Starlink |OT| High bandwidth - Low latency Internet for everyone in the world

mclem · Oct 22, 2019

Jonnax said:
The OP and most of the comments are talking about how it's much closer to earth than a normal satellite.

Only half as far, right? That'd still at most halve the distance it has to travel in the roundtrip. Mum having half latency would be nice, but it's still going to be fairly painful; we're not talking in the 100ms bracket here.

(Fair's fair, it's quite possible that Mum doesn't have good satellite internet, I don't know the full details!)

Paganmoon · Oct 22, 2019

10 ms latency sounds like a pipedream. The return time of a signal to a satellite at 1100km would be around 8 ms alone.

Jonnax · Oct 22, 2019

mclem said:
Only half as far, right? That'd still at most halve the distance it has to travel in the roundtrip. Mum having half latency would be nice, but it's still going to be fairly painful; we're not talking in the 100ms bracket here.

(Fair's fair, it's quite possible that Mum doesn't have good satellite internet, I don't know the full details!)

Nah, that was someone's assumption.
Viasat and HughesNet are apparently 35,000km above the earth whilst these are 500km.

Certainly going to have a better roundtrip.

But who knows if it'll be any good.

Day 1-ing Stadia is probably a bad idea.
Day 1-ing this makes Stadia seem totally risk free haha.

Herne · Oct 22, 2019

Tom Praderio, a SpaceX firmware engineer, said during live launch commentary "This system, if successful, would provide people in low to moderate population densities around the world with affordable high-speed internet access, including many who have never had Internet access before,"Elon said

So... who said it?

newmoneytrash · Oct 22, 2019

Ryno23 said:
People want to give him so much shit, but he always gets done exactly what he says he is going to do

how's that hyperloop going

RROCKMAN · Oct 22, 2019

Interesting, but I have a hard time believing this will be more affordable than internet now.

I'll keep an eye on it I guess

Anarion07 · Oct 22, 2019

newmoneytrash said:
how's that hyperloop going

The prototypes are pretty promising so far

shark97 · Oct 22, 2019

Lagspike_exe said:
What is the cost of launching 42.000 satellites in Earth's orbit? This seems like a complicated solution to a problem that could simply involve more fiber investments.

Digging up a bunch of ground to lay cables to houses that already have cables going to them anyway is about the most expensive and work intensive thing imaginable, as well as illegal due to environmental regulations, cable monopoly etc.

I dont see why fiber is needed when my cable internet can already deliver me 1gbps, today. Whats needed is some competition, but putting an extra cord in the ground for every company that wants to do it aint the way.

In texas i pay 7c kwh for electricity and theres competition, although theres one line to your house electric companies can compete to deliver you power over it. They decoupled the infrastructure maintanence from the electric delivery company. I wish the same thing would happen with my cable pipe, but obviously regulations brought by lobbying make it not so.

Deleted member 17952 · Oct 22, 2019

Sounds nice.

Too bad it's never going to happen in my country, too much red tape, corruption, and monopolies for anything to even improve.

But good luck to whoever gets coverage. I still think streaming games is a dumb idea regardless of whether Starlink succeeds or not and it will never be better than local gaming (whoever thinks that is kidding themselves), but better internet for all is always a good thing.

shark97 · Oct 22, 2019

papertowel said:
They already have 60 satelittes orbiting right now with another 60 getting launched in a few weeks. The tech exists, the rocket exists. Now its just getting them up there. And SpaceX is not the only company doing this. But they are the only company that produces both the satellite and a rocket, so if anybody can pull it off it'll probably be them.

So 30000 planned, 60 launched. In other words nothing to really indicate this isnt just vaporware, yet.

Im not clear on if 120 is enough to cover the usa though. Which is my concern since its where i live.

My monthly cable internet bill is a source of annoyance to me as its too high because theres literally zero competition, they can essentially charge whatever and as a big techie/gamer i have to pay it, so i really hope either this or 5g home internet takes off. Is covering the usa honestly a near term likelehood and how many sattelites would it take?

Komo · Oct 22, 2019

Anarion07 said:
this was also an Elon Dreams Big idea

So was Tesla and PayPal.

adumb · Oct 22, 2019

I dunno, the toys are a little pricey.

Also Elon Musk can fuck off.

shark97 · Oct 22, 2019

Mbolibombo said:
Ah remember the good ol' days when internet via satelite was offered here in Sweden at speeds of 0.5Mbit-1Mbit :P

But we're good here in Sweden for now, no need for this here. Government has had a strategy for quite some time, and by 2020 95% of all households will have access to at least 100Mbit/s and by 2025 everyone will have access to a Gbit line.

These sound quite low. I have 1gbps access in usa now, although i choose to only pay for 400 mbps (the bottleneck is almost always the server anyway even at 400, plus wifi only delivers about 250 and my house doesnt have ethernet jacks in the walls) And i dont exactly live in a huge city.

twisted89 · Oct 22, 2019

I know nothing about satellites but surely having so many in orbit there's a huge risk of collisions?

Yerffej · Oct 22, 2019

I want to read an article by someone with real life use cases through bad weather.

