SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk announced on Wednesday (2/2) that SpaceX's satellite broadband service Starlink will launch a high-end version of Starlink Premium, which can download 150 to 500Mbps and is expected to be launched in the second quarter of this year.
SpaceX began testing Starlink in October 2020, the standard version of the specification is a download rate of 100 Mbps, upload is 20 Mbps, users must first pay $499 to purchase terminal equipment, and then pay a monthly fee of $99 per month, Starlink has more than 1,700 communication satellites, in 25 countries around the world to provide services, the number of users has exceeded 145,000, but has not yet crossed the American and European markets.
Starlink Premium is designed for high-demand users, such as small offices, stores and super users, can support higher usage, its download rate can reach 150 ~ 500Mbps, latency between 20 and 40 milliseconds, but its hardware cost is $2,500, satellite antenna deposit is $500, monthly fee is $500.
Whether it is the standard version or the advanced version of the delay time are the same, there is no limit on the use of quotas, the biggest difference is that the standard version of the download rate is between 50 ~ 250Mbps, upload for 10 ~ 20Mbps, high-end version of the download is 150 ~ 500Mbps, upload for 20 ~ 40Mbps, in addition, the high-end version emphasizes more extreme weather tolerance.
In the third quarter of last year, the network speed measurement website Speedtest compared the speed of satellite broadband services such as Starlink, HughesNet and Viasat and the speed of the fixed network, showing that Starlink's download/upload rate and latency, although still not as good as the fixed network, has greatly surpassed HughesNet and Viasat, but Speedtest also warned that when the number of users increases, Starlink's rate will slow down, but the latest Starlink Premium Emphasize can be applied to 10 to 20 users.
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