Maritime Starlink
SpaceX finally got the go-ahead from the FCC on June 30th to begin offering their Starlink service to customers on-the-go, and the company wasted no time in getting their feet wet. Pun intended.
CEO Elon Musk was talking on Twitter just last week about the new system, which he insinuated is already much cheaper than the maritime services offered previously.
The current plan is to charge customers a one-time fee of $10,000 USD for those two, high-performance terminals, and then a monthly rate of $5,000 USD afterwards. So, not cheap, but certainly much cheaper than the alternatives; which seemed to be getting too cozy without any competition.
The Starlink connection would reportedly give floating customers a download speed of roughly 350 Mbps, which is definitely not bad considering how remote ocean routes can get.
As a use case test, when SpaceX switched their autonomous drone ships from their old provider to Starlink, the satellites reduced latency from one or two seconds to 50 milliseconds. It also improved the video quality so we can see those sweet barge landings at better quality.
Aside from themselves, SpaceX believes their customers will be mostly oil rigs, cruise ships and premium yachts, but the U.S. Military is also reportedly a prospective customer, as are the many air service companies that SpaceX has already signed deals with.
As with most technology, early adopters always shoulder higher costs, but as with anything else, wider adoption will bring those prices down - not to mention what the Starship-launched V2 satellites will do for coverage and speeds.
Exciting times for internet growth.