A day after declaring he couldn’t fund the project, Elon Musk has hinted that his SpaceX firm will continue to support Starlink’s internet service in Ukraine.
Elon Musk seems eager to regain Kyiv’s trust after earlier this month when he floated a “peace proposal” that included new elections in areas that Vladimir Putin had forcibly annexed.
The world’s richest man reversed his earlier statement that he could no longer afford to keep the satellite service operating in the war-torn country and highlighted the need for “good deeds” in doing so.
“The hell with it… even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free,” he tweeted.
Following the invasion in February, his offering of Starlink to Ukraine had been warmly received, and it has proven essential to the military victories that Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s forces have achieved.
Oksana Markarova, a representative for Ukraine, highlighted that it was “very important” to maintain Starlink’s operations because it was “the only connection that we have” in some areas of the nation.
What is Starlink?
Starlink is a satellite internet provider takes pride in its capacity to provide ultrafast broadband in some of the world’s most difficult conditions, including remote locations with notoriously spotty network coverage and, in the case of Ukraine, an active conflict zone.
Starlink is a satellite internet constellation operated by SpaceX, providing satellite Internet access coverage to 40 countries.
Broadband in space is the simplest way to put it, according to Dr. Viktor Doychinov, a satellite communications researcher at the Bradford-Renduchintala Centre for Space AI.
While speaking to Sky News, he said:
“It’s like having all the base stations that normally provide mobile phone coverage up in the air, up in space, whizzing around the Earth.”
Starlink is run by Elon Musk’s SpaceX enterprise and powered by thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit. To establish a connection and deliver internet service, receiver devices are utilized on the ground.
“The equipment is portable, you can put it in your car or your truck, and go anywhere and still have internet. It’s small, mobile, and has a high data rate,” Dr Doychinov added.
The entrance fee in the UK is a £460 hardware kit and a £75 monthly payment, which is a significant premium over the service providers you may be accustomed to.
The website thinkbroadband has recorded download speeds as high as 106 megabytes per second, which is quick enough to enable the most recent FIFA game on your PlayStation in less than eight minutes.
What function has Starlink served in Ukraine?
The introduction of Starlink dishes back in February gave civilians and military alike a lifeline as part of Russia’s targeting of the nation’s infrastructure.
The New York Times has written on how Starlink’s internet helped kept the world informed about Russia’s tenacious siege of Mariupol and how it assisted in reestablishing communications in areas that Ukrainian army had liberated.
And in a move that was on-brand for Musk but out of character for normal business, the initial distribution of Starlink was managed by direct Twitter dialogue with Ukraine’s digital minister.
Since then, Musk has taken offense at the US government’s failure to provide financial backing for the continuation of Starlink.
Since April, when Starlink registered as an internet service provider in Ukraine, more than 23,000 systems have been put into use.