Mbolibombo · Oct 22, 2019

shark97 said:
These sound quite low. I have 1gbps access in usa now, although i choose to only pay for 400 mbps (the bottleneck is almost always the server anyway even at 400, plus wifi only delivers about 250 and my house doesnt have ethernet jacks in the walls) And i dont exactly live in a huge city.

What seems low? The speed? I to can have gigabyte line if I wish, heck my ISP even offers 10gb line. That wasnt the point of my post but rather that every single household in Sweden should be able to get a gigabyte line 6 year and 100mb next year if they so desire as to why we wont be in need of this service.

Linus815 · Oct 22, 2019

shark97 said:
These sound quite low. I have 1gbps access in usa now, although i choose to only pay for 400 mbps (the bottleneck is almost always the server anyway even at 400, plus wifi only delivers about 250 and my house doesnt have ethernet jacks in the walls) And i dont exactly live in a huge city.

it isnt about the speeds, its about the availability of them. the us has a big problem with that, majority of places are still only covered by crappy ADSL lines.

VariantX · Oct 22, 2019

nikos said:
Something about this seems fishy. Also, launching 30k+ satellites is crazy. I don't trust anything about this for some reason.

You're launching 30k satellites into space BECAUSE ISP'S will sue the shit out of you for trying to lay new lines and lobby the shit out of local governments to create rules that make it damn near impossible for another competitor to come in even if they had the resources. That's how fucked the situation is with bringing in new competitors and how people are essentially held hostage by a single company with nowhere else to turn to.

Deleted member 135 · Oct 22, 2019

RestEerie said:
Is this a wholly American owned entity? If so, good luck on the part of 'for everyone'...and because it ain't gonna be implemented globally. Not just China, even EU seems 'wary' of relying too much on American tech especially in terms of networking.

And Japan and S.Korea will look at this and ask: "Why do we need this?" while continue to use their public Wifi at 1gbps.

Can satellite signals be jammed? If not I could see this being a useful psyop tool if an antenna capable of connecting to the network can be designed to be made from readily available common parts and plans for such antennas are disseminated in hostile oppressive countries like the PRC and North Korea.

Kinda like a Radio Free Asia but with internet.

Tappin Brews · Oct 22, 2019

this will be huge for a rural hermit such as myself. hope i'd be in the mid-2020 latitudes

Deleted member 12317 · Oct 22, 2019

RossC said:
That's a lot of satellites. Do they all get launched individually or do a group of them get sent up in one launch?

They launch it by batches, last time it was 60 in a single rocket, they can stack them, check the first photo of the "Satellite details" part in the first post.

Paganmoon said:
10 ms latency sounds like a pipedream. The return time of a signal to a satellite at 1100km would be around 8 ms alone.

Starlink satellite are at 550 Km, hence the lower latency, mostly trafic around the Earth, it will be faster than fiber across oceans. A bit longer locally, but it targets remote areas not deserved by fiber.

Lightning · Oct 22, 2019

So when does the Star Fox DLC drop for this?

Looking forward to seeing what happens with this, though, I can't see the bandwidth being there for a significant amount of users.

spectator · Oct 22, 2019

ARPU $60 a month?! Yeesh.

Alucardx23 · Oct 22, 2019

SG-17 said:
Can satellite signals be jammed? If not I could see this being a useful psyop tool if an antenna capable of connecting to the network can be designed to be made from readily available common parts and plans for such antennas are disseminated in hostile oppressive countries like the PRC and North Korea.

Kinda like a Radio Free Asia but with internet.

It seems that Starlink will cooperate with every country. If they don't want their service they won't send the signal, but as you mentioned there is still some potential to hack away some solutions on places like Cuba or North Korea.

"According to interview with Mr Musk way back, they will have agreements with all countries where the service is available and deliver in compliance with whatever requirements the country has. Since China will be a really important market for them I am sure they will not bypass anything."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.re...ments/7sk3x0/starlink_and_the_great_firewall/

RossC · Oct 22, 2019

Xcell Miguel said:
They launch it by batches, last time it was 60 in a single rocket, they can stack them, check the first photo of the "Satellite details" part in the first post.

That's really cool. Thanks!

Alucardx23 · Oct 22, 2019

RROCKMAN said:
Interesting, but I have a hard time believing this will be more affordable than internet now.

I'll keep an eye on it I guess

Just think about the scale this type of service will have, just by that alone they should be able to lower the price a lot more compared to other ISPs. Starlink has been promoted several times as a way to provide high quality internet to poor countries.

Fonst · Oct 22, 2019

Does it come with a cool plastic toy ship?

shark97 · Oct 22, 2019

Linus815 said:
it isnt about the speeds, its about the availability of them. the us has a big problem with that, majority of places are still only covered by crappy ADSL lines.

not really, i live in rural.

adsl barely exists.

Paganmoon · Oct 22, 2019

Xcell Miguel said:
They launch it by batches, last time it was 60 in a single rocket, they can stack them, check the first photo of the "Satellite details" part in the first post.

Starlink satellite are at 550 Km, hence the lower latency, mostly trafic around the Earth, it will be faster than fiber across oceans. A bit longer locally, but it targets remote areas not deserved by fiber.

