[HN Gopher] Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps
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Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps
Author : trulyrandom
Score : 245 points
Date : 2020-08-14 17:22 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| Barrin92 wrote:
| just to do some napkin maths, the entire constellation is
| supposed to be 12k satellites. Some googling gives 20Gbps
| throughput per satellite, so that'd be about 240k Gbps per
| second.
|
| Now of course the satellites keep exchanging information
| themselves and not all satellites are everywhere all the time but
| ignoring that, and let's say you can assume ten times as much
| bandwidth because not everyone is online at the same time, that
| still doesn't serve a lot of people right?
|
| If you go with their eventual Gigabit speed claims that'd work
| out to about 2 million customers if I didn't make an error.
| That's only a single digit percentage of the American rural
| population let alone anywhere else in the world.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Bandwidth is over provisioned at 50-100x the amount. Sometimes
| even more.
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| If that's the case, assuming 50mbs at 50x overprovisioning
| and $50/mo average, the 12k satellite system could provide
| service for 240m people and generate $144B/yr in revenue.
| bob33212 wrote:
| This will not be competitive with existing broadband offerings.
| Especially in competitive markets. Some people pay 70/month or
| less for 1GB currently in good markets. This will be
| competitive where the cost is currently 100/month for much
| slower connections.
| gbear605 wrote:
| Gigabit speeds are great, but 80% of the value of Starlink is
| just getting the 11 Mbps to the people who can't get even that
| speed in any better way. There are many (millions?) of
| Americans who don't have that. So let's calculate from that
| number (or 10 Mbps, to make it easy).
|
| 240K Gbps * 1000Gb/Mb / 10Mbps/customer = 24M customers.
|
| I've heard that in most residential cases, people on average
| use about a tenth of their bandwidth. That gets us up to 240M
| customers. That's only about a tenth of the world's rural
| populations [1], but that is still pretty great.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-...
| manmal wrote:
| Also, rural endpoints can be shared among multiple
| households, AFAIK small African villages often share one WiFi
| hotspot, and sometimes one phone/tablet/computer.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| For comparison, DSL is 1.5 Mbps. 4g is between 5Mbps and 12 Mbps
| (up to 50Mbps in burst mode), while 5g generally _starts_ at
| 50Mbps. Cable internet is usually 25 Mbps, and up to 1 Gbps if
| you 're willing to pay, and fiber is up to 10 Gbps if you're
| lucky enough to live in an area with fiber built out to your
| home.
|
| So in other words, Starlink is useful if you live too far away
| from a major residential center to have access to better and
| cheaper forms of internet access.
|
| There aren't enough people in the US or EU that live in rural
| areas far from decent internet connections for Starlink to be
| more than a tiny fraction of the ISP market.
|
| On top of that, unlike existing forms of internet access,
| Starlink is susceptible to weather conditions.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > There aren't enough people in the US or EU that live in rural
| areas far from decent internet connections for Starlink to be
| more than a tiny fraction of the ISP market.
|
| Oh, I'm not sure that's true. 41,000,000 Americans don't have
| access to broadband [1]. That's the entire population of Canada
| and then some.
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-19/where-
| the...
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Starlink can't handle that many people, so it's a moot point
| that there are a theoretical 41 million potential customers.
|
| You can build out landlines far more easily than you can
| launch satellites; you just need the cable/fiber and some
| guys to dig a trench. The reason it hasn't happened is
| because it's not worth the financial investment without
| government subsidies (and this is why the federal government
| provides some subsidies for rural broadband buildouts).
|
| Iridium tried to be Starlink a decade or two ago, and they
| ran into the same problem: the cost of servicing rural and
| remote areas far exceeds the money you would receive from
| rural customers without massive government subsidies.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > You can build out landlines far more easily than you can
| launch satellites;
|
| Each satellite costs SpaceX about $250K to build and $500K
| to launch and services thousands of customers.
|
| That same $750K might buy you a mile or so of trenching and
| cable. Many rural customers need multiple miles each.
