In May SpaceX CEO Elon Musk visited Sao Paulo to meet with Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. The pair discussed how to provide internet connectivity to rural areas of the country and how they could use Starlink to monitor and reduce deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.
Just a few months later and Starlink is now connecting schools in the Amazon region to the internet.
On Thursday Brazil’s Minister of Communications Fabio Faria shared a pair of images on Twitter showing Musk participating in a video chat with dozens of very excited students at an unnamed school.
https://twitter.com/fabiofaria/status/1573003619913326593
Musk responded to the tweet noting that an internet connection is vital in today’s world in receiving an education and as a result a way to escape poverty.
Education is the path out of poverty and Internet access enables education
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 23, 2022
SpaceX is also doing what it can to connect student in rural areas of the United States. The company revealed in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) this week it is conducting a pilot program adding Starlink internet to rural school bus routes that are over 60 minutes each way.
The letter asks the FCC to include Starlink as a service that is eligible for funding support from the Schools and Libraries Universal Service Support Mechanism in order to add Starlink to more school buses across the country.
