SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, has said that the company’s satellite internet service, Starlink, has been approved in Nigeria.
Musk, who made the confirmation on Friday, through his verified Twitter page, had earlier hinted at rolling out the satellite internet service in Africa following a question from a fan about his plans for Africa.
Since last year, SpaceX, which saw Nigeria as a critical market, has been in talks with the telecoms regulator in the country, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to secure licences needed to launch Starlink.
“Starlink approved by Nigeria and Mozambique”, the billionaire, who is also the founder of Tesla Inc. tweeted.
Must equally added that the satellite internet service has also been approved by the Philippines.
According to SpaceX, Starlink was launched as a low-earth orbiting (LOE) constellation of satellites to provide low latency, high bandwidth internet to consumers across the globe.
A low latency network connection is one that generally experiences small delay times, while bandwidth refers to the amount of information that a connection to the internet can handle at a given time.
Starlink internet is said to work by sending information through the vacuum of space, where it travels much faster than in fiber-optic cable.
It is also said to be ideally suited for areas where connectivity has typically been unreliable or completely unavailable.
With the approval, Starlink will be rivalling 5G licence operators such as MTN Nigeria and Mafab Communications, as well as other internet service providers like Globacom, Airtel, and 9mobile.