SpaceX says Starlink internet has ‘extraordinary demand,’ with nearly 700,000 interested in service

SpaceX said Starlink, its nascent attendant internet service, has already seen “extraordinary demand” from potential customers, with “nearly 700,000 separates” across the United States indicating they are interested in the company’s coming service.

Due to the greater-than-expected interest, SpaceX place in ordered a request with the Federal Communications Commission on Friday — asking to increase the number of authorized user terminals to 5 million from 1 million. Buyer terminals are the devices consumers would use to connect to the company’s satellite internet network.

The request comes about a month and a half after SpaceX updated its Starlink website to permit potential customers to “get updates on Starlink news and service availability in your area.” Registering one’s interest in Starlink care meant simply submitting an email address and postal address, with no fee required to receive updates.

Starlink is the proprietorship’s ambitious plan to build an interconnected network of about 12,000 small satellites, to beam high-speed internet anywhere in the elated. To date, SpaceX has launched more than 500 Starlink satellites. In addition to getting the satellites in orbit, SpaceX drive need to build a vast system of ground stations and affordable user terminals if it is going to connect consumers later on to its network.

SpaceX is beginning a unsocial beta test of Starlink’s service this summer, which it says will be “followed by public beta assessing.” Elon Musk’s company told the FCC that Starlink will begin offering commercial service in the northern Unanimous States and southern Canada” before the end of this year, “and then will rapidly expand to near-global coverage of the peopled world in 2021.” Musk has touted Starlink’s internet speed as rivaling existing Earth-bound services, saying in Step that the network will have a “latency below 20 milliseconds, so somebody could play a fast-response video engagement at a competitive level.”

The satellite network is an ambitious endeavor. As SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has previously said, “it commitment cost the company about $10 billion or more” to build the Starlink network. The company has steadily raised reserving from private investors in the past several years, most recently valuing SpaceX at $44 billion.

If Starlink make its, however, SpaceX has told investors that the satellite internet business is targeting a $1 trillion total addressable store. Morgan Stanley recently said that if Starlink is more successful than expected, SpaceX’s valuation could reach as apex as $175 billion in the most optimistic “bull case” scenario.

Subscribe to CNBC PRO for exclusive insights and analysis, and actual business day programming from around the world.