Public beta testing for SpaceX’s satellite-beamed internet service kicked off late last year for people in the US, Canada and the UK, and an FCC application (PDF) tells us a bit about how things are going so far. CNBC points out the filing, which seeks designation for Starlink as an eligible telecommunications carrier, and notes that SpaceX reports over 10,000 people are already using the service.
Starlink is seeking designation so it can access the millions of dollars it’s been granted from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to provide service across a number of states. The letter also notes that SpaceX already has more than 1,000 satellites in orbit (it just launched a few more last night), and that its network is showing it can provide more than 100/20 megabits per second connections, as well as less than 31ms of latency for 95 percent of round-trip measurements.
