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What do you think about the new free Internet from Elon Musk? Is it true that you can connect to it for free? Or maybe we need to buy special equipment to catch the Internet from its satellites?

Google had the same idea of providing free internet to the worldwide but for now it is not possible due to the expenses of satellites and I don't we need any special equipments, if yes then it is cheaper to buy a wifi connection for your own. :D

If a product is free most likely you are the product. I don't know how exactly but I don't believe Musk is doing it just because of his big hearth.

He is doing for his tesla I guess because in future driverless cars are going to have more consumers so if he can provide lot of free perks then people will get attracted to his car and of course he can track the user data and can make use of their database for his future product engagements.

Every single genius has their own agenda which will benefit them. But let's take it the brighter side that he'll actually help a lot of communities if he can create a free internet to the entire world.

But the collateral of it is, we're all interconnected and he will have the idea where everyone is sitting or walking, in short, he will have the access for everyone's location.

From what I've heard this wasn't supposed to be a free internet project, but something like $80 for more bandwidth than other providers offers.

This is no longer free internet. It's just that a colossal coverage area is planned for him. And yes, it will need a signal receiver that no one will give out for free either.

Where do you see this news related to free Internet.. Can you kindly add the link to the news related to free Internet from Elon Musk. Because If I could remember. The last time I used free Internet was the edge Era. When Edge was the fastest network in my country.

I have not heard any free internet announcement by Elon Musk, I know fb is trying to come up with global free internet service for more adoption and usage of the internet.

This is a question for personal research such as using Google for more verification and more understanding.
But remember that their is know free business again, given a free internet for the masses that shows that the website owner is benefiting seriously with in directly.
And free internet can be the easy way to penetrate into your email and other secret things in your phone, laptop,Facebook account, Instagram, Twitter account and telegram account, its very dangerous to free internet.

Aa far as I heard the free Internet is part of a the new satellite Internet idea of Elon Musk it will likely only be available for poorer people in 3rd world country at a fairly low speed. The premium part of that service will be sold to companies. Financial services firms will likely pay top dollar for the satellite Internet because the speed is 30% higher than fiber optic cables. This is very interesting for connections across continents. With the revenues from that Elon Musk will be able to offer free Internet for some people.

Internet is not going to penetrate to anything. :D

But when something is available for free then you are going to be the product they are going to sell and make revenue from it.

If this Internet really becomes 100% free (which I very much doubt), then it is guaranteed that we will be inundated with vast amounts of advertising (after all, it will be necessary to recoup the costs somehow).
But I guarantee that it will never be free. One way or another, we will have to part with the money.

Totally agree, nothing in life is free and everything has a price.

Please be aware that Free internet is risky for people like us who has been in crypto and also holding amount because we don't know what's their intention in providing free internet.
actually Facebook and messenger are already free for usage in my country though in FB you cannot see the photos and videos while you are in free mode.

I believe in Elon's capabilities on setting up a free Internet network.
He is going to send some satellites on the space and provide the Earth with the network. Probably he is going to ask people to buy some equipment if they want to have free network - in the end nothing is for free.

nothing is actually free of course you have to buy a satellite receiver to use it and I think it is quite expensive

I don't know if it is possible in current state of earth orbit being polluted with satellites.
So the main idea of Elon was to fill whole orbit with satellites that receive and send information worldwide for free, but this is only possible if there is room for such huge amount of them.
I would be surprised if he'll manage to do this in a good way, of course.
I guess in order to connect with it you'll have to buy sort of antenna (if you don't have one in your house)

Maybe Elon Musk will roll out his own satellite for free internet.  ;D

I don't think there would be any additional gadget or equipment need to get to the free web offered by Elon Musk through his Starlink project. It dependent on an objective to make web free for all, so including additional equipment costs does't sound consistent by any means.

It is a very rare possibility that it really happens in my view , it's easy to write it on paper but reality, with storms, sunray, and magnetic field could be changeable, but i hope someday it happens.

I also heard about the idea of selling the Internet to other companies. Otherwise, how Elon Musk would profit from that? There is a bunch of internet & telecommunication companies worldwide, which provide lots of services.  I mean it's much easier to use the Internet from my cell phone provider, I can be sure about the quality of the service.

Starlink (https://www.starlink.com/) isn't free, where is your source to bring this claim? There have been closed beta testing with promising speed and latencies, many people in rural areas are interested in a satellite service that actually works but nowhere i have seen that this is "free", there are simply speculations about what would it cost monthly and there is the medium size pizza antenna (terminal) as well which is luckily easy to install because its phased array (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array) which pretty much means "self aiming".

