By Abel Mavura
Elon Musk has announced that Starlink service is now active in Ukraine and more terminals will be sent for Ukraine.
Musk was responding to a request on Twitter, ten hours earlier, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov had challenged the billionaire on the social network, asking him to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations.
Fedorov wrote, “Elon Musk, while you try to colonize Mars — Russia tries to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand.”
Russia often targets Communications infrastructures to disable communication of Ukraine army with higher ranks or among themselves but with star-link, they can Communicate freely without worrying about it being cut off.
This means that Ukrainian people have access to the fastest satellite internet system ever created. Russia can not disable Ukrainian internet access fully without cyber attacking foreign data centres.
He also called on Elon Musk to encourage “sane Russians” to oppose their government.
SpaceX on Friday launched a second shipment of about 50 Starlink satellites to provide internet connectivity to customers around the world.
On Saturday, it was unclear how users in Ukraine had the ground capabilities to receive the service.
What should you know about Starlink?
In 2002, Elon Musk founded SpaceX to revolutionize space technology and reduce space transportation costs. In 2020, the company developed a new service, in the form of the provision of a connection to the Internet by satellite, a sector that had been fairly confidential until then.
According to Starlink, its mission is to bring high-speed internet to people who do not currently have access to it, that is to say mainly to households in rural areas. In fact, at the end of 2020, the US Federal Communications Commission awarded SpaceX more than $885 million to help fund its efforts to make high-speed internet more accessible in these areas.
SpaceX is just one of many companies awarded this grant. The FCC has assigned it about 643,000 locations in 35 states to bring high-speed internet to.
But SpaceX’s Starlink internet service won’t just be available to customers in rural areas.
The company is currently beta testing a named service – called “Better Than Nothing Beta” – which means only certain people have access to it. The company is growing rapidly and is accepting pre-orders from people who want to sign up when the service becomes available in their area.
