China surpasses Elon Musk's Starlink in 6G laser transmission from satellites to Earth.
China has surpassed Musk in a competition, while the situation in India remains uncertain.
In November 2020, China launched the world’s first 6G satellite into space. Now, nearly five years later, the country has reached a new milestone in laser communications between satellites and Earth. The Chinese space technology company Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co reported achieving an extraordinary image transmission rate of 100 gigabits per second during its tests this past weekend. This advancement is ten times faster than the previous record and was achieved between a ground truck and the Jilin-1 02A02 satellite, which is part of the company’s constellation of 117 satellites.
Wang Hanghang, the company’s laser communication director, noted that while Elon Musk's Starlink has announced laser communication between satellites, it has yet to implement it for connections between satellites and Earth. Referring to this achievement, Wang described the transmission speed of 100 Gbps as sufficient to download ten full movies in just one second. Additionally, he mentioned that the company plans to integrate laser communication into all its Jilin-1 constellation satellites by 2025, with the intention of expanding this technology to 300 additional satellites by 2027.
This advancement highlights how China not only leads in the implementation of 5G technologies but is also at the forefront of developing 6G networks, with speeds that promise to be 10 to 20 times faster than 5G.