#starlink

#starlink

Elon Musk's satellite internet provider Starlink has begun undercutting traditional broadband providers in the UK after rolling out aggressive price cuts, intensifying competition in Britain's fixed-line market. Starlink is now offering high-speed broadband for as little as £35 a month in selected parts of the UK, down from a previous entry-level price of £55. The move places the satellite service below comparable packages from BT, which charges around £40 a month, and Virgin Media O2, whose equivalent service is priced at £36.

Acting on behalf of the Home Office's Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme (ESMCP), the UKSA invited participants to explore how existing and emerging technology (including satellites) could augment the ESN to provide coverage in remote areas and "locations which are challenging to service using standard transmission methods." Starlink is the satellite operator with the most developed direct-to-cell services, now selling these with T-Mobile in the US and Kyivstar in Ukraine, among others.

The maneuvers will be undertaken by SpaceX, the owner of the largest satellite fleet in orbit. About 4,400 of the company's Starlink Internet satellites will move from an altitude of 341 miles (550 kilometers) to 298 miles (480 kilometers) over the course of 2026, according to Michael Nicolls, SpaceX's vice president of Starlink engineering. "Starlink is beginning a significant reconfiguration of its satellite constellation focused on increasing space safety," Nicolls wrote Thursday in a post on X.

Numerous stories have been written about the growing swarm of Starlink satellites in low earth orbit (LEO) over the past few years, as astronomers grow increasingly worried about the crafts' impact on their observation equipment. Launched by Elon Musk's SpaceX, each satellite has the potential to disrupt astronomy through both radio emissions and light pollution - and as the number of satellites grows, so too does the amount of interference. Now, a new study by researchers at NASA is warning that obstructions caused by SpaceX and other private satellite companies are becoming so severe that not even the Hubble Space Telescope is safe.

Elon Musk's Starlink has gained yet another airline customer as the ultra-high-speed WiFi service continues to gain popularity. On the first day of this month's Dubai Airshow, Emirates announced that Starlink will be available for free, starting November 23. Business Insider previously tested Starlink on Qatar Airways' first flight with it last October. The connection speed peaked at 215 megabits per second, more than enough for a lag-free video call, and faster than many cable-based internet services.

Traditionally, sparsely populated areas have not received as much attention from fiber providers as those with greater populations because they simultaneously had less revenue potential and were more expensive to reach and serve. Satellite services can change that. Currently, it says that only 3% of Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program funding awards are for Starlink and less than 1% are for Amazon Kuiper.

You can sign up for emergency satellite texting if you have a phone compatible with T-Satellite, though there are some pretty notable exceptions. It doesn't support phones with emergency satellite texting built in, including the iPhone 14 and later, as well as the Pixel 9 and up (excluding the 9A). That means you can only use T-Mobile's 911 texting if you have an iPhone 13, Pixel 9A, a Samsung Galaxy S21 and up, or a newer Motorola phone.