Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, which deals with orbital satellites. The company embarked on a journey of providing commercial satellite-based internet services along with a large satellite system. People have come under the Internet in the eighties of the last century. And in just 40 years, about 80 percent of the people, that is, about four billion people live directly in the Internet world Even 24 years ago, the number was only 14 crore. Attempts are now being made on the future of the universal internet.
Currently, there are several problems with the satellite-based internet system. Satellite-based Internet services are provided primarily through geostationary satellites. Such satellites revolve around a specific point on the earth 35,000 kilometers above the earth's surface. For this reason, to exchange any information through these satellites, one has to travel a long distance. These satellites are supposed to have a data transmission latency of 240 milliseconds, but in reality, their data transmission latency is 400-500 milliseconds. Which is 12 times higher than high-speed broadband latency. Another problem with geostationary satellites is low bandwidth. Due to this, the download and upload speed of the users is less.
Starlink is planning to build a network of 12,000 low orbit communication satellites to provide high-speed and low data transmission latency internet services. Low-orbit is just 500-1000 kilometers above the earth's surface. Where the geostationary satellite is 35,000 kilometers above the earth's surface, the low-orbit satellite will be about 60 times closer than the geostationary satellite. Due to its proximity to the Earth's surface, low orbit satellites can reduce data transmission latency by several times.
A person living in a village enjoys far fewer benefits than a city dweller. A person living in a city can do a lot of things using internet technology and he will get many benefits from the internet. But no one living in the village can enjoy such benefits. You will also find that the Internet infrastructure in the USA and China is much improved. In our country, it is not so advanced and easily available. For this reason, we needed internet universality. Despite being one of the most important issues in the world today, people everywhere are not able to take advantage of it and benefit from it. And the digital divide is created from this thought.
Nowadays more than half the people are deprived of internet facilities. Providing broadband internet service to a large population through optical fiber or mobile networks is a very difficult, time-consuming, and expensive task. And so projects like Starlink are being implemented to provide universal internet services all over the world. Of course, Starlink’s objective is not just global connectivity. Ensuring high speed, low latency, next-level internet connectivity is also one of its goals.
So it can be said that internet services like Starlink may one day eliminate optical fiber. In other words, scientists are working hard to find a way to reach the Internet to all people in all parts of the world. And the benefits of technology are constantly making us optimistic about this.