Ukraine engineer talks testing SpaceX’s new Starlink service

Image: Oleg Kutkov

On Monday night, in between the hourly air alarms that sounded outside his home in Kiev, Ukraine, and the sound of a plane in the sky, Oleg Kutkov stuck his SpaceX Starlink dish outside of his window and pointed it up at the sky. He got a signal from one of the satellites that was overhead, indicating he was getting broadband internet.

I didn't believe that it would work, according to Kutkov. It just connected. I got really good speed.

Kutkov had a Starlink dish for a while, but wasn't able to use it. He bought his off eBay in order to reverse engineer the device and learn more about it. The person who transferred his US account to Kutkov didn't have a Starlink service yet, so he didn't have much to do with the dish.

He wrote an article about his reverse engineering efforts in late 2021. He tried to switch the address on his account from a US address to a Ukrainian one, but he was told his location wasn't supported. Kutkov paid for the account to keep it alive for his experiments.

Image: Oleg Kutkov

Everything changed this week. Over the weekend, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's vice prime minister, asked Musk to provide his company's Starlink service to help in the fight against the Russian invasion. The internet-from-space program is being developed by Starlink, which plans to launch tens of thousands of satellites to low Earth orbit to beam broadband down to the surface. Individuals need to have one of the user terminals or dishes to use the system. The nickname for the antennas is "Dishy McFlatface." The gateways on the ground are connected to existing fiber-optic infrastructure.

When Musk responded to Fedorov's statement that Starlink service was active in Ukraine, Kutkov decided to give his account another chance. The attempt to connect his dish to his account failed first. Kutkov says that he was told his account should connect now. On Monday night, after Fedorov posted a picture of a truckload of Starlink dishes that had arrived in Ukraine, Kutkov stuck his dish outside his window to prove that the service was working.

He claimed he was able to reach a top speed of more than 200 Mbps. At the moment, there are nearly 2,000 Starlink satellites in space, and a few above Ukraine. An unofficial map of Starlink's infrastructure shows there are gateways in a few neighboring countries of Ukraine, which should help to keep the satellites connected.

Image: Oleg Kutkov

Kutkov doesn't plan to use his Starlink dish full-time, so he did a little experiment. He says he has a good connection to the internet, which has not had any disruptions so far. Kutkov tinkered with his dish so much that it can even detect the sky now that he has removed the antenna's base. He wanted to show the people of Ukraine that Starlink is up and running.

I thought I could test it and report it to everyone. It's good to go, Kutkov says.

He knows that his internet infrastructure could change in a second. One of his colleagues witnessed Russia attack a television tower in Kiev with an airstrike, a seeming attempt to disrupt the city's communications. It is possible that Russia could target the existing internet system in Kiev. There has been speculation that the equipment could make him susceptible to Russian airstrikes, so Kutkov is cautious about using the Starlink dish frequently.

He says he got a lot of messages from people in Ukranian asking where they could get a Starlink dish, and he had to explain that his came from eBay. He admits that it could be difficult for the Ukrainian government to distribute the dishes. He claims that air sirens warning of impending attacks have increased in frequency.

He says that he saw real explosions when he was asleep. There were loud explosions in our neighborhood yesterday. He and his family take shelter in the basement when there are attacks.

Despite Russia telling citizens to leave the city, Kutkov is not planning to leave. Kutkov and his wife already moved to escape the Russian invasion of the peninsula, and he doesn't plan to do it again.