SpaceX Starlink Just Won a Huge Customer - Motley Fool

24, SpaceX crossed the finish line, achieving the 800 Starlink broadband internet satellites in orbit it needed to offer "moderate" internet coverage to large portions of Earth's surface.

Just two days later, the company officially opened up Starlink to "beta" subscribers, advertising 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s broadband internet service for prices as low as $99 a month (plus a $499 hardware fee).

has reportedly been brisk, and demand in Canada is about to get even brisker -- because just this month, regulators approved Starlink to offer internet service in Canada as well.

How important is this to Canada, and is $99 for as little as 50 mbps internet speeds really a good deal.

you might not think so, but here's the thing: Listening in on tweets from elated Canadian (future) customers, and hearing their lamentations about being forced to pay, for example, $46 a month (presumably Canadian) for 6 mbps, $75 for 5 mbps, or even $95 for a measly 2 mbps, it's pretty clear that the service Starlink is offering will be a big improvement for a lot of rural users. .

What's more, in an effort to win a $16 billion rural broadband contract from the FCC, SpaceX is working hard to get its speeds up to 1 gigabyte per second -- as much as a 20x improvement over the initial capabilities of the beta service.

Although SpaceX is promising "near global coverage of the populated world" by 2021, the Starlink website explains that, because of where the initial deployment of Starlink satellites are orbiting, SpaceX can really only offer internet coverage to "the Northern U.S.