Starlink satellite internet will be available in the Netherlands and Belgium this year

[Chewy_fox]

SpaceX has opened pre-orders for the Benelux on the website of its Starlink internet satellite service. This is a limited test phase, in which users, depending on their address, can expect coverage in the second half of 2021 at the earliest.

Interested parties can place a pre-order on the Starlink website . The hardware costs 499 euros, to which is added 60 euros for shipping. There is also a subscription of 99 euros per month. For this, users will receive a phased-array user terminal , a small dish that must have a clear view of the sky in order to send and receive signals to and from the Starlink satellites with a mass of 250 kg. There is also a tripod and a WiFi router that users have to connect to the dish.

After filling in the address, Starlink gives an indication of when there should be coverage. For many addresses in the Netherlands and Belgium, this should be 'mid to late 2021', as is the case in Haarlem and Antwerp, for example. But 2022 is mentioned for addresses in Leuven and Maastricht, for example; next year is also the coverage period for Luxembourg.

A recent Starlink document addressed to the US telecom regulator FCC shows that there are now more than 10,000 users worldwide, located in certain parts of the US, Canada and the UK. SpaceX says in the document that it has already shown that it can allow speeds of 100 / 20Mbit / s or more and latency below 31ms. At the start of the so-called Better Than Nothing Beta program in the US, speeds of between 50Mbit / s and 150Mbit / s were mentioned, with a latency of between 20ms and 40ms.

SpaceX has now placed around 1,140 Starlink satellites in orbit, not all of which are active anymore. The FCC gave permission in 2018 to put 4,400 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. SpaceX wants that to eventually become 12,000 and has already requested permission to bring that number to a total of 42,000. The idea is that this network of internet satellites can provide broadband internet with good speeds and not too high latency, especially in remote areas. SpaceX wants to use this constellation to generate income for its plans to put a human on Mars.

Edited May 21, 2021 by Chewy_fox

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