OP's info says 1100km to 1300km

Alucardx23 said:
83 orbital planes 1,110km to 1,325km (700 miles)

Deleted member 12317 · Oct 22, 2019

Paganmoon said:
OP's info says 1100km to 1300km

According to Starlnk's website it's now 550 Km : https://www.starlink.com
They may have changed their plan and OP's info is oudated.

FCC report about this change : https://fcc.report/IBFS/SAT-MOD-20181108-00083/1569860

Screencap of the Starlink page found on previous page here :

Alucardx23 · Oct 22, 2019

Paganmoon said:
OP's info says 1100km to 1300km

Sorry for the confusion, not all of the satellites will be at the same altitude, some will be as low as 328 KM.

tr1b0re · Oct 22, 2019

It says "everyone in the world" but these sorts of things never come to my country

Yerffej · Oct 22, 2019

I wanna know how and who they deploy to set up these things at homes. That's going to have to be a pretty decent amoutn of people at the ready for tech issues when they pop up.

Anarion07 · Oct 22, 2019

tr1b0re said:
It says "everyone in the world" but these sorts of things never come to my country

Technically I don't see how any country could prevent the usage of this?

Alucardx23 · Oct 22, 2019

tr1b0re said:
It says "everyone in the world" but these sorts of things never come to my country

Excepting the poles, Starlink will offer full coverage to the rest of the world. If it doesn't come to you country it's because your government is against it.

Empyrean Cocytus · Oct 22, 2019

Okay, legit thought this was about the Ubisoft toys-to-life game.

....I enjoyed it!

Alucardx23 · Oct 22, 2019

Yerffej said:
I wanna know how and who they deploy to set up these things at homes. That's going to have to be a pretty decent amoutn of people at the ready for tech issues when they pop up.

That part is not clear. Might be local resellers, maybe direct purchase from them.

Alucardx23 · Oct 22, 2019

Anarion07 said:
Technically I don't see how any country could prevent the usage of this?

They have mentioned they are willing to cooperate with governments, if they don't want their services on their region. You can imagine the conflicts that might arise if they don't respect that.

Yerffej · Oct 22, 2019

Alucardx23 said:
That part is not clear. Might be local resellers, maybe direct purchase from them.

That...could be fraught with liability issues. I have it tough enough in my area with Frontier, who bought out Verizon's network. Getting someone to come out and take care of a messed up modem or other weird issues can take up to 4 days.

daybreak · Oct 22, 2019

Alucardx23 said:
That part is not clear. Might be local resellers, maybe direct purchase from them.

This is something I am keen to know more about. If it's resellers, I would be very interested in starting up a Starlink installation company for rural Canada.

Anastasis · Oct 22, 2019

My parents live in a rural place and really need decent internet. I will keep an eye on this! Thanks for posting!

Alucardx23 · Oct 22, 2019

Yerffej said:
That...could be fraught with liability issues. I have it tough enough in my area with Frontier, who bought out Verizon's network. Getting someone to come out and take care of a messed up modem or other weird issues can take up to 4 days.

That is certainly part of the service that must be good.

Alucardx23 · Oct 22, 2019

Winterreise said:
This is something I am keen to know more about. If it's resellers, I would be very interested in starting up a Starlink installation company for rural Canada.

I'm pretty sure that would be a successful company. I would start asking questions today, direcly to them if I were you.

Deleted member 23046 · Oct 22, 2019

When a scientist meets an engineer.

https://www.businessinsider.fr/us/s...tellite-after-crash-warning-due-to-bug-2019-9

daybreak · Oct 22, 2019

Alucardx23 said:
I'm pretty sure that would be a successful company. I would start asking questions today, direcly to them if I were you.

Definitely. I'm already working with a local rural ISP as a contractor for business development, this would be an interesting offshoot. Just grabbed a couple domains relating to this that I feel would be high value.

Avengers23 · Oct 22, 2019

Lightning said:
So when does the Star Fox DLC drop for this?

Looking forward to seeing what happens with this, though, I can't see the bandwidth being there for a significant amount of users.

These satellites will do a barrel roll.

Mass_Pincup · Oct 22, 2019

I don't understand how the only government you have to go to to launch satellites across the whole world is the US.

Also at $60 it's basically DOA in a lot of places.

DrBo42 · Oct 22, 2019

Pretty cool but a little concerned about how many of these are launching into space. Space junk is no joke.

Alucardx23 · Oct 22, 2019

Mass_Pincup said:
I don't understand how the only government you have to go to to launch satellites across the whole world is the US.

Also at $60 it's basically DOA in a lot of places.

We still don't know the prices for this service. Starlink is being promoted as a service that will bring high quality internet to poor or difficult to reach places of the world, so you can definitely expect good prices. Specially when compared to the current average price for internet we have today.

dude · Oct 22, 2019

While adding space junk and making observations harder are both bad, if this thing works, and can help millions have internet for the first time - I'd rather we prioritize actual living humans and their quality of life.
But I don't have a lot of trust in Musk in general, so we'll have to see I guess.

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