After its race with OneWeb to cover the North Pole and other areas with satellite internet, the National Science Foundation is testing out a Starlink terminal at McMurdo Station. The increased bandwidth will allow scientists to work on the remote continent.
Satellite internet was already available at McMurdo, the most heavily populated station, but it was rough. The 17 Mbps link at the base severely limits what people can do. The station doesn't allow people to use high-bandwidth apps likeNetflix, cloud backups, and video calls, with the exception of once-weeklySkype or FaceTime sessions at a public kiosk or mission-critical communications.
The addition of Starlink probably doesn't mean that McMurdo residents will be able to hold a movie night or something, even during the winter when there aren't many people in the area. Mike England couldn't say what the system would be used for as it's currently in testing.
Starlink is now on all seven continents and is able to operate in remote places thanks to its space laser network, according to theNSF. I promise we will touch the lasers in a second, but I have a problem with the continents. If you look at Starlink's availability map, you will see that the service is not available in Africa or Asia. The company is planning on launching service in at least two countries on each continent by the end of the year, but at this time, it looks like you can't actually buy it
For Starlink's maritime service, it only works in coastal waters off of certain countries, limiting its use for customers such as Royal Caribbean. Most of the world's oceans will be covered early next year.
The lasers are part of what makes this expansion possible. If you wanted to use Starlink, you had to have a satellite that could talk to your dish at the same time as the ground station. The job of the satellites is still to connect Starlink terminals to the ground stations, but they are now able to talk to each other.
It is important that the company does not have to build out dozens of additional ground stations when it expands its coverage. There are regulatory hurdles that need to be overcome, such as the fact that it has to license spectrum in each country that it works in. The fight over whether Dish can use the 12 GHz spectrum for 5G is not just a one time issue.
If the test goes well, it could help prove that even the most remote areas can be covered by technology. Lasers are just plain cool, as I mentioned when I covered a startup using tech from the internet project. You can't help but root for it if you throw a remoteAntarctic research station in the mix.
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