Our Starlink journey with the Beta "Better than nothing trial" has been off to a great start. We've been running lots of tests, simulating the different environments that can be found out there and reporting back to you our results. We have been pleased with our services to date and have recently received an email from #Starlink addressing some questions in regards to there networks operation. The following is copied word for word from their e-mail. Starlink Expansion Since rollout of initial U.S. service in October 2020, #Starlink now offers limited beta service in Canada, U.K., Germany and New Zealand. To date, we have deposits from almost every country around the world; going forward, our ability to expand service will be driven in large part by governments granting us licensing internationally. Preventative Maintenance Recently some beta users saw short but more frequent outages, particularly in the evening hours. This was caused by two main issues— preventive maintenance on various ground gateways, coupled with a network logic bug that intermittently caused some packet processing services to hang until they were reset. The good news is fixes were implemented and users should no longer see this particular issue. Gateway Availability As more users come online, the team is seeing an increase in surges of activity, particularly during peak hours. The gateway infrastructure to support these types of surges is in place, but we are awaiting final regulatory approval to use all available channels. Near term fixes have been implemented to facilitate better load balancing in the interim, and this issue will fully resolve once all approvals are received. Dynamic Frame Allocation The #Starlink software team recently rolled out our dynamic frame allocation feature which dynamically allocates additional bandwidth to beta users based on real time usage. This feature enables the network to better balance load and deliver higher speeds to the user. Connecting to the Best Satellite Today, your #Starlink speaks to a single satellite assigned to your terminal for a particular period of time. In the future, if communication with your assigned satellite is interrupted for any reason, your #Starlink will seamlessly switch to a different satellite, resulting in far fewer network disruptions. There can only be one satellite connected to your #Starlink at any time, but this feature will allow for choice of the best satellite. This feature will be available to most beta users in April and is expected to deliver one of our most notable reliability improvements to date. These upgrades are part of our overall effort to build a network that not only reaches underserved users, but also performs significantly better than traditional satellite internet. To that end, the #Starlink team is always looking for great software, integration and network engineers. If you want to help us build the internet in space, please send your resume to starlinksoftwarejobs@spacex.com
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