SpaceX Tells FCC Starlink's Architecture Can Scale Up To Serve 'America's Unserved And Underserved Population’ In Rural & Urban Areas

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SpaceX is building the Starlink broadband constellation to provide reliable high-speed internet service worldwide. The company already operates 1,740 satellites in low Earth orbit and plans to deploy up to 12,000 over the course of seven years. Last month, SpaceX officials had a conference call with FCC leaders during which they shared that the Starlink constellation is already providing service to around 90,000 users across 12 countries. When SpaceX rolled out its beta service late last year, company officials said Starlink's primary focus is to connect customers living in rural or remote regions. Most recently, SpaceX’s Director of Satellite Policy David Goldman submitted a commentary document to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which states Starlink is capable of expanding to provide internet coverage to users in urban regions. “At least 30 million Americans are currently unserved and many more who are underserved. Starlink's architecture can scale to support America's unserved and underserved population, rural, suburban, and urban,” the company representative wrote.

"While SpaceX's system is designed to optimize for rural areas initially, it will provide service in urban areas. Already had extensive demand for urban service," Goldman wrote to the FCC on August 2. “Starlink has over half a million back orders in just the first 6 months of beta testing with no marketing and only a third of its satellites deployed,” they wrote, “Demand will grow rapidly as system deploys. SpaceX has already applied to increase the number of blanket licensed user terminals to 5,000,000 [million]." The company currently only has authorization to operate 1 million Starlink dish antenna terminals in the U.S. “As the constellation matures, user density will increase,” the company told the Commission.

Mr. Goldman’s commentary submission to the FCC was in response to a study by SpaceX competitors, RS Access, LLC. and DISH. This information was first-found by Wccftech.com reporters who published a detailed article explaining how RS Access tried to convince the Commission that multichannel video data distribution service (MVDDS) providers could share the 12GHz spectrum band with satellite constellations (like Starlink) without intervening. Goldman wrote on behalf of SpaceX Starlink to inform the FCC that the RS Access study is “fatally flawed,” in the counterstatement they mentioned that SpaceX can scale up to serve both rural and urban regions in the United States. Read more details in Wccftech's great report: Wccftech Official Report.

Featured Image Source: Render created by @ErcXspace via Twitter