Elon Musk’s SpaceX has activated free Starlink satellite service in Iran amid ongoing protests and a severe internet blackout. According to Ahmad Ahmadian of Holistic Resilience, SpaceX has waived subscription fees so Iranians with receivers can access the network at no cost. A source familiar with Starlink confirmed the free access, though it hasn’t been publicly announced.
@noelreports can they use these? I bet they get shot and terminals destroyed. They are relatively easy to spot from the air, especially in cities?
@birkenator @noelreports I suspect it's fine if you cover them with radio-transparent materials. Bigger problem is obtaining the terminal in the first place.
@elgregor @noelreports yeah, how many iranias own one of those… being able to use a regular satellite dish would be cool and hard to detect. People would just need to obtain the center thing instead.
@birkenator @noelreports Regular satellite dish is meant for geostationary satellites. Starlink terminals use beamforming to aim the signal at one of the moving satellites.
@elgregor @noelreports the more you know