SpaceX founder and billionaire Elon Musk is offering free satellite-based internet service in Ukraine via his firm Starlink, as Russia invades the nation and causes energy outages.
Starlink is a rising community of small satellites that SpaceX has been constructing out since 2018 to produce broadband internet entry across the globe. The Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine and minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, appealed to Musk in a tweet Saturday, asking him to increase Starlink’s high-speed broadband internet providers to the besieged nation.
Musk on Saturday tweeted that Starlink service was lively in Ukraine and in addition agreed to ship extra Starlink terminals to develop the nation’s bandwidth.
“Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route,” Musk tweeted.
Invading Russian troops have disrupted Ukraine’s internet infrastructure, at occasions making service unreliable and spotty in some areas.
The Starlink service, which is billed on its web site as being “ideal for rural and remote communities” and different locales the place internet connections have traditionally been unavailable, is predicted to be extra dependable than land-based programs which are at the moment out of service.
One Starlink terminal prices $499. The system was not too long ago used to revive communications in distant villages in Tonga after internet service there was reduce off by a volcanic eruption that triggered a tsunami.