Credit: Pixabay/CC0 public domainElon Musk, a billionaire entrepreneur, announced Tuesday that he will invest as much as 30 billion dollars in his ambitious Starlink satellite internet company.Starlink will deploy thousands of satellites in low orbit to bring high-speed internet access to remote and under-connected areas.It has deployed more than 1,500 satellites so far and will be able provide coverage around the globe except for the North and South Poles by August, Musk said to the Mobile World Congress, a conference in Barcelona that focuses on telecoms.Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated that he expected to invest at least five billion dollars in Starlink, possibly as high as ten billion, before Starlink has a positive cash flow."Then it will be a multiple of that over time, which would be 20 to 30 billion dollars. He said that it was a lot.Starlink currently operates in around a dozen countries with the possibility of adding more. It currently has just over 69,000 users, Musk stated.He said, "We are on the way, I think to have a few hundred thousand users and possibly over 500,000 users within twelve months.""There is an urgent need for connectivity in areas that don't have it or are very limited."Musk stated that Starlink sells its terminals at $500, even though they cost Starlink over $1,000 to produce. His team is currently working on a less expensive model. Musk hopes to develop a temrinal for the company that is between $220 and $250.He stated, "Obviously, selling terminals for half the price is not very compelling."Musk stated that Starlink had two partnerships in place with "major telcos" and that it was "in discussions" with others.Starlink, he said, could be used by telecom companies to meet rural connectivity requirements that are contained in the licences for superfast 5G mobile networks. These networks are currently being deployed all over the globe.Musk's SpaceX company, which operates Starlink has applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), for authorization to deploy up to 42,000 satellites in order to provide satellite internet service.Starlink is up against a variety of competitors, including OneWeb, a broadband communications company that was acquired by a consortium comprising the UK government, Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Global and Amazon subsidiary Kuiper.According to the GSMA (an industry body that organizes the annual mobile congress), 67 percent of the world's population had subscribed to mobile services by 2020.2021 AFP
