Elon Musk Said it: Starlink is Now in the Philippines

On Wednesday (February 22), SpaceX posted a tweet announcing the official commencement of operations of SpaceX’s low earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet service Starlink in the country. It was retweeted by Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX. 

Available na ngayon ang Starlink sa Pilipinas → https://t.co/slZbTmZmAt pic.twitter.com/4pl3isvnYX

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 22, 2023

On Starlink’s official website, the Philippines is now highlighted as one of the countries where the satellite Internet services are now available.  

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A Starlink account costs some P34,720 to start: P29,320 for the hardware, P2,700 as a deposit, and another P2,700 in monthly service fees.  

While some commenters bristled at the cost, the actual price has turned out to be much cheaper than original fees announced by SpaceX Senior Manager Rebecca Hunter in July 2022: $599 (or about P33,000) for the hardware and $99 (about P5,459) for the monthly service fees. 

Although satellite internet isn’t exactly new, Starlink is groundbreaking for using a network (or “constellation”) of satellites at low Earth orbit or LEO (only about 300 miles above Earth’s surface), which dramatically improves internet speeds versus existing satellites that are higher up in the atmosphere. These satellites are launched into orbit by SpaceX’s rocket missions. 

Data speeds vary from 50Mbps to 150Mbps and latency (or time it takes for data to be transferred between its original source and its destination) from 20ms to 40ms.

Starlink is backed by the Sy family’s Data Lake Inc., the first Starlink integrator in the country and in Southeast Asia.