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0173/8204/7844/files/GMnpPBg_large.jpghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/Phased_array_animation_with_arrow_10frames_371x400px_100ms.gif/270px-Phased_array_animation_with_arrow_10frames_371x400px_100ms.gif

And yes, you will have to pay for this antenna as well as a monthly fee.

Given the late youtube scams using Elon Musk name, i highly suspect this. Starlink is true and is serious, but "free internet" is not. It does however change the game for internet satellite, basically renders everybody else obsolete.

You are right, the main goal is for Tesla's future progress...
It's not only Elon who has the goal of creating free internet access, Google and Facebook also want it, they don't do it because of their kindness but rather to reach more users, there's a big business behind.

Great discussion!   Fast instant internet access for all is the goal.

Not more bandwidth - you can't beat physical medium on volume.
Faster bandwidth - you can't beat vacuum on speed!

It's not intended to replace fiber in high density areas, although you'll probably be able to pay for a PPP (old networking term) within the same MAN (organizational term) if response time is crucial to you.   That's where he going to make the $$$.    I bet he'll have multiple satellites just to serve the NYSE (financial term!) alone. 

I am sure that the free Internet from Elon will work soon.
But as always, problems will be created by states.
I'm sure that the governments will simply not allow the free sale of such antennas in order to connect to this network.
You will need to get a bunch of licenses and the cost of this antenna will be very high.
Therefore, only large providers will be able to purchase them. And then these providers will sell you this free internet for real money.
In general, everything is as always. States and governments have too much control and leverage.

I thought as much.

I heard he is now the third richest person in the world.

people wont have to buy satalite dishes individually.
what will happen is 'cellular' towers with satelites(spaceX groundstations) will be set up to organise packets of data to make it more efficient to cover hundreds of people at a time instead of hundreds of individual dishes

this saves on not having to fibre optic cable homes.
ISP's will become more decentralised because the cell tower becomes the traffic controller between a cell phone signal and a satelite dish

ofcourse elon isnt doing it for free. however offering city councils cheaper internet for the public streets means that town councils pay a bill and offers free internet to people in the town centres

yes it will be 'free perk' with his cars. but it also allows trains and planes to have better internet. so the rail/airline companies pay. as the 'extra free perk' for passengers

they will usage to military and science. and also bigdata. so it is very much a case of why google appears to be free even though they make their money behind the scenes and not directly user subscription fees

It's supposed to be a satellite-based internet, in the past months Elon Musk has been sending a shit ton of satellites to provide this service... if he becomes the number one provider he will become the richest man in the world, i can see it coming. So maybe it has a free version and the paid one, isn't clear yet... But it will be something good for those poor countries who don't has internet access.

Which other Internet Provider company can boast about launching their own satellites? The constellation for Starlink is planned for 40k sats. That's A LOT. But they are the only ones with capacity to do so, because SpaceX.

The simple matter that they have cheap access to space while the others don't, is already balance breaking. But their constellation is also low altitude, which allows for those tasty 20ms pings.

On top of that, the vacuum of space lets light travel faster then fiber, so their typical example is they could achieve lower latencies from, say, New York to London then using the transoceanic fiber optic cable.

The satellites act pretty much like the cells in a cellular network, the passing sat has to share its bandwidth with all the terminals. Therefore it would result faster in isolated places with fewer people, than urban centers with millions. If a city is already well connected, you won't see any point in this. If you are rural, it is a game changer.

Some even say that this might enthuse people to go back and live in rural places now that proper internet will be available everywhere.

The technical limitation is out of the way, but the political ones... For example, China does not allow planes flying above their airspace to give wifi internet to their passengers. You can bet Starlink will be banned too. Doesn't mean if you could somehow smuggle that antenna it wouldn't work, unless Starlink (somehow) complies with Chinese authorities and turn off their sats when they fly above their land...

Poor Elon, he is going to face the dark side of humanity. So far they had good relations with Tesla, we will see.

Oh and speaking of planes, yes this is very good for moving aircraft, it has already been tested in flight and worked great.

Perhaps there will still be free internet from Elon Musk. Only in order to lure you into their networks. One to three months for free, and then pay. We have seen this more than once on ordinary Internet providers. And there will be discounts on equipment too ... Pay a year in advance for the Internet and get a discount.

Never rely in free internet because this is not that safe and protected , you wanted to have free net but you are risking your accounts to be hacked and your privacy to be invaded?

Lots of them are packaged as free internet whereas their providers profit from it, like making money with users data or through other means... this should disqualify them as being free internet.  I believe things that are truely free should be free without any hidden means to make money off the users of the free things