BIZ BUZZ: Who buys Starlink dishes?
Converge ICT Solutions Inc. opened a new revenue stream as an authorized reseller of tech tycoon Elon Musk’s Starlink, a satellite connectivity services provider that has become an alternative for those in remote areas.
And it looks like this venture is boding well for the fiber service provider. “We have a few hundreds already in the market,” Converge CEO and co-founder Dennis Uy said in a virtual briefing on Thursday.
Uy said they are selling this product to enterprise clients, including resorts on islands where traditional internet infrastructure is lacking. He added that some mining companies already bought satellite dishes.
Apart from these, Converge chief commercial officer Benjamin Azada said some customers want satellite connectivity for redundancy.
“While we provide fiber connectivity, sometimes, due to weather, the fiber cable might get cut,” Azada said. “It is good to have the back-up connectivity.”
Other customers for this product are in retail and tourism, he added.
According to the Starlink website, subscription for enterprise customers starts at P1,950 per month. A satellite dish costs about P40,000.
Starlink provides internet speed of up to 200 Mbps (megabit per second), which can support high-definition video conferencing, real-time financial transactions, cloud computing and remote-controlled industrial operations.