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| Century link quotes me about $5K / mile of copper (I
| assume). But they will only give me dial tone, not
| internet, because their equipment is saturated (rural
| Montana).
| bartvk wrote:
| Plus, if these satellites are mass produced, then I'd
| expect the price to drop because they figure out ways to
| make them cheaper.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _That same $750K might buy you a mile or so of trenching
| and cable._
|
| If you want to make this about the economics...
|
| All studies on this topic report that it costs less than
| $250k/mile in metro areas, which cost more due to the
| need to get permits, plan around utility lines and
| existing infrastructure, dig into asphalt/sidewalk, and
| then repair the damage.
|
| In a rural area where you can just dig into dirt and not
| repair anything, $750k should get you all of a town and
| then some, and I'm assuming we're talking about one
| scattered out across tens of miles. You're primarily
| paying for labor, and it's possible for a small team to
| dig dozens of miles of utility trenches in a day with
| common construction equipment. Once you lay the cable,
| your expenses are essentially fully booked.
|
| A single Starlink satellite, assuming maximum satellite
| bandwidth and minimal user bandwidth would service at
| most 2500 customers. At $750k/launch, assuming a useful
| life of 4 years (per Musk's Techcrunch interview from
| April 2020) and maximum customers, Spacelink would need
| to charge at least $6.25/month to each customer _not
| accounting for operational or marketing costs_ just to
| break even. You would need to at least double the price
| to cover ongoing operational costs. Plus, Spacelink would
| need to pay other ISPs for interconnection agreements,
| which is another 1x cost there. Add in the costs of
| paying off R &D and other capitalized costs, and you're
| looking at a minimum of 5x the putative minimum price of
| $6.25/month, or roughly $30/month.
|
| Or in other words, Starlink would be charging no less
| than its current satellite and landline competitors
| already charge today.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Your operational and marketing and capital costs apply to
| all ISP's, not just Starlink. The net present value of
| $6.25 monthly at a 3% interest rate for 20 years is
| $1100. For 50 years it's $2000. So that's your breakeven
| point. You might be able to wire up an entire town for
| less than $2K per customer but you certainly can't do
| rural customers for that.
|
| Shotwell has said that Starlink will be competitive with
| $80/month internet.
| adventured wrote:
| > Starlink can't handle that many people, so it's a moot
| point that there are a theoretical 41 million potential
| customers.
|
| It's a critical point in fact, because you're never going
| to capture an entire market, you're going to capture at
| best a modest fraction of the maximum market (for numerous
| obvious reasons).
|
| Those 41 million potential customers are actually more like
| maybe 10-12 million stable or semi-stable households. The
| 41m is an incorrect number to go on, that represents the
| total number of people rather than the household count.
|
| You're only going to get a fraction of those 10-12 million
| households no matter what you do. So now you're talking
| about probably at least 1m, up to maybe 4-6m households /
| accounts. Starlink can make a large dent in that.
| [deleted]
| petschge wrote:
| DSL might only be 1.5 Mbps where you are but it is standardized
| between (at least) 0.7Mbps and 300 Mbps. I personally have used
| it at speeds between 2 and 100 Mbps.
| robotnikman wrote:
| The fact that people can actually switch from their current ISP
| to starlink is a big deal though.
|
| Most people just use the internet for social media and video
| streaming, which starlink provides more than enough bandwidth
| for
| gamblor956 wrote:
| People can switch from their current ISP now, unless they
| live in a rural area. They can choose between DSL, cable, or
| go fully mobile and rely on their 4G/5G connection.
|
| Starlink's bandwidth rates only apply to their beta test.
| Think about that: with minimal users, speed caps out at
| 60Mbps! 4G can handle that even when the network is fairly
| congested.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" 4g is between 5Mbps and 12 Mbps (up to 50Mbps in burst
| mode), while 5g generally starts at 50Mbps."_
|
| Yup. I actually regularly get sustained speeds well over 50
| Mbps on 4G with carrier aggregation (which some phones call
| "4G+"). And anything less than 200 Mbps is a bad day on 5G.
| (Vodafone UK network)
|
| https://www.speedtest.net/result/9898742367
| bserge wrote:
| So, I'm on 4G right now, getting 45/25 Mbps, in what is
| considered a rural area (20km from the city).
|
| I lived in Birmingham, UK, a way more populated area, and got
| ~40/30 on 4G, as well.
|
| I noticed many people say they're lucky to get ~15 Mbps on 4G
| and I'm confused, why? Is it just congestion or is there some
| difference in the towers/implementation?
