Air and Space: SpaceX Wants to Conquer the Internet

By Jon Kelvey

The broadband satellite market is worth an estimated $300 billion, and SpaceX has plans to grab some of that. Elon Musk's company will launch 12,000 Starlink satellites into LEO (Low Earth Orbit) to provide Internet service to unconnected and rural areas. However, any people are skeptical. All LEO satellite companies in the past have gone bankrupt. Even though billions of people in rural and undeveloped areas need the Internet, they can't afford the price. Not only is getting satellites into LEO extremely expensive, getting routers to people and connecting it to existing infrastructure will be expensive as well.

    Because low-orbit satellites are not stationary, they must move very quickly. Also, their low altitude gives them a smaller range than geostationary satellites, requiring more of them to cover the same area. As for the price of the user terminal, SpaceX has been very tight-lipped. Altogether, unless Musk has another ingenious idea, connecting Africa alone could cost as much as $100 billion. One thing that might save SpaceX, though, could be a government grant. It could be very advantageous for the US to partner with SpaceX to provide Internet connection to Africa, where the Chinese company Huawei is already the dominant provider.