Introduction
Back in February, Mykhailo Fedorov, the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, tweeted at SpaceX founder Elon Musk asking the billionaire to connect the Ukrainian nation with the internet.
Within hours, Musk responded that the company’s Starling satellite Internet service was “now active in Ukraine” with “more terminals along the way.”
Now, in an interview published by The Washington Post on Friday, the service is operating efficiently and connecting Ukraine with the rest of the world.
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Thousands of antennas
Fedorov’s warring country has thousands of Internet antennas that are “extremely useful.”
“The quality of the connection is excellent,” Fedorov said using a Starling link by a translator. “We use thousands, thousands of terminals, with new exports coming in every day.”
No comment
Funnily enough, The Washington Post approached Musk to comment on the story and received a salutatory response to “Your Puppet Master Bezos”. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the owner of The Post.
But even though he did not comment, the story changes him and his internet service very nicely. After all, if the service is able to operate through combat conditions, it can certainly keep up with the times.
However, now the service has proven to achieve what Musk wanted: reaching the neediest. In June 2021, Musk said his service would go global in five weeks and was committed to helping those in need.
“You may think Starling is filling the gaps between 5G and fiber,” Musk said at the time, “it’s really hard to reach three or five percent of people who need high-speed broadband Internet.” “We will get 500,000 users in 12 months. It is growing fast and we are continuing the user terminal.”
Well done Musk! Well done indeed!