Billionaire Elon Musk revealed and received praise for the successful launch of Starlink’s Direct-To-Cell satellite. Falcon 9 launched 21 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.. The new satellite is expected to streamline internet connectivity for all its users.

What is Starlink’s Direct-To-Cell service?

Starlink Direct-To-Cell Service will begin operating in the coming days. The implementation of the text function will be active in 2024, while the activation of the voice, data, and IOT services will occur in 2025.

By functioning as a mobile phone tower in orbit, Direct to Cell technology will be compatible with LTE phones. This means that if you have an active satellite signal, service will be available everywhere. For the same, no hardware or external connections are needed.

The enhanced Starlink satellites have an advanced modem that acts as a cellphone tower in space, eliminating dead zones with network integration similar to a standard roaming partner., as stated on SpaceX’s official website.

Global cellular providers using Direct to Cell to gain reciprocal access in all partner nations include T-Mobile in the U.S., Rogers in Canada, KDDI in Japan, Optus in Australia, One NZ in New Zealand, Salt in Switzerland, and Entel in Chile and Peru.

This will allow for mobile phone connectivity anywhere on Earth. Note, that this only supports ~7Mb per beam and the beams are very big, so while this is a great solution for locations with no cellular connectivity, it is not meaningfully competitive with existing terrestrial cellular networks, said Elon Musk on his X account.

In October 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter in $44 billion, and in December same year said that he would step down from CEO position when he gets a suitable replacement. He also said that he would then run the Twitter software and servers team.

Who is  Linda Yaccarino?

 Linda Yaccarino is from the media industry.  Yaccarino worked for NBCUniversal for more than 20 years. In 2011 Yaccarino joined NBCUniversal after serving 15 years at Turner Entertainment. She is also credited with taking the network ads in the digital era. She is handling all the NBC universal global advertising and partnerships businesses. She will join in 6 weeks from now. Yaccarino is the first female Twitter CEO. She is not from Tech- Background. All the X- CEOs are from the Tech Background.

The benefit of deleting the inactive account will be to those people who want a particular username but are not able to take it because that username has been taken by someone else. Now, if the user is not using that account and has not tweeted since the beginning, then in that situation the account will be deleted. By doing this, Twitter’s user accounts will indeed reduce, but Musk has not paid attention to it. 

According to reports, India has 23 million active users on Twitter, the US has 76 million active users, Japan- has 58 million, Indonesia-18 million, and Brazil has 19 million users.

Announcing the closure of 150 million inactive accounts on his Twitter account, Elon Musk wrote – ‘Twitter will soon start freeing up the namespace of 1.5 billion accounts.’

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has completed the deal to buy the social media platform Twitter. According to reports, Musk has swung into action with the completion of the deal. He has escorted out the company’s Indian-origin CEO Parag Agrawal and two other top executives. These include the names of the company’s legal policy head Vijaya Gadde and chief financial officer, Ned Segal. With this, the ongoing dispute between Musk and Twitter for the last several months has also ended. Musk offered $44 billion to buy Twitter. But later he backed out of it. After this, Twitter dragged him to court. Had Musk not pursued the deal by Friday, the court hearing would have started. Tesla CEO Musk acquired the micro-blogging platform Twitter, after a long time but before the court’s deadline.

Musk was embroiled for several months over the acquisition of Twitter. The US court had given him a deadline of Friday to complete the acquisition of Twitter. Failure to do so, Musk has to face trial in court. However, Musk took over Twitter on Friday before the deadline.

Elon reached the Twitter office a day ago

Elon Musk shared a video of himself walking into the Twitter office yesterday, October 27. He shared this video on Wednesday, two days before Friday’s deadline to complete the agreement to buy Twitter for $ 44 billion. Musk also changed his Twitter profile and wrote ‘Tweet chief’ in his personal statement. He also changed his location to Twitter HQ. Musk can be seen carrying a ‘sink’ to the premises of the Twitter office in the video.

Discussions over the deal, which last week appeared uncertain, accelerated over the weekend after Musk wooed Twitter shareholders with financing details of his offer.

With the finalization of the deal, Twitter has now become a private company from a public company since its 2013 initial public offering.

Under the terms of the agreement, Twitter stockholders will receive $54.20 in cash for each share of Twitter common stock that they own upon closing of the proposed transaction. The purchase price represents a 38% premium to Twitter’s closing stock price on April 1, 2022, which was the last trading day before Mr. Musk disclosed his approximately 9% stake in Twitter.

Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s CEO, said, “Twitter has a purpose and relevance that impacts the entire world. Deeply proud of our teams and inspired by the work that has never been more important.”

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a statement, adding, “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”, tweets Elon Musk.

“The board and I had many discussions about Elon joining the board, and with Elon directly. We were excited to collaborate and clear about the risks. We also believed that having Elon as a fiduciary of the company where he, like all board members, has to act in the best interest of the company and all our shareholders, was the best path forward. The board offered him a seat,” Agrawal said in a tweet.

“Elon’s appointment to the board was to become officially effective 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning he will no longer be joining the board. I believe this is for the best,” he wrote.

Agrawal tweeted last week that he was “happy” that Musk would join the board of Twitter after Musk announced a 9.2 percent investment in the company and became its largest stakeholder.

“There will be distractions ahead, but our goals and priorities remain unchanged. The decisions we make and how we execute is in our hands, no one else’s. Let’s tune out the noise, and stay focused on the work and what we’re building,” Parag Agarwal, CEO twitter added further.

Twitter’s share has dropped 7.5 percent since Musk revealed his stake on April 4, after soaring 27 percent the day before.