SpaceX and T-Mobile to announce plans that boost connectivity

FILE PHOTO: A T-Mobile logo is seen on the storefront door of a store in Manhattan, New York, U.S., April 30, 2018. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/

(Reuters) - Rocket maker SpaceX said on Wednesday that founder Elon Musk and T-Mobile US Inc's Chief Executive Officer Mike Sievert would announce plans to increase connectivity on Thursday.

Musk, SpaceX chief and the world's richest person, said in a tweet that it will be "something special". (https://bit.ly/3T9alcV)

SpaceX's satellite communications division Starlink is launching a mega-constellation of satellites to low Earth orbit with the aim of providing internet connectivity to underserved regions of the world.

SpaceX has steadily launched some 2,700 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit since 2019 and has amassed hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

Competition in the low-Earth orbiting satellite internet sector is fierce between SpaceX, satellite operator OneWeb, and Jeff Bezos's Kuiper project, a unit of e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc.

(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)