How useful Elon Musk's communications service can be.
With constant bombing and shelling of Ukrainian cities, this solution is unlikely to become a full-fledged alternative to traditional Internet providers in the near future, the expert reports.
Recently, Minister of Digital Transformation Mikhail Fedorov announced that Elon Musk provided access to Starlink satellite Internet, and also sent the necessary equipment to receive satellite signals to our country. Cybersecurity expert Konstantin Korsun appreciated how useful a communication service provided by an American businessman can be. The specialist wrote about this on his Facebook.
What is Starlink and how does it work
Starlink is a service for providing Internet access via a network of satellites, Konstantin explained. Traditional Internet access uses terrestrial wired channels: from a home router and a house riser to a district collector/switch, then through wires to an ISP, then through underground wells to main channels, then outside the country and up to underwater armored cables.
According to the specialist, the satellite access system has a minimal infrastructure on the ground, which sends a signal to the satellite and receives a signal from the satellite.
Ukraine has its own satellite Internet — Lucky.Net, which has been operating since 1994. However, Korsun notes, satellite communications have always been expensive ($100 per month). Moreover, it has a number of limitations:
- speed,
- data transfer volume,
- dependence on the location of the satellite in orbit,
< li>a small total number of satellites, which affects the stability of the connection.
«The Elon Musk project involves placing 42,000 small, low-cost satellites in orbit about 500 km above the Earth's surface, and will quickly exchange signals with each other. That is, this is a data transmission system in which a signal from the Earth is transmitted to a network of satellites in orbit, retransmitted within this network, and then the data is read anywhere on Earth», — Konstantin explained.
At the moment, there are 2,809 satellites in orbit out of the planned 42,000. And although the entire surface of the Earth is covered, the signal is relatively weak, slow and unstable, Korsun notes.
As of 2022, there are about 145,000 satellites in the world .active subscribers. Almost all of them are from the USA, Canada and Australia. There are relatively few active users in Europe, but it is known that the queue for connecting the service is quite long.
The set of equipment costs $499, and the monthly subscription fee is $99.
< p>Data Transfer Rate —50 Mbps to 200 Mbps.
For comparison: an ordinary Kyiv provider offers 1000 Mbps for about $10 per month (although this speed is always achieved).
How to connect to Starlink
To connect subscribers in Ukraine, there are technical restrictions, basically does not exist. But some nuances should be taken into account, the expert warns.
For example, you bought a Starlink Kit for connecting, which includes a satellite dish («dish»), base station, WiFi router, charger and wires. You need to attach the antenna to a tripod and position it outdoors so that the antenna has unhindered access to the open sky. But in today's conditions in Ukrainian cities, Korsun does not recommend doing this, because the defense patrol may decide that you are marking or filming Ukrainian military aircraft, or filming the urban landscape, if, for example, you decide to put a «plate» ; on the roof.
If, however, a connection can be established, then you need to install an application from Google Play or the AppStore on your phone to set up a home network, protect it with a password.
Will Starlink help Ukrainians stay connected
«With constant bombing and attacks on Ukrainian cities, I am not sure that this solution can become a full-fledged alternative to traditional Internet providers in the near future. As a backup communication channel for the military and government authorities, or for Internet access somewhere far away in the fields — an excellent solution, but not yet for mass use. Moreover, it is, in principle, a commercial product. Ukrainian state structures were provided with several kits for free, and they (apparently?) do not require subscription fees,» the specialist wrote.
He believes that those sets of equipment that were transferred for our country will decide the problem of a backup Internet access channel, but only for several thousand people, and only in certain locations, and mainly for military and civil servants.