By Chathushka Perera
New York, USA (CWBN)_ SpaceX project Starlink issued its first bills to users in North America enrolled in its beta testing program at a resounding 99 USD per month along with a 499 USD setup kit, which brings the cost of setting things up to a bitter 598 USD.
According to the Leichtman Research Group (2020), an average American spends around 60 USD per month, hence the Starlink offer is a near 40 USD add-on to the household budget. At first glance, in comparison to other countries like UK (41 USD per month), India (20 USD per month) and China (10 USD per month), it would seem that Americans tend spend more to connect to the internet. It nearly amounts to the average rent values in country.
Despite the fact, sources indicate that Americans tend to enjoy an average speed of up to 32.89mbps compared to UK (22.37mbps), India (8.66mbps) and China (2.69mbps), while Taiwan and Singapore maintain highest ranks with speeds of nearly 70mbps or more.
In Taiwan, the average monthly internet cost comes close to Spacelink’s setup, at 500 USD while Singapore might just have the world’s best internet services costing an average of 25 – 40 USD per month.
Starlink’s current average is recorded at about 50mbps and a latency drop of 12 milliseconds compared to Singapore, currently standing at 30 milliseconds. In the US, the average latency could range from 17-44 milliseconds.
Nonetheless, Starlink remains of historic significance as the cheapest and fastest satellite based internet service that would be available to a global community, and would has no challenger in terms of its versatility.
