Elon Muskin a tweet, announced that he had Starlink service activated in Ukraine after the request of Mykhailo Fedorov, Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine. But is it really so? And how does the connection behave? Oleg Kutkova citizen living in Kiev, decided to test the satellite internet service by Elon Musk and his company SpaceX, with truly amazing results.
Does SpaceX’s Starlink internet service really work in Ukraine as promised by Elon Musk?
Monday evening Oleg Kutkov he installed his parable Starlink outside his window in Kiev, Ukraine, and pointed it at the sky. To her surprise, she got the signal in just 10 seconds from one of SpaceX’s satellites, receiving broadband internet.
“I honestly didn’t think it was going to work,” he said Kutkov a The Verge. “I thought there might be some problem with the obstructions, or some problems with my device. But no, he just connected. I have really good speed and stability. “
Photo credits: Oleg Kutkov.
Oleg Kutkov has been in possession of the Starlink dish for a few months, capable of capturing the internet signal from satellites in orbit, but obviously without being able to use it. As a software engineer, he had bought it on eBay – where prices range from $ 2,000 to $ 3,000 – for decode the device and learn how it works. The person he bought the dish from had transferred his US account to Kutkov, although there wasn’t much the engineer could do with the device, as the Starlink service was not yet available in Ukraine.
At the end of 2021 he had also written an article describing his own reverse engineering attempts, also managing to contact people within SpaceX. He also tried to change his account address, but Elon Musk’s company support replied that obviously his position wasn’t supported, so he couldn’t use the service. Fortunately, Kutkov has decided to continue paying for the subscription to “continue the experiments”, as he said on Twitter.
The turning point of the last days
Thanks to the active subscription, this week he was finally able to access the service. In fact, during the weekend, Mykhailo Fedorov, Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, had asked Elon Musk on Twitter to provide the Starlink service to Ukraine. This would have helped in the fight against the Russian invasion. Starlink is in fact an internet-from-space service, which foresees the launch of tens of thousands of satellites in low earth orbit and broadcasting broadband internet. To tap into the system, people need to have a SpaceX dish.
When Musk replied to Fedorov’s tweet saying the Starlink service was now active in Ukraine, Kutkov decided to give his account another chance. He then tried to link the dish to his account and after a few failed attempts he managed to take advantage of the broadband connection. And, as he states on Twitter, he is able to reach a maximum speed of over 200MBps.
The top speed was >200 Mbps for a while.
– Oleg Kutkov (@olegkutkov) February 28, 2022
Kutkov’s little experiment was just a test, as he has no plans to use Starlink full time. He currently he is indeed in possession of an excellent connection to fiber optic internet, which so far has not had interruptions. Also, Kutkov has been tinkering with his dish so much during reverse engineering that he is no longer able to scan the sky to find the correct placement. By testing him he just wanted to show the Ukrainian people that Starlink is operational at the moment. And, thanks to a shipment of dishes that arrived in Ukraine on February 28, it will be possible to take full advantage of the service.
After his tweet, many Ukrainian citizens tried to find out how to receive one of the Starlink parables that arrived a few days ago. Kutkov bought his on eBay months ago, and it is currently unknown how the Ukrainian government plans to distribute the devices: certainly a difficult task at the moment.