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| Starlink hopes to have 500,000 users next year |
Speaking at MWC, Elon Musk said SpaceX's satellite internet users are expected to reach nearly 500,000 over the next 12 months.
Musk stated that SpaceX's current goal is to provide high-speed internet to most regions of the world by August.
Musk told MWC that Starlink has put more than 1,700 satellites into low Earth orbit since 2018 and recently exceeded the key strategic benchmark of 69,420 active users.
"Starlink exists and is growing in 12 countries," he said. I think we're going to have hundreds of thousands of users in 12 months, maybe over 500,000 users.
Reaching 500,000 users next year and expanding global internet coverage in the next two months is a very ambitious goal for Starlink.
The internet is sold directly to consumers in rural parts of the world and to governments looking for better military internet connections.
As a result, many individual users pay $99 per month for the internet in the trial version.
SpaceX promises a download speed of 100 Mbit/s and an upload speed of 20 Mbit/s.
There are many challenges on the way to unlocking business services and global Internet coverage. Each Starlink terminal costs $499 to consumers. Musk admitted at the meeting that each site costs twice as much as SpaceX, or more than $1,000.
Starlink Project
SpaceX said in April it had halved the cost of the site by $3,000. His goal is to bring it down to a few hundred dollars within a year or two.
Musk said Starlink has signed contracts with two telecom operators in major countries. But he did not mention their names.
Mask Starlink complements existing 5G providers rather than competing with them directly. He said, “You can think of Starlink as a bridge for 5G/fiber separation and access to hard-to-reach areas around the world.”
At the same time, Musk said Starlink's total investment could reach $20 billion to $30 billion.
Once the network is fully operational, SpaceX hopes to generate an estimated $30 billion in profit from Starlake and could become public separately from SpaceX.
Most of the proceeds will be used to fund SpaceX's interstellar space probe system, which forms the basis of Musk's ambitions to send people to the Moon and Mars.
In addition, Musk said that the first orbital test of the interstellar spacecraft system could take place in the coming months.