Elon Musk’s Starlink low Earth orbit (LEO) network has been awarded US$885 million over 10 years to build out rural internet access in the U.S.
This was the fourth largest amount awarded under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). Testing of preliminary Starlink service recently began. This is a billion-dollar (almost) vote of confidence in a service that is at the preliminary consumer testing stage.
For rural and remote Canadians, does this mean that competitively-priced high-speed broadband access will finally be available anywhere?
For others, new technologies will compete against today’s cable Telco, and independent internet service providers.