While cities enjoy a myriad of broadband Internet service providers (ISP), rural America remains a barren landscape in that regard. From fiber optic cable services and over-cable Internet providers to upcoming 5G cellular services, all are competing to offer the best coverage, price, and speed. But the consumer--the residents of rural areas--are conveniently overlooked in program design, implementation, and budgetary planning.

During a former government administration, broadband Internet service was classified as an essential service--indeed, even for those outside the city circles. In the effort to expedite the inclusion of rural residents' into the 21st century, funds were set aside for companies that are first to connect this much-needed service.

Satellite internet services have been generally excluded since they don't meet the minimum requirements for latency (<100ms). However, Elon Musk's Starlink would be the exception, as the company made the bold claim that its orbit-based Internet services would satisfy the requirement. Musk himself recently has doubled down with a promise of latency below 20ms.

Starlink Beta Testers Share Internet Speeds, SpaceX achieves latency below FCC's 100ms thresholdhttps://t.co/g1IHPb8XwY

— Tesmanian.com (@Tesmanian_com) August 16, 2020

Just a few months back, the FCC started questioning the claim and even threatened to pull back on the funding, without much explanation as to why the reversal in the funding was considered. Nevertheless, Starlink continued with its satellite deployment via the SpaceX Falcon 9 deployment platform, reaching the current count of operational satellites of 597. This allowed the company not only to start publicly testing but prompted Starlink to file for more user coverage due to increased demand.

One of the public testers posted various results on Reddit, including upload and download speeds but more importantly, the latency results:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/i9w09n/list_of_confirmed_starlink_speed_tests/

These data not only confirm Starlink's promise but also Elon's tweet where he states that the Starlink's measuring stick will ultimately be online gaming abilities, which require latency to be less than 20ms.

Whether you live in an urban center, or are amongst the woods, Starlink service pledges to serve you--even where no ISP has gone before.

Article edited by @SmokeyShorts, you can follow him on Twitter