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" I noticed many people say they're lucky to get ~15 Mbps
| on 4G and I'm confused, why? Is it just congestion or is
| there some difference in the towers/implementation?"_
|
| It can depend on the network, the device, congestion levels,
| and location. Some networks are notoriously bandwidth-
| constrained ( _ahem_ Three UK) and will always be prone to
| bad 4G speeds. Some networks have added capacity on more
| exotic 4G bands that are only supported by relatively recent
| devices. If you 're connected to a macro site in a major city
| it probably has fibre backhaul with plenty of bandwidth
| available, but if you're connected to a small edge cell it
| may have radio backhaul with less capacity available.
|
| And newer devices will support things like carrier
| aggregation and higher levels of MIMO that get faster speeds.
|
| Interesting site showing how the UK mobile frequency is
| allocated here: https://pedroc.co.uk/content/uk-commercial-
| mobile-spectrum
|
| Note that only fairly new devices will support the more
| exotic bands like 32/38/40 (and, of course, 5G).
| gamblor956 wrote:
| 4G is slower in the US, largely due to congestion.
| adventured wrote:
| 4G in the US often matches the parent's reference speeds,
| it depends on where you're at. People often make poor
| comparisons with the US, they context drop, comparing eg
| the speed across the entire US or a state versus their
| experience in one large city in a smaller more densely
| populated country (and then cherry picking based on a good
| outcome).
|
| Cleveland, Minneapolis, Detroit, NYC, Boston, Pittsburgh,
| Cincinnati, Baltimore are the best in the US, _averaging_
| at or above 30mbps across the cities in question. SF,
| Philly, Atlanta, Kansas City were also competitive with
| what the parent referenced (eg the SF avg was 27mbps,
| meaning people are routinely seeing the parent 's ~40mbps
| in Birmingham).
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2019/05/31/state-mobile-network-speeds/
| wlesieutre wrote:
| The US does have a lot of people in rural areas where 5G
| coverage won't be good. And even if you have good 4G coverage,
| take take a look at the 4G home internet plans from Verizon:
| https://www.verizonwireless.com/home-services/lte-internet-i...
|
| For $60/month you get 10 GB of data. For $150 you can go up to
| 40 GB. Overage is billed at $10 for each additional 1GB.
|
| If I did my math right, at 12 Mbps you can chew through the
| largest monthly data allotment in under 8 hours.
|
| In practical terms, for $150/month you can't even download one
| AAA game, and even if you buy all your games on disc you'll
| probably still go over the data cap just downloading mandatory
| updates.
|
| Starlink hasn't said anything about data caps yet, but there's
| plenty of room to compete with terrestrial broadband providers
| on things other than download speed.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| I get that people are placing their internet hopes and dreams
| on Starlink being cheap, but the financials they've provided
| just don't work out to them being any cheaper than any
| existing ISP unless (a) Starlink receives massive government
| subsidies (b) signs up a fuckton of commercial
| partners/sponsors, or (c) runs the network at a huge loss.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| They've provided financials?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| They've indicated that each satellite costs about $250K
| to build, and launch costs per satellite are about $500K.
| Each satellite lasts 5 years. Each satellite gets 50Gbps
| (25Gbps actual since you have to go up & down). They
| haven't released base station costs, but there are some
| estimates that it'll be about $2K per. The other big
| unknown is the utilization factor.
|
| It's pretty hard to punch those numbers into a model and
| not show SpaceX making money hand over fist, but there
| are bears out there that have come up with some really
| contrived models.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _It 's pretty hard to punch those numbers into a model
| and not show SpaceX making money hand over fist, but
| there are bears out there that have come up with some
| really contrived models._
|
| At $2000 just to buy in to the system, they've cut off a
| huge chunk of their purported market.
|
| Unless they plan on using unicorn accounting again, it's
| pretty hard to punch those numbers into a model and show
| SpaceX even making its money back on the _first wave_ of
| satellite launches unless they dominate the rural ISP
| market. In order to just break even on fixed and
| operational costs they 'd need to charge at least as much
| as existing rural ISPs, and if they charge significantly
| more they won't acquire significant market share because
| their are faster options available at higher pricepoints
| that aren't susceptible to the weather. And most of those
| alternatives have roughly the same buy-in costs if SpaceX
| actually plans on making customers pay $2000 for a base
| station.
|
| And then they'd need to do it all over again in 5 years
| when they have to replace their satellites.
| hangonhn wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giQ8xEWjnBs
|
| According to this Engineering Explained video, it may be possible
| to achieve a lower latency using Star Link than over fiber if the
| points are far enough. People like high frequency traders might
| be willing to pay a ton for such a thing.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| I recall when Iridium was going up, there was discussion about
| the complexity of the software that managed the pattern of
| transmitting packets among the satellites. The description
| indicated it was a complex software problem and they were
| struggling to get it right. (I went looking for articles from the
| time period, but couldn't track one down, however, came across
| MIT/Motorola FCC application for what would become Iridium.[1])
|
| It's likely(?) that the orders of magnitude more Starlink
| satellites, their LEO speed, and other factors that impact
| optimization (amount of data to transmit, type of data, current
| load on intervening sats, positional changes during transmission,
| handoffs, etc.) can make this pretty hard. Or... It could be a
| learning system via neural net, etc.
