Starlink coming to Korea in second quarter

A screen capture of SpaceX's Starlink website shows that the company is set to begin its satellite internet service in Korea in the second quarter. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Starlink will be available in Korea by June, the SpaceX service providing anywhere broadband for around $100 a month.

Skeptics wonder whether it will make a dent in a market with some of the cheapest and fastest internet in the world already.

Early this month, the U.S.-based space company filed an application for a license to provide telecommunication services in Korea with the Ministry of Science and ICT, according to the government.

SpaceX indicates on its website that it will roll out the Starlink service in Korea in the second quarter this year. The company will need to establish a local subsidiary to operate a telecom business in the country.

Starlink is a low earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet network run by SpaceX, a private company run by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. The Starlink satellite internet service is accessible in much of the United States, Europe, Australia and Japan.

Analysts are nonplussed by the revolutionary service.

They expect that Starlink will target corporate clients for business internet in Korea, rather than the residential internet service market, due to the low prices and fast service already available in Korea.

“We believe that Starlink’s entrance to the Korean market is aimed at internet services on ships and during flights, rather than a domestic residential service,” said Lee Seung-woong, analyst at eBest Investment & Securities Monday.

“The actual demand for Starlink service will not be strong, considering Korea’s fiber network deployment rate of more than 80 percent and the domestic internet service prices.”

For the Starlink, a customer must buy hardware that costs about $500 and pay about $100 a month. The service offers 100 megabits per second, always on internet with low latency.

This might be a tough sell in a country where 1-gigabit-per-second broadband is about a third of the price of Starlink.

Satellite internet is a wireless internet powered by satellites orbiting the earth. Data travels between the communication satellites and the earth through radio waves.

LEO satellite internet has ultra-low latency and high speeds due to the short distance between the satellites and the earth, which is around 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) or less.

But as the LEO satellites have smaller coverage compared to traditional geostationary satellites operating about 22,000 miles above the ground, a large number of satellites are required for wider coverage.

SpaceX aims to deploy 12,000 small satellites by 2030, and will possibly push up the figure to 42,000 in the future.

As the number of LEO satellites is forecast to increase significantly in near future, the risk of signal interference is rising as well.

KT Sat, a local satellite company, argues that the authorities need to keep an eye on possible satellite interference caused by SpaceX’s satellite signals.

BY SHIN HA-NEE [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]