Space Exploration Technologies, Elon Musk’s rocket company, is working with Cloudflare to boost the performance of SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink, according to a person with direct knowledge of the project.
The two companies are working on a way to increase Starlink’s terrestrial network of mini data centers around the globe—known as points of presence. That, in turn, could help it deliver faster network speeds to its customers, the person said. Such improvements could help overcome one obstacle to Starlink’s long term growth, as future bandwidth-hungry applications become commonplace.
Starlink is SpaceX’s most ambitious new effort after its rocket launch business. But the service, which had 1.5 million subscribers as of May, is still relatively small and, at least in areas with larger populations, faces tough competition from terrestrial internet services.