|
| The notion that the system could get faster and more efficient
| over time, simply by operating and without the usual trudge of
| scheduled software releases and upgrades, is an intriguing
| possibility. Tho somehow, that's not a novel notion...
|
| [1]
| https://web.mit.edu/deweck/www/research_files/comsats_2004_0...
| TheSkyHasEyes wrote:
| What happened to the Iridium satellites?
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| After multiple bankruptcies, primarily offering nautical
| communication services.
|
| https://www.iridium.com/products/iridium-go/
| busterarm wrote:
| IIRC, Starlink satellites operate at a much lower orbit, are
| much more numerous and are a lot closer together which reduces
| the tracking complexity a fair bit. Also the inter-satellite
| links on the Iridium network are radio whereas the Starlinks
| have 4 motorized optical links (laser). They're highly
| reflective objects against the background of space.
| pacificmint wrote:
| As far as I know, the current satellites don't have any
| lasers for satellite to satellite communication yet. That
| will come in later generations.
| busterarm wrote:
| Ahh, I had to look this up but you are correct.
| 0x38B wrote:
| This would have been awesome in Alaska, where we had only one
| option for ISP... we weren't in the boonies either. We just
| barely got DSL.
| H8crilA wrote:
| How low will it get once there's 100 (or more) people connecting
| from a single neighborhood?
| chiph wrote:
| If someone knows - what kind of cable does the unit use out to
| the antenna? My COVID project is wiring the house with Cat6 and
| it might be worthwhile putting an enclosed drop out on the deck
| for the future.
| awad wrote:
| According to this Reddit thread, the dish only has one cable
| presumably with POE
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/hqu7p6/data_minin...
| alexwennerberg wrote:
| Is anyone concerned about the effect this has on the night sky
| and astronomical observation?
|
| https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/starlink-sa...
| Bombthecat wrote:
| Nope, we destroyed the earth already. Why should we worry about
| the sky?
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| Honestly, this is just awesome. It's a working demonstration of
| high-speed satellite internet, showing this approach is a viable
| solution for "anywhere on Earth" internet.
|
| For all those people who don't have broadband available, this
| will be life-changing.
|
| It'll only get better from here, welcome to the future :)
|
| (and remember that perfect is the enemy of good)
| birdyrooster wrote:
| I'm still not sure we won't get develop Kessler Syndrome
| (runaway debris situation in LEO) so let's hope you are right.
| infogulch wrote:
| LEO is not as much of a problem as higher orbits. At the
| height that Starlink operates unpropelled debris falls out of
| the sky relatively quickly due to drag.
| bob33212 wrote:
| The greater the surface area the quicker the decay. So if
| these satellites naturally fall after 3-5 years that means
| that if they somehow collided with each other creating
| millions of pieces of debris they would clear out with in
| less than a year because of the loss of energy during the
| collisions and the increased surface area.
| elnik wrote:
| I wonder what happens on a cloudy day.. currently the satellite
| based DTH television displays a cloud and refuses to work.
| Technically is there a work around to that?
| yencabulator wrote:
| Well, on a rainy day both LTE and point-to-point wifi here go
| bad anyway, so it's still an improvement (more signal routes
| = more chance one works).
|
| People keep comparing Starlink to their ideal non-rural
| internet connection. That's not what it needs to compete
| with.
| bargl wrote:
| Cloudy days will 100% affect internet speeds. But it's also
| possible for them to have better equipment at LEO due to
| lower launch costs to overcome that affect.
|
| It's kinda funny because cloudy cover are a smaller portion
| of signal loss at GEO, (most loss is due to distance), but it
| affects that signal quite a bit once satellites are tweaked
| to get signal to Earth. Most GEO satellites try to have
| something like 95+% uptime due to average cloudy days in an
| area, which means they account for those really bad days
| where the clouds are just too thick. They use weather stats
| to project how much cloud cover each region will get so they
| can build bigger beams for that area.
|
| In the past those beams would cover large areas (Like the
| entire USA). Now they're getting smaller (State Sized) so
| they can tweak how much signal could go to say Washington vs.
