Just days after SpaceX launched its Starlink pilot program in Chile, the company’s head alluded to 600,000 prospective users on its Starlink satellite internet, before the service has even been launched to the public.
At the Space Warfighting Industry Forum last week, SpaceX COO and President Gwynne Shotwell said that Starlink has received over half a million preorders in the last nine months, according to Teslarati.
Shotwell also said that the service had added 10,000 active beta users to its 90,000 beta users discovered in a filing earlier this month, adding up to a total of 600,000 prospective Starlink users.
While it is clear just yet when Starlink will officially launch to the public, SpaceX Founder Elon Musk says that Starlink will IPO once it “can predict cash flow reasonably well.”
SpaceX Starlink Internet Speed Test in Germany Nears 300 Mbps Download https://t.co/nSi1KWzrMs
— TeslaNorth.com (@RealTeslaNorth) August 17, 2021
Earlier this month, Shotwell also stated that Starlink expects to reach global coverage by around September. Starlink also has over 1,600 satellites actively in orbit, with plans to complete its full satellite constellation by the end of 2022.
SpaceX also has plans for 30,000 Starlink Gen2 satellites, according to a filing revealed last week.
Despite efforts from fellow satellite internet company Viasat to stop Starlink’s launches, the courts have rejected Viasat’s request to halt SpaceX’s Starlink launches.
