With SpaceX’s Satellites, You’ll Be able to connect to the Internet in the Air!

With the help of the company’s Starlink subsidiary, SpaceX has begun testing a commercial in-flight Wi-Fi Internet service for airline companies. 

When SpaceX announced in June that it was in talks with various airline companies to provide Starlink’s satellite internet network for a better in-flight Wi-Fi experience, it was met with a lot of enthusiasm. Although no specifics were given by the company on the project’s commercialization launch date. 

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted later in June that the company was in contact with airlines. The company’s goal was to provide low-latency internet access in the air with a half-gigabit output speed. There are two major companies operating in the industry right now: Viasat (which provides satellite broadband services for inflight Wi-Fi) and Intelsat (which provides satellite broadband services for inflight Wi-Fi). OneWeb and Telesat, both of which are situated in the United Kingdom, are direct competitors to Starlink in terms of fundamental infrastructure.

Jonathan Hofeller, Starlink’s Vice President of Commercial Sales, has recently confirmed that the company is “already testing the first iteration of its in-house antenna on aeroplanes,” although he has yet to provide a precise schedule for when the product would be available for purchase. 

According to a Bloomberg story, Hofeller stated that the company intends to sell its satellite internet service to airlines “as soon as possible” while speaking at the Airline Passenger Experience Association (APEX)/IFSA EXPO Thought Leadership conference. 

Hofeller is quoted in an APEX blog post, which adds that “Starlink is going one-by-one to each country and that its continued efforts in disaster aid is speeding up their arrival into some markets.” 

If you compare Starlink to the established companies on the in-flight connectivity (IFC) market, you will see that it has one significant advantage: it uses satellite internet technology.

Satellites in geostationary orbit transmit data to the internet, which is used by existing stakeholders. Internet connectivity will be provided by Starlink, which has a network of satellites in the lower Earth orbit that will provide internet service. 

In the past, Hofeller said that the Starlink receiving terminals installed on aeroplanes would be a version of the already-existing ground-based receivers, which have just begun to appear at Tesla charger stations. 

An important factor to consider when putting satellite internet receivers on aeroplanes is their long-term reliability. Strangely enough, an FCC proposal discovered earlier this year hinted at improved mobile receivers that can handle “higher extremes of heat and cold.”

Starlink also has a numerical advantage over its competitors. Starlink already has ten times the amount of LEO satellites as today’s geostationary satellites, according to Hofeller at the APEX conference. Starlink’s executive disclosed that the company currently operates a network of 1,800 satellites across 20 countries. However, due to problems with the Starship rocket engine, which were so severe that CEO Elon Musk worried it would bring SpaceX to the edge of bankruptcy, Starlink’s goals may come to a grinding end, according to reports.