| Idaho. They're always trying to make this stuff better. But
| those newer sats at GEO cost 300+ million dollars per sat and
| are expected to last 20+ years. So it'll be a while before
| this new generation of GEO sat is out there.
|
| The workaround would be. More signal power at the satellite
| (costly), or you as a consumer get a bigger/more powerful
| receiving antenna.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| Having this kind of network is a good thing but the idea that
| any kind of satellite or wireless can replace wires is just
| fantasy.
|
| Delivering just 10Mbps to 100 million customers is over 900
| Tbps. There is absolutely no way a satellite network can clear
| that kind of downlink bandwidth. And that's just a tiny
| fraction of the market.
|
| Physical cables/fiber represent several orders of magnitude
| more capacity and always will. So satellite is great for remote
| areas or unique situations but absolutely not a substitute for
| running cables.
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| And yet such a satellite network is being built and deployed.
|
| The people building this have obviously done the math and
| have a solution which they're implementing while you're busy
| saying that it can't be done :)
| grahamburger wrote:
| Economies of scale work _massively_ in your favor in this
| situation. You definitely do not need to sell the bandwidth
| 1:1, and the more customers you aggregate the more you can
| oversell. With 1gbps upstream bandwidth you can comfortably
| provide 1000 customers with 10mbps Internet service and they
| will virtually never see speeds lower than 10mbps.
| jliptzin wrote:
| Your math assumes all 100 million customers will be
| downloading at 10Mbps at the same time, all the time.
| Obviously that is not the case.
| e12e wrote:
| Not "all the time", but at any one time - at the same time
| (eg: watching superbowl - but of course any kind of
| multicast/broadcast is a little different).
|
| At any rate, it's mostly about the bandwidth each satellite
| has to route. I don't know what the likely number of
| subscribers for any _one_ LEO sattelite will be? Will it
| really be on the order of 100 million _not_ also served by
| 4g cellular, dsl and other broadband?
|
| Say for new York state its a large area and population
| _total_ but the area where you might want /prefer satellite
| service isn't very densely populated?
| jiofih wrote:
| 100Gbps microwave links have been shown on land. If you take
| that as a theoretical limit, 12k satellites can give you
| 1200Tbps.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > Delivering just 10Mbps to 100 million customers is over 900
| Tbps.
|
| 50 Gbps * 12000 satellites is 600 Tbps.
|
| Most of those satellites will be over the middle of nowhere
| at any given time. But those customers don't use 10Mbps 24/7
| either.
| adventured wrote:
| It also may not be limited to 12,000 satellites. They're
| seeking approval for up to 42,000.
|
| Oct 2019: "SpaceX submits paperwork for 30,000 more
| Starlink satellites"
|
| https://spacenews.com/spacex-submits-paperwork-
| for-30000-mor...
| SEJeff wrote:
| There is absolutely no way a satellite network can clear that
| kind of downlink bandwidth.
|
| Evergreen comment. Encoding and compression software and
| hardware continue to improve. The only constant in technology
| is change. Will we be able to do this sort of bandwith to LEO
| eventually? Yes. Can we do it this very moment? No one has
| tried.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| There are underlying physical limitations to spectral
| efficiency. The best modulation schemes in use today can
| hit about 60 bits per second per hz of bandwidth.
| Meanwhile, single fibers top out above 40 terabit. To
| duplicate the bandwidth of just a single fiber link with a
| radio downlink, you'd need over 600 ghz of available
| spectrum. That'd require advances pushing deep into the thz
| gap, but beyond that, the physics of propagation are so
| different between 6 ghz, 60 ghz, and 600 ghz that it's hard
| to conceive of a single system covering so much spectrum.
| And that's not even getting into issues with geometric
| limitations of radio beam widths.
|
| While change is constant, this isn't an argument that any
| change you can imagine is physically realizable.
|
| Fiber is here to stay for a very long time precisely
| because it starts out with such massive fundamental
| physical advantages. It's also a mistake to assume
| innovation only benefits one alternative. We're still
| learning how to make and run fiber cheaper too.
| rubber_duck wrote:
| > Encoding and compression software
|
| What does that have to do with bandwidth ?
| SEJeff wrote:
| Sending less data over starlink (which is not tcp/ip
| btw).
|
| I'd you can make 10Mb suddenly only require 900k of
| actual raw bandwidth by say adding a fpga or something
| then you can increase throughout to the users.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Technology only improves compression ratios to a certain
| point, and we passed that point with lossless compression
| decades ago. We're approaching that point with lossy
| compression now.
