Starlink Offers 500 Mbps Internet Speed In 25 Countries, Coming Soon To Indonesia

Starlink offers high speed internet with low latency. (photo: starlink)

JAKARTA - This year SpaceX launched its top product for its Starlink satellite broadband subscribers, which offers speeds of up to 500 Mbps worldwide. However, this product is priced at 500 US dollars/month or around IDR 7.1 million.

Elon Musk's company started rolling out its internet service to customers last year, and now has around 145,000 users in 25 countries around the world.

The service has been improved as more satellites have come online. In fact, more than 2.000 satellites are now in low Earth orbit, they send signals to satellite dishes on the ground.

These new speeds, up from a maximum of 250Mbps to 500Mbps, come with a significant price increase - from $99 per month to around $500 per month. Quite expensive for the size of Indonesia.

However, this speed is comparable to the average internet speed across the US of only 99.3Mbps, with an estimated average cost of USD 68.38 per month.

The new product is known as Starlink Premium, and is open to pre-orders, with the “first course” expected to begin shipping in early summer this year.

In addition to doubling the top download speed, upload speed will also increase, from a maximum of 20Mbps to 250Mbps on premium subscribers.

There will also be 20 to 40 milliseconds of latency, which is double the average for the base plan. This is an important factor for users who want to play online games.

Latency is a measure of the time it takes a data packet to reach its destination and return, it is the round-trip delay measured in milliseconds.

Satellite internet has traditionally had very high latency rates, as spacecraft would have to be thousands of miles away, in geosynchronous orbit, to reach the entire Earth.

"Starlink Premium users can expect download speeds of 150-500 Mbps and latency of 20-40 ms, enabling high-throughput connectivity for small offices, storefronts and superusers worldwide," the company wrote.

But by having a constellation of thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit, all working together, this distance can be reduced to less than 300 miles.

Cellular network providers in the US have an average latency of 60 ms for 4G and 30 ms for 5G, but home cable or fiber has latency as low as 5 ms.

The $500 per month price for the premium plan isn't the only cost involved in switching to satellite broadband, which can be the only high-speed option for some people living in rural and remote areas of a country.

Starlink also charges $2.500 for the antenna and other hardware, when on the premium plan, compared to $499 for the standard plan.

"Starlink Premium has more than double the capabilities of Starlink antennas, delivering faster internet speeds and higher throughput for the highest-demand users, including businesses," the company wrote on its website.

In addition to faster speeds, SpaceX says its premium service will perform better in 'extreme weather conditions' and offers customers 24/7 support.

In Indonesia, Starlink will enter soon. They even claim that there are already 13.000 potential customers in the country who want to take advantage of Elon Musk's internet services.

Interested? Just contact Starlink, which is expected to enter Indonesia in 2022.