SpaceX founder & Tesla CEO Elon Musk aims to connect the entire world to the internet, even to remote places where it is completely unavailable. SpaceX’s Starlink broadband internet could help the company fund making life multiplanetary long-term. Starlink will be a constellation of over 20,000 satellites that will connect users globally. To date, the company has deployed 1,740 satellites to low Earth orbit.
On September 10 a Japanese newspaper, Nikkei, reported that SpaceX’s Starlink division partnered with KDDI telecommunications company to provide internet service in rural Japan. The news report was shared by Hiro Mizuno on Twitter, who is a financial executive director/member of the Tesla Board and a United Nations Special Envoy on Innovative Finance and Sustainable Investments. “Starlink SpaceX coming to Japanese internet users in remote areas,” Mizuno wrote in a Twitter post.
However, this partnership has not been officially announced publicly by SpaceX nor KDDI. KDDI provided a statement to another Japanese news outlet [k-tai] that said they would “refrain from commenting.” No other details are known.
Starlink #SpaceX coming to Japanese internet users in remote areas. 🇯🇵🎏🎎@elonmusk @kddipr https://t.co/BUq9C38FSq
— HIRO MIZUNO (@hiromichimizuno) September 10, 2021
In August, Musk shared that SpaceX’s Starlink constellation is delivering service to around 100,000 users across 14 countries, including: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Austria, Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Portugal, New Zealand, and Australia. Most recently, SpaceX opened up service to Chile in South America. It is the first Latin American country to have access to the broadband service. Though, SpaceX is still delivering broadband in Beta mode and to a limited amount of users per region. The company says it will open the opportunity for more users per country to join the network as more internet-beaming satellites are deployed to low Earth orbit. SpaceX targets to launch the next fleet of 60 Starlink satellites before the end of September. For more information on the internet service visit SpaceX’s official website: Starlink.com.
Featured Image Source: NASA
About the Author
Evelyn Arevalo
Evelyn J. Arevalo joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover news as a Space Journalist and SpaceX Starbase Texas Correspondent. Evelyn is specialized in rocketry and space exploration. The main topics she covers are SpaceX and NASA.
