Starlink Price in India has become a topic of discussion on social media. Starlink India Price came to the spotlight on Monday (December 8). Elon Musk’s Starlink on Monday displayed complete residential pricing on its local website.
As per the website, the satellite-based internet service is priced at Rs 8,600 per month, and new subscribers have to purchase a hardware kit for Rs 34,000.
However, Starlink's price in India was later taken back and a statement was issued. Lauren Dreyer, Vice President and Senior Director–Starlink Business Operations at SpaceX, said in an X post that “The Starlink India website is not live, service pricing for customers in India has not yet been announced, and we are not taking orders from customers in India”.
It was called a configuration glitch by Starlink.
Nevertheless, do you know that the efficiency of Starlink changes place to place?
Elon Musk in a podcast with Nikhil Kamath explained how Starlink works and where it's efficiency cuts down.
Nikhil Kamath, "A San Francisco-based company, they are trying to replace network engineers. So, he was telling how in densely populated areas, Starlink works differently than it might be in place with not as many people. So, can you explain how it works?"
Elon Musk, "There are several thousands satellites in low Earth orbit and they are moving around 25 times the speed of sound . They are zipping around the Earth basically. They are at an altitude of about 550 kilometers which is generally called low Earth orbit. Because they are at low Earth orbit, there latency is low. Because the distance is not that far compared to a geostationary satellite at 36,000 KM. So, you have got thousands of satellites providing low latency, high speed internet throughout the world and they are interconnected as well. So, there are laser link between the satellites, so it forms sort of a laser mesh."
"Let's say if cables are damaged or cut like fiber cables, the satellite can communicate between each other and provide connectivity even if the cables are cut. For example when Red Sea cables were cut a few months back, Starlink continued to work without a hitch. SO, its particularly helpful for disaster areas."
Elon Musk then outlined that Starlink works best in sparsely populated areas but it's efficiency goes down in densely populated area.
The billionaire said, "It's complimentary to cable system. The satellite beams work best in sparsely populated areas. Because you have got satellite beam,, they are pretty big beam, and you have a fixed number of user per beam, so it tends to be very complimentary to the ground based cellular system, because those are very good in cities."
"But cell towers tend to be inefficient in the countryside. So, in rural areas is where you tend to have worst internet because its very expensive, difficult to lay. SO Starlink is very complimentary to existing telecom companies."
Nikhil Kamath then counter questioned, "Can this change? Like you explained the beams are quite broad and it can't work in a densely populated areas with high buildings. But can that change and work efficiently in densely populated city where it is competitive with the local network providers?"
Elon answered, "Unfortunately, physics dont allow for that.We are too far away. Even if try to reduce the distance till 350 KM, it's still very far away. We can't something that is one kilometer away, which is cell tower. Physics is not on our side here. So, it's not physically possible for Starlink to serve densely populated cities. It can serve a little bit, may 1 percent of the population. But, it can be much more effective in rural areas where the internet connection is much worse."
