"Please let them know if you want it on your
airliner," Musk wrote in a tweet, adding that Starlink could add "low
latency half gigabit connectivity in the air!"
Musk, who is known for his Twitter banter, announcements and
lively interactions with followers, did not provide any details about the talks
in his tweet. It was not immediately clear which airlines were approached or
when installation would occur.
Airlines work with satellite broadband providers for
inflight Wi-Fi, with Viasat and Intelsat – the latter of
which purchased Gogo’s commercial aviation business – two such
companies that add connectivity on flights by airlines
including Delta, JetBlue, American
Airlines and United. But, while existing services use satellites in
distant orbits, Starlink satellites orbit closer to the Earth and could boost
the speeds that passengers see inflight.
Shares of in-flight Internet provider Gogo fell to an
intraday low of 5.7 percent before recouping some of the losses in afternoon
trading.
Starlink is the company’s plan to build an interconnected internet
network with thousands of satellites, known in the space industry as a
constellation, designed to deliver high-speed internet to consumers anywhere on
the planet.
Starlink, the satellite Internet unit of SpaceX, plans
to deploy 12,000 satellites. SpaceX has said the Starlink constellation will
cost it roughly $10 billion.
It is one of a growing number of companies making small
satellites that also includes Amazon's Kuiper, Britain's OneWeb, venture
capital-backed Planet, and Raytheon's Blue Canyon Technologies.
Musk currently helms companies including electric-car maker Tesla, rocket startup SpaceX and Neuralink, a startup that is developing ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect the human brain to computers.
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