SpaceX has received more than 500,000 orders for Starlink broadband service, the company said yesterday.
“‘To date, over half a million people have placed an order or put down a deposit for Starlink,’ SpaceX operations engineer Siva Bharadvaj said during the launch webcast of its 26th Starlink mission,” CNBC reported.
SpaceX opened preorders for Starlink satellite service in February and is serving at least 10,000 users in its beta in the US and overseas combined. The preorders required a $99 deposit for service that would be available in the second half of this year. The 500,000 total orders presumably include both US residents and people in other countries; we asked SpaceX for more details and will update this article if we get a response.
A preorder doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get service, and slots are limited in each geographic region because of capacity limits. Still, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said he expects all of the preorderers to get service—but said that SpaceX will face a challenge if it gets millions of orders.
“Only limitation is high density of users in urban areas,” Musk tweeted yesterday. “Most likely, all of the initial 500k will receive service. More of a challenge when we get into the several million user range.”
The total cost for each Starlink user is $499 for hardware, $50 for shipping and handling, and $99 for monthly service, plus tax. Preorders are still open on the Starlink website.
SpaceX prepares for up to 5 million users in US
Despite Musk’s comment, SpaceX has been laying the groundwork to potentially serve up to 5 million subscribers in the US. SpaceX initially obtained a Federal Communications Commission license to deploy up to 1 million user terminals (i.e. satellite dishes) in the US and later asked the FCC to increase the authorized amount to 5 million terminals. The application is still pending.
“SpaceX Services requests this increase in authorized units due to the extraordinary demand for access to the Starlink non-geostationary orbit satellite system,” the company told the FCC in its license-change request on July 31, 2020. At that time, nearly 700,000 people in the US had registered interest on Starlink’s website, but that action didn’t require putting down any money. The 500,000 orders and deposits that Starlink has received even without saying exactly when the service will exit beta is a stronger indication of people’s interest in the satellite broadband system, though this number likely includes non-US residents.
Musk has said that Starlink will be available to “most of Earth” by the end of 2021 and the whole planet by next year. SpaceX is also planning a new version of the “Dishy McFlatface” satellite dish for large vehicles, aircraft, and ships. Musk has said that the original version of the dish “should be fully mobile later this year, so you can move it anywhere or use it on an RV or truck in motion.”