One of many, many concerns surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that the latter’s broadband Internet services will be affected, either intentionally or not. So Ukrainian officials reached out to SpaceX to see if its Starlink services might be of help. Starlink works by providing an Internet connection from satellites in space, rather than cables in the ground. Users just need a unit to receive the signal and then they can connect any devices in their home.
Starlink was not yet active in Ukraine as of last week, but when a Ukrainian official reached out to SpaceX via Twitter over the weekend and asked if they could get the service, the company got to work. By Monday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted that Starlink was up and running in Ukraine and the government there had received a number of kits so they could use it in case their broadband infrastructure was affected.
But it’s not just the government who will be able to connect if they need to. Oleg Kutkov, who resides in the capital city of Kyiv, said he was able to connect with his Starlink unit that he had bought from a user in the U.S. “I didn’t expect it will work, but the system appears to be robust and provides a great connection,” Kutkov told Business Insider, reporting that he was able to get speeds of up to 200 Mbps.
