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Billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX is expanding into the Philippines by offering satellite broadband services to businesses and governments, his local partner said on Thursday.
Data Lake Inc, a Philippines-based company partly owned by tycoon Henry Sy Jr, said it signed a deal to become SpaceX’s Starlink’s first partner in Southeast Asia.
“The Philippines is an archipelago, and connecting our nation to the wider world often requires extensive infrastructure,” Data Lake Chairman Anthony Almeida said in a statement.
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The Philippines is made up of more than 7,600 islands, many of which are isolated and mountainous, making broadband coverage difficult for businesses. Also typically around 20 tropical storms hit the country each year, often damaging infrastructure and cutting communications between islands and provinces.
SpaceX’s Starlink uses a network of thousands of satellites to provide internet access in remote areas or when communications are disrupted during natural disasters.
In the Philippines, only 7 in 100 people have a fixed broadband subscription, trailing regional peers such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, according to the World Bank.
Earlier this month, the Philippine Department of Information and Communications Technology said that Starlink plans to enter the Philippine market in 2023.
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