Elon Musk surprises again: high-speed Internet of the company “Stralink” in airplanes

Fast and free surfing in the cabin: The American airline “United” has signed the largest agreement of its kind in the industry with the company “Starlink”, part of the space company of the billionaire SpaceX Elon Musk to install a fast WiFi service of the Starlink space company in the main and regional aircraft fleet. United flights will soon be able to surf at a high speed similar to the speed of surfing on Earth.

In recent years, internet has been installed on flights that are not low cost, but it is often slow and stuttering: the internet is usually only available when reaching cruising altitude. While on the ground it is possible to reach speeds of hundreds of megabytes per second and even more, in an airplane the speeds are usually between five and ten megabytes per second and in some cases even less. Surfing on passenger planes is also often interrupted.

There are several factors that affect the low surfing speed on airplanes: they use satellite communication technologies that provide low surfing speeds, which decrease even more as the number of passengers on the flight surfing at the same time increases. When the plane flies over remote areas or over the ocean the Internet connection may be weaker and much slower.

The first high-speed Internet of its kind to be installed on United planes, will allow passengers to enjoy new experiences in the skies on a scale that no airline has provided before. Among other things, passengers will be able to watch live TV broadcasts and streaming, surf social media, shop, play computer games, both on the seat back screens and on their cell phones and tablets at the same time, without limitation.

According to the agreement signed by United with Starlink, the high-speed internet will be installed in over a thousand of the planes over the next few years. Trials will begin early next year, and the high-speed Internet services will be free.

The Starlink company provides high-speed broadband internet services via satellites, mainly in remote and rural areas where there is no sufficient terrestrial internet infrastructure or it is expensive and unreliable. The download speed ranges from 50 to 350 megabytes per second, and the file upload speed ranges from 10 to 40 megabytes per second.