Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite internet is very expensive and very slow

Let’s go for the beta version of Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet. The company started sending out the first invitations on October 26 to join the test «Better Than Nothing» (“Better than nothing”).

A perfect name for a service that promises to be rather shaky. “Expect a connection speed of 50Mb / s to 150Mb / s and a latency of 50ms to 40ms during the next few months”, notifies the email.

“There will also be brief periods without any connectivity”, explains the company, which promises improvements in the coming months as more satellites are launched.

“Connection speed, network availability, latency and overall performance are expected to improve dramatically”, swears the email, which anticipates a latency time of 16 to 19 ms in the summer of 2021.

It’s beta

Because for the moment, and if the advantage of Starlink is also to offer the network to networks poorly served by traditional operators, we are far from the initial promise of performance.

“With performance that far exceeds that of traditional satellite internet, and a global network with no limit of ground infrastructure, Starlink will deliver high-speed internet to places where access is unreliable, expensive or completely. unavailable”, proclaims the company’s website. Initially, SpaceX expected a throughput of 1Gb / s and a latency between 25ms and 35ms, recalls The Independent.

The other bad surprise comes from the price: in 2015, Elon Musk had suggested a price “Around 80 dollars per month” with installation costs between $ 100 to $ 300.

Today, Starlink is asking its beta customers $ 99 per month (84 euros) to connect to the network, not to mention the $ 499 needed to set up the hardware part (router, tripod, accessories, etc.) By comparison, the price average Internet connection in the United States is about 68 dollars per month.

This is not the first time that Elon Musk, whose success remains difficult to deny, significantly oversold one of his crazy companies. Its demonstration on pigs of its Neuralink technology, last August 8, supposed to demonstrate the capacity of the technology to create an interface between the brain and the machines, did not convince many people.

The entrepreneur had also predicted a range of 1,000 km for the Tesla Model S “Certainly by 2017” – today we are officially at 647 km. The conquest of Mars is already scheduled for 2024, as well as a Hyperloop train connecting New York to Washington in 29 minutes, announced in 2017: we are waiting to see.