How much is Starlink Internet? Cost, how to get, and more as Volodymyr Zelensky thanks Elon Musk for Ukraine support 

In late February, Ukrainian Vice President Mykhailo Fedorov reached out to SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk to get Starlink to the country amid the conflict with Russia. Musk responded and provided the satellite internet coverage, sending trucks filled with the service’s antenna nodes.

On March 6, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to Twitter to publicly thank Elon Musk for his help with restoring the internet in some areas where the service was required. Zelenskyy tweeted:

The President added that more batches of SpaceX’s satellite internet system would reach Ukraine by next week. He also spoke to the billionaire about future space projects.

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What is known about the Starlink Internet service by SpaceX?

Starlink is a venture of Musk’s reusable rocket and space exploration company, which is essentially a satellite internet service. Around 2000 satellites orbit the planet to provide internet coverage to places where high-speed data connections are scarce.

While broadband availability for accessing the internet is available in most urban areas on Earth, rural and remote areas do not have such easy access to Internet Service Providers. SpaceX bridges the gap by positioning the user-end link towards the satellite, which provides the user internet speeds of up to 100 to 200 Mbps.

The speed may seem slow by urban standards, but the service surpasses the connectivity of any available options for remote locations. Furthermore, users can expect ping “as low as 20 ms in most locations.”

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Registration process and cost

Users who are interested in switching to SpaceX’s internet service would need to go to starlink.com to register their interest in receiving the service in their selected location. If the area chosen by the user is serviceable, then the site will take the user to order pages for Starlink.

The service is still being rolled out globally in over 29 countries and currently caters to over 250,000 as of February 2022. Most locations that are not supported would be given an estimate on the website regarding the service’s availability. However, many sites are not serviceable at all with pending regulatory approvals.

According to their websites, the internet service installation would be on a “first come and first served” basis for serviceable areas. The service is available for $99 per month (with taxes and additional charges). Meanwhile, the entire subscription will initially cost $499 (plus taxes and fees) to set up the connection with a satellite receiver/emitter and a router.