Internet services and social media play a very important role in getting information in war stricken areas and usually, the internet is the first thing that the enemy targets to cut off the opponent from the world. When the internet services were disrupted on the eve of the Russian invasion, Mykhailo, the Vice President reached out to Elon Musk and requested his assistance. It was not less than a Hollywood movie scene, in a moment Musk proceeded to activate the Starlink network over Ukraine and promised more terminals to be sent.
As it can be seen, Musk has the power to really move the shipments when he wants to as the Starlink dishes which are called dishys have arrived in Ukraine in less than 24 hours. This is quite a logistical feat in extraordinary times.
It can be seen that the Dishy diagram present on the box is of the circular kind which means that the shipment is Dishy V1s and not Dishy McFlatface. There are three rows of 9 boxes with 2 boxes at the very end. So, the net total of 29 Dishys are visible in the picture. If we consider the length of the truck, this means we are easily looking at around 110 to 218 Dishys.
If we talk about the average internet broadband speed in Ukraine, according to Cable.co.uk, it is around 25Mbps. A speed test has already been run by a user in Ukraine on the Dishy V1 and he saw a sustained speed of 136Mbps with a maximum speed of around 200Mbps. These results are very impressive considering the fact that this is almost 5x the national average available in an area of war. The user commented that this test was straight out of the window and without any adjustments. So, a maximum speed of about 200Mbps seems totally possible in Ukraine while using the Dishy V1 hardware.
While this is a plus point and the Ukrainians are reconnected to the internet, caution should also be urged as this signal from the Dishys could be tracked by the Russians and could be used as a home beacon for missiles. It can be read about this potential attack here. However, it should be noted that this requires significant expertise in technology and complete air superiority over Ukraine. So, this is something Ukrainian forces will already know about. So it appears that the internet disconnections are going to become past, all thanks to Starlink.
Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 26, 2022