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Public Trials of SpaceX Satellite Internet Service to Begin Within 6 Months

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk mentioned the timetable in a tweet. Meanwhile, the company successfully deployed another 60 Starlink satellites into space on Wednesday for a total of 420.

Michael Kan
 & Michael Kan Principal Reporter

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If all goes according to plan, the public will have a chance to try out SpaceX’s satellite internet service in six months. 

CEO Elon Musk mentioned the timetable in a Wednesday tweet. “Private beta begins in ~3 months, public beta in ~6 months, starting with high latitudes,” he said. In another tweet, Musk said the German market qualifies as high altitude. 

Dubbed Starlink, the upcoming service is promising to bring fast and affordable internet to any location in the world. It’ll be particularly appealing for people who live in remote areas or underserved markets with few options for home broadband. Expect download speeds of up to 1Gbps with a latency ranging between 25 to 35 milliseconds, on par with ground-based broadband services. 

Although satellite internet is nothing new, SpaceX’s network is designed to achieve faster speeds by using low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. The plan is to have them fly around the planet from a distance of 200 miles to 700 miles above the surface while they ferry data between ground stations and internet users below. 

To get the service up and running, the company has been securing approval from regulators to launch as many as 40,000 satellites in the coming years. On Wednesday, the company successfully deployed another 60 Starlink satellites into space for a total of 420 currently in operation.

Related

According to its website, SpaceX’s goal is to launch the broadband service for the US and Canada later this year. Starlink is then scheduled to go global in 2021. Cost has not been announced, but the company plans on supplying customers with a Starlink terminal you can easily place in your home.

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About Our Expert

Michael Kan

Michael Kan

Principal Reporter

My Experience

I've been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I'm currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country's technology sector.

Since 2020, I've covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I've combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink's cellular service.

I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. In 2024 and 2025, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.

I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I'm now following how the AI-driven memory shortage is impacting the entire consumer electronics market. I'm always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.

The Best Tech I've Had:

  • My first video game console: a Nintendo Famicom
  • I loved my Sega Saturn despite PlayStation's popularity.
  • The iPod Video I received as a gift in college
  • Xbox 360 FTW
  • The Galaxy Nexus was the first smartphone I was proud to own.
  • The PC desktop I built in 2013, which still works to this day.

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