This week, the Federal Communications Commission approved Elon Musk’s SpaceX company to provide Starlink Satellite Internet services to cars, trucks, ships and aircraft in motion in the United States.
The FCC said in its decision: “the new terminal that authorizes the SpaceX satellite system will expand the range of broadband capabilities to meet the growing needs of users. These needs now need to be connected in the mobile process, whether driving RV across the country, transporting cargo ships from Europe to U.S. ports, or in the process of domestic or international flights.”.
This approval is a key step in the major expansion of Starlink’s functions, but users of the service need to wait before they can start surfing the Internet.
Starlink currently allows users to pay an additional $25 a month on top of the normal $110 monthly fee. However, portability means that the Starlink base station can be moved from one fixed location to another.
On the other hand, mobility is the ability to receive Internet access in motion. Although the FCC’s decision gave SpaceX the green light to provide this function, the company is clear that the service has not been configured for this situation.
“Using the Starlink kit in sports will void your limited warranty for the kit,” said the current version of the Starlink FAQ page on this topic. “Although our team is actively working to make it possible to use Starlink on mobile vehicles, Starlink has not been configured for safe use in this way.”
SpaceX has not given a public timetable or other details for the launch of mobility.
Although portability and mobility are the favorite topics of Starlink users, considering the availability of cellular networks in many regions of the country, it is not clear that this function will be widely used; I don’t know its reliability on the existing Starlink base station at first. For SpaceX, business users seem to be a big part of the motivation.
This week, CNBC reported the FCC’s approval for the first time. The company pointed out that the decision did not solve the broader regulatory dispute between SpaceX and dish network and RS access on the ability of 12GHz wireless band to support ground-based and interval communication services.
At the same time, SpaceX is continuing to expand its low earth orbit satellite constellation. Amazon is developing its own satellite internet service, called the “Kuiper plan”, and recently submitted a letter asking the FCC to “act cautiously” when considering the second-generation system of SpaceX (with nearly 30000 proposed satellites), so as to ensure that the deployment of SpaceX will not be at the expense of the competition and innovation of competitor networks “.