Telstra said it expects the new Starlink service options to be available for customers and businesses towards the end of 2023
Australian operator Telstra said Monday that it will tap into Starlink, the satellite internet constellation operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, to provide fixed broadband and voice services to rural Australians.
“Australia is a big place. We’ve got over 7.6 million square kilometers of land with 26 million of us spread across it — which creates a unique challenge in keeping all of us adequately connected — and means some of us can’t get the same quality connection of those in more metro areas,” wrote TelstraRegional Australia Executive and Regional Customer Advocate Loretta Willaton in a blog post. “To help provide additional solutions for these customers, we’re now working with Starlink to deliver Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite connectivity to provide voice and fixed broadband services in remote and hard to reach places.”
Willaton added that in most circumstances, users can expect the latency, download speeds and general experience offered by the LEO satellite service to be “far superior to copper-based ADSL.”
In May, Ookla publishd data showing that Starlink users in the U.S. “love” their service, while fixed broadband users are a whole lot less thrilled with their internet service providers (ISPs). When users were asked to rate how likely they are to recommend their provider to friends or family on a scale of 0 to 10, both metro and non-metro Starlink far outperformed metro and non-metro ISPs combined for Net Promoter Score (NPS) ratings, which are categorized into Detractors (score 0-6), Passives (score 7-8), and Promoters (score 9-10), and is calculated as (% Promoters – % Detractors) x 100.
Specifically, Metro Starlink had a score of 31.94 compared to -23.62 for all metro fixed broadband providers combined, and rural Starlink users rated their service even higher at 42.21, compared to non-metro ISPs at -21.27. Further, during Q1 2023, Ookla gathered Starlink data from three new countries: Nigeria, Peru and the Philippines, and according to Ookla, the results are promising.
Over in Australia, Telstra said it expects the new service options to be available for customers and businesses towards the end of the year. Pricing and plan details will also be made available at that time.
