times of 20-40ms, download speeds of between 50-150Mbps and uploads of c.20Mbps (such figures will improve as their network grows).

The good news, as spoken yesterday by Elon Musk, is that Starlink will finally come out of beta “next month.” The beta has had its ups and downs, not least between issues of connection reliability and thermal shutdowns, but anybody taking Starlink as a full commercial product will be expecting such issues to have been resolved. Today’s network is of course much bigger and the terminal kit, as well as the software, is being improved, which will hopefully bode well for those who order the final product next month.

So far, the service speeds and latency times that Starlink deliver have generally been in keeping with what the beta promised, and performance continues to improve as the network grows and evolves (e.g. the recent addition of inter satellite lasers being a good example of this).

However, going commercial is also likely to place additional load on the network from masses of new customers, which is necessary in order for it to be economically viable. But that may yet impact performance further down the line, especially if you’re in an area with lots of other Starlink users nearby. The network is more intended for rural consumers, but no doubt some poorly served urban users may also view it as an option.

Musk previously remarked that the first 500,000 customers should get the service, but it will become more of a “challenge when we get into the several million user range.” At present the operator has already taken pre-orders from around 600,000 to 700,000 customers, with lead times extending up to around 6 months.

Starlink also plan to maintain a simple non-tiered approach to pricing and, at the time of writing, there’s no indication to suggest that the launch product will be radically different from that of the beta, at least in terms of price, but we’ll find out more next month. However, it is known that Starlink are developing a basic package for lower income consumers, although we’ve yet to see that proposal being turned into a product.

In an ideal world we’d like to see Starlink offering a 50Mbps package for half the price, which might be more viable to remote rural consumers in the UK, but so far, they’ve shown no indication of wanting to go down that route. Roll on October.