Key Facts Introduction Satellite internet has entered a new era in 2025. Once a niche last-resort service with slow speeds and tiny data caps, it’s now a fast-growing sector powering everything from rural homes to airplanes in flight. The charge has been led by SpaceX’s Starlink, the low-Earth orbit constellation that proved satellite broadband can…
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Starlink Standard Kit includes a 23.4″ x 15.1″ motorized dish (~6.4 lb) with IP67 weather sealing, a 49 ft cable to a Wi‑Fi 6 router, and delivers up to about 220 Mbps down with 20–50 ms latency on Roam plans, priced around $599 for the kit and $150/mo unlimited Roam or $50/mo Roam 50GB. Starlink…
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Vanuatu is a Y-shaped archipelago of roughly 80 islands with a population of about 330,000, of which nearly 74% live in rural areas. A 7.3-magnitude earthquake in late 2024 severed Vanuatu’s sole international submarine cable, the Interchange Cable Network (ICN1), causing a nationwide internet outage. The ICN1 is a 1,280 Gbit/s submarine fiber cable connecting…
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In 2018, LinkSure announced plans for a 272-satellite constellation to provide free global Wi-Fi by 2026. Quika offered a mostly free satellite broadband in parts of the Middle East and Africa, delivering about 3 Mbps down/1 Mbps up, but installation and a hardware deposit were still required. There is currently no genuinely free satellite internet…
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As of mid-2025, SpaceX Starlink has deployed over 7,600 satellites—about 65% of all active satellites—reaching 4+ million subscribers by late 2024 and 5+ million by mid-2025 across more than 125 countries. Starlink offers 50–200+ Mbps speeds with 20–40 ms latency, using a flat phased-array user terminal nicknamed “Dishy McFlatface” and laser-linked satellites to extend polar…
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Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet constellation, now has over 5 million customers in 125 countries, with rivals including Eutelsat OneWeb, Globalstar, and Amazon’s Project Kuiper and government-led IRIS2 and QianFan programs. Vodafone and AST SpaceMobile formed SatCo, a Luxembourg-based joint venture aiming to deliver direct-to-device satellite connectivity across Europe by 2026, integrating with 4G/5G networks. MTG-S1,…
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On 17 June 2025, Prof. Wu Jian of Peking University and Dr. Liu Chao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences down-linked 1 Gbps from an unnamed GEO satellite 36,705 km above Earth using a 2-watt laser. The AO‑MDR method combines 357 micro-mirrors on a 1.8 m telescope to reshape the wavefront and eight spatial modes,…
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Starlink has launched over 8,000 satellites since 2019 and serves more than 5 million users across 125+ countries as of 2025. Amazon’s Project Kuiper launched its first 27 satellites in April 2025 on an Atlas V, aiming for a 3,236-satellite constellation with Ka-band and user terminals around $400. The EU’s IRIS² plan is a €10.6…
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In mid-June 2025, India’s Department of Telecommunications granted Starlink a Global Mobile Personal Communications by Satellite (GMPCS) license, publicly confirmed by Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia. Starlink becomes the third GMPCS licensee in India after Eutelsat OneWeb and Reliance Jio’s satellite venture. Starlink operates a Low-Earth Orbit constellation at about 550 km altitude, and globally has…
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Starlink (SpaceX) is a LEO constellation (~4,500 satellites) delivering residential speeds ~100–250 Mbps down / 10–20 Mbps up, business up to ~350–400 Mbps, with a median latency ~45 ms in Q1 2025 and no hard data caps, employing a Fair Use Policy that deprioritizes after 1 TB. HughesNet Jupiter-3 (GEO) upgrade in 2024–25 offers 50–100…
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