|
The
company, owned by Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, has been in
talks for months with airlines to provide Starlink internet
in-flight, a key prong in SpaceX's strategy to scoop up
enterprise customers beyond consumers and households in rural
areas of the globe with little to no internet access.
The deal is with semi-private jet service JSX and involves
equipping 100 airplanes with Starlink terminals, with the first
Starlink-connected plane taking flight by year's end, the
charter company said in a statement. A JSX spokesperson declined
to disclose the value of the partnership.
SpaceX has launched some 2,000 Starlink satellites to low-Earth
orbit since 2019 and, though the network is not yet fully
deployed, offers broadband internet service to thousands of
customers in a handful of countries for $110 a month using a
$599 terminal dish roughly the size of a pizza box.
SpaceX has sought regulatory approval from the U.S. Federal
Communications Commission to operate Starlink on airplanes and
shipping vessels and had previously tested the internet network
on a handful of Gulfstream jets, as well as military aircraft.
The Starlink service on JSX planes will come at no charge to JSX
customers, the jet service said in its statement, adding it will
"not require logging in or other complexities associated with
legacy systems."
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Stephen Coates)
[© 2022 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
