Starlink will continue to operate in Ukraine despite the fact that Elon Musk assures that he is losing $20 million dollars a month due to the expenses associated with keeping the Army of that country connected to its satellites.
Elon Musk announced that his company SpaceX will continue to offer satellite Internet to the Ukrainian government and its army, through Starlink, despite the losses that this generates for his company. The billionaire, considered the richest person in the world by Forbes, stated that the service will continue to be completely free.
The hell with it … even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 15, 2022
“Fuck that… even though Starlink is still losing money and other companies are getting billions of dollars from taxpayers, we will continue to fund the Ukraine government for free,” Elon Musk posted on his Twitter account. .
The announcement comes after CNN reported that SpaceX asked the US Administration to bear the costs associated with sending new Starlink terminals to Ukraine. It is estimated that only at the end of this year these expenses represent some $124 million dollars, a figure that could easily climb to $380 million dollars during the next year.
Added to this is a series of tweets in which the businessman pointed out that SpaceX is losing approximately $20 million dollars a month as a result of maintaining satellite Internet service in Ukraine.
Ukraine's internet connectivity is too important to be left in the hands of one private individual. Let's find a way to form a coalition of Ukraine's allies to pay for Starlink, or let's find an alternative supplier. Lithuania is ready to contribute.
— Gabrielius Landsbergis🇱🇹 (@GLandsbergis) October 15, 2022
In this sense, Musk had previously indicated that the idea that his company would offer the Internet to Ukraine indefinitely was not viable.
Given this situation, Lithuania proposed that a coalition of countries allied with Ukraine be responsible for paying for the service so that Starlink remains operational in the country for as long as necessary.
“Ukraine’s Internet connectivity is too important to be left in the hands of an individual. Let’s find a way to form a coalition of Ukraine’s allies to pay for Starlink, or find an alternative provider. Lithuania is ready to contribute,” Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuanian Foreign Minister, posted on Twitter.
According to Elon Musk, so far his company has sent more than 25,000 terminals to Ukraine, which are estimated to have been fully or partially paid for by the United States, the United Kingdom and Poland.
However, Musk has said that these payments only represented a small percentage of what SpaceX has had to invest in order to keep the Internet service running for all these months.