Starlink begins or expands service in three more countries
Starlink this week officially began service in both India and the African country of Guinea-Bissau, while expanding its service in the Ukraine to include phone-to-satellite texting.
In India the final licensing approval came through, and the service is now available to customers through two different Indian telecommunication platforms.
The deals consists of selling Starlink’s equipment through Jio and Airtel’s retail networks, while Jio will also offer customer service, installation, and activation support. It will emphasise on providing high-speed internet to businesses, healthcare centres, schools and remote communities across India, according to reports.
SpaceX also begain to offer its services in Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony located on Africa’s northwestern coast and the seventh African country to approve Starlink. Its license had been approved in April, but the service wasn’t available apparently until now.
Finally, regulators in the Ukraine have now approved the use of Starlink’s phone-to-satellite service by the Ukrainian telecommunications company Kyivstar. The program will at present be limited to texting and emergency alerts. This expands Starlink’s already extensive internet availability there.
In every case, Starlink will act to decentralize control of communications aware from the government, as its sells terminals to ordinary citizens.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Starlink this week officially began service in both India and the African country of Guinea-Bissau, while expanding its service in the Ukraine to include phone-to-satellite texting.
In India the final licensing approval came through, and the service is now available to customers through two different Indian telecommunication platforms.
The deals consists of selling Starlink’s equipment through Jio and Airtel’s retail networks, while Jio will also offer customer service, installation, and activation support. It will emphasise on providing high-speed internet to businesses, healthcare centres, schools and remote communities across India, according to reports.
SpaceX also begain to offer its services in Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony located on Africa’s northwestern coast and the seventh African country to approve Starlink. Its license had been approved in April, but the service wasn’t available apparently until now.
Finally, regulators in the Ukraine have now approved the use of Starlink’s phone-to-satellite service by the Ukrainian telecommunications company Kyivstar. The program will at present be limited to texting and emergency alerts. This expands Starlink’s already extensive internet availability there.
In every case, Starlink will act to decentralize control of communications aware from the government, as its sells terminals to ordinary citizens.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
India is a big deal. Ukraine is at least a moderately big deal as that country has a sizable population for a European country, every one of them seems to carry a cell phone and one can think of few large populations more likely to want full-coverage no-fail texting service more than theirs – a possible recent exception being Iran which can’t have it yet except on a black market basis.
Guinea-Bissau won’t be a big deal for SpaceX, at least financially. The country has a population of only about 1.75 million and a GDP-per-capita of about three bucks a day. But Starlink will likely be a pretty big deal for Guinea-Bissau, or at least for that portion of its population able to access it in any fashion.
Guinea-Bissau, by the way, cannot be fairly described as being on Africa’s northern coast. It’s located at about the 8-o’clock point on the generally partial-circular south and west coastal crescent of the West African bulge. It is toward the northern end of a string of ten small coastal savannah and jungle nations I tend to describe collectively as Grasshutistans that run from Senegal to Benin. There are a few much larger landlocked West African nations to which this honorific also applies as well as both coastal and interior nations in the southward-pointing portion of Africa. Truth to tell, based on per capita GDPs, most of Africa qualifies including most of the Mahgreb and even the “resource-rich” nations of Nigeria and South Africa.
Mr. Musk’s continent of birth, even in its entirety, is unlikely to prove much of a market for Starlink services compared to other parts of the world. But that will be consistent with all of the other ways in which Africa seems destined to remain a mostly backwater fraction of humanity for the foreseeable future.
The great thing is that the system could be purchased by a school and powered by solar panels.
Now every school and internet cafe could be connected to the whole of the world. Bringing news in real time.
Add in the ability to directly use cell phone to satellite communications.
In the end this is more powerful than any Chinese belt and road plan.
And this has the ability to keep dictatorships from gaining or keeping power.
pzatchok,
Agreed. Starlink continues to inexorably grow both its network and its customer base in ever more nations – increasing its vertical integration and first-mover advantages by the day.