Elon Musk wants you to have fast internet… anywhere.
Musk, who is the brains behind Tesla, SpaceX and the new internet provider, Starlink, wants to provide relatively inexpensive high-speed internet anywhere in the world by beaming data up to and down from low-orbit satellites.
SpaceX rockets have been launching Starlink satellites since May 2019. Soon, over 12,000 of these satellites will be circling the globe. Because they’re low orbit, the latency is significantly reduced so data can be streamed effectively between your farm and the internet. All you need is the Starlink receiver and electrical power.
Starlink is already in beta testing in Canada and for $806 you can reserve a spot in line to be one of the first customers -- that’s $649 plus shipping and taxes for the hardware and $129 per month for the service. In tests in rural Northern Ontario, users were reporting speeds of 144 megabits per second. These speeds rival or exceed what you can get on fibre optic in rural areas – if you’re one of the few people lucky enough to be close to a connection point.
To learn more, go to starlink.com where you enter your email address and your address. Currently, Starlink is only available south of 50-degrees latitude north. In Alberta, 50-degrees north lands somewhere between Calgary and Lethbridge.
Soon up to 42,000 small satellites will be circling the globe. With each satellite coverage gets better.
It will be interesting watching the implications of fast internet anywhere in rural Canada:
- Look for software developers to build more robust, internet-enabled programs that couldn’t get traction until farmers had the bandwidth to use them.
- More producers will begin experimenting with the “internet of things” where tractors, lights, doors, thermostats, pumps… almost anything that runs on electricity can be connected to the internet.
- Finally, ubiquitous high-speed internet will help drive up rural land values as office workers sick of living in the city move to rural Canada, something they were loath to do when faced with super-slow internet speeds.