According to a tweet by Elon Musk released at the end of February, the transmission rate of Starlink will be increased to 300Mbps in 2021, doubling the current 150Mbps, and it is expected to complete global coverage by 2022.

Impact analysis

The goal of global coverage can, according to planning by SpaceX, be initially achieved after accumulating 1,584 satellites at an altitude of 550km. If estimated from current scale of 1,085 satellites as well as the frequency of previous launches, it is likely that the goal can be achieved by early 2022. Since this is the first time that a satellite network will have served such a great number of users to provide a certain extent of bandwidth, it is believed to be the most important milestone for the development of a low-orbit satellite program. Nonetheless, even if a gap still remains between 300Mbps to that of high-end communication technology under present development (such as WiFi6), the low-orbit satellites can, even on a basic level, accommodate most use environments; in fact, it is even better than in areas where infrastructure is not well developed. As satellite communications use a large number of frequency bands above 6GHz, PCB will become one of the components affected in the first wave. Materials will be at the crux of this development. According to the timetable that has already been counting down from the past year or so, manufacturers are prompted to take more proactive action.