SpaceX on Wednesday rolled out its inflight Wi-Fi services on private jets giving customers a $150,000 (nearly Rs. 1.2 crores) aircraft antenna ) in a context of increasing competition for air connectivity. The announcement came a day after OneWeb collaborated with Panasonic Avionics for selling its aircraft internet services.
The Elon Musk firm is charging between $12,500 to 4 25,000 a month for the service along with a one-time investment of $ 150,000 for the hardware. Deliveries to aviation customers are scheduled to “start in mid-2023,” the company said, and reservations require a $5,000 initial payment.
Starlink will begin delivering its terminals in mid-2023, the website said adding that has sought Federal Aviation Administration certificates for a variety of aircraft, most of which are typically owned and operated as private jets. The flat-panel antenna on the top of the aircraft would deliver up to 350 Mbps speed fast enough to make video calls, play online games, virtual private networks and other high data rate activities.
SpaceX’s Starlink and Britain-based OneWeb are racing to court airline and private jet internet services. The latter satellite network beaming broadband on Tuesday announced an agreement with in-flight broadband giant Panasonic Avionics which caters to 70 airlines, to market and sell OneWeb’s broadband services to airlines by mid-2023.