United Airlines seeks stellar connectivity, teams up with Starlink

Last week, United Airlines announced it would start testing a partnership with SpaceX’s Starlink to provide passengers with Wi-Fi, following similar deals between Starlink and other carriers, such as Hawaiian Airlines, which rolled out complementary Wi-Fi earlier this year.

Connecting flights

Checking your emails at 35,000 feet is a remarkable feat of engineering. However, it’s a technology that’s older than many of us might expect, having been around since the early 2000s. The problem is that — even after 20+ years — checking your emails is often the only thing you can do, as the commercial offerings have typically struggled with poor latency. Starlink’s constellation of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites provide a dramatic improvement, at least according to testing from the Wall Street Journal which found it could handle multiple streaming devices and offer download speeds of up to 150 Mbps.

To achieve its goal of global internet coverage, SpaceX has been launching thousands of satellites into LEO.

In fact, per data from Jonathan’s Space Report, first cited by The Economist, Starlink's active satellite count has skyrocketed, and now accounts for nearly two-thirds of all satellites in space. Its services have been used by Ukrainian soldiers, by people in areas devastated by natural disasters, by remote communities in countries with less-developed internet infrastructure, and by terrorists.

Starlink’s rapid growth has made it a dominant force, but its success has also raised concerns. The FCC is exploring ways to increase competition in (the) space, but some fear that more satellite internet companies could worsen the growing problem of space junk (there’s a lot of stuff whizzing around our planet now).