|
| Going beyond that point requires the laws of physics
| (more precisely, the laws of information theory) to
| change, and that's not going to happen.
| Ekaros wrote:
| If that big compression rates where achievable why
| wouldn't we be already using them? They would be standard
| in any network.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Hopefully in 2020 most internet traffic is encrypted. If
| encrypted traffic is compressible you're doing it wrong.
| otterley wrote:
| Context is important, though. Network performance advances
| are always relative. If satellite fully-congested download
| speed improves 10x while hardwire link performance improves
| 10x, satellite will still be perceived as "too slow" by
| some segment. Our experience thus far has been that
| advances in applications tend to consume the bandwidth
| available. Whether that trend continues remains to be seen.
| (To be fair, I have never saturated my bidirectional 1GBps
| fiber link and I don't foresee ever doing so except for
| very brief periods of time.)
| DingoMeansDildo wrote:
| Give this man a dildo, or a new beer, whatever he needs
| dudes. Bingo. Good answer.
| pier25 wrote:
| > _Encoding and compression software and hardware continue
| to improve._
|
| But these would apply to both wired and wireless, no?
| manquer wrote:
| If encoding tech is specific to wireless then not really
| , just like improving cable medium , number of cable
| pairs etc will not improve wireless , better transmitter
| or receiver will not impact wired
| Alupis wrote:
| And even in remote areas, building out VDSL2 networks with
| relatively decent speeds (200Mbps down and 100Mbps up[1])
| would be better, honestly.
|
| Most homes already have a phone line and can support a DSL
| network... and in some countries a phone line is mandated by
| law, so the infrastructure already exists.
|
| But, DSL is not nearly as "sexy" as thousands of
| satellites...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL#:~:text=VDSL%20offers%
| 20s....
| vetinari wrote:
| In rural areas, we have LTE-based FWA.
|
| 10 MHz wide channel with 256-QAM can push 100 Mbps down.
| yencabulator wrote:
| I'd argue if you get 100 Mbps down, you're not all that
| rural.
| Ekaros wrote:
| The range just isn't there even for suburbs. The high
| speeds are only achieved with line length of less than
| 500m, and at 1600m it's similar to ADSL2... So not really a
| effective solution.
| chuckhendo wrote:
| I mean, you're not wrong, VDSL in rural areas would be
| great! But it also hasn't happened.
| grahamburger wrote:
| I haven't personally deployed VDSL2, but I have deployed
| DSL and other data-over-twisted pair systems including
| recent G.fast, G.hn and MOCA. I strongly doubt that VDSL
| can achieve those kinds of speeds reliably at the distances
| and densities needed to provide this service to the areas
| that need it most. In rural areas the copper lines are too
| long and too old to achieve these speeds (but they're fine
| for voice/POTS, so there's no mandate to upgrade.) Twisted
| pair is also really susceptible to noise and crosstalk, so
| in more densely populated areas once you start doing DSL to
| a lot of customers whose cables are bundled together they
| start to interfere with each other and everybody's service
| gets bad. In both cases the problem is signal to noise
| ratio - long cables mean poor signal, density means high
| noise, and twisted pair copper just isn't designed to deal
| with either very well.
| Alupis wrote:
| What about VDSL2 Vectoring (G.vector)? Seems like it
| mitigates most of the crosstalk problems - but I admit
| I'm not an expert on DSL deployments.
|
| It seems VDSL2 can achieve maximum throughput at run
| lengths under 1000ft from the DSLAM, with maximum
| performance beginning to degrade after. That sounds
| sufficient for most of the people currently stuck with
| slow access right now in the US (more rural areas outside
| major cities, but not actually remote as-in nearest
| neighbor is 1 mile away).
|
| Also... surely solving this problem is cheaper than
| sending thousands of satellites into orbit every few
| years as they decay.
| grahamburger wrote:
| > It seems VDSL2 can achieve maximum throughput at run
| lengths under 1000ft from the DSLAM, and maximum
| performance degrades after that over distance. That
| sounds sufficient for most of the people complaining of
| slow access right now in the US
|
| I would guess that this isn't right, but honestly I don't
| have the data either. My rough guess would be that only
| around 5-15% of people have <1000' of copper to their
| DSLAM, and I from what I've experienced with other
| technologies the speeds degrade _very quickly_ after the
| max length, and only even work up to the max length in
| absolutely ideal scenarios. What I 've seen of current
| copper infrastructure in the U.S. is pretty bad - lots of
| hand twisted copper lines with the ends exposed and
| rusting out, for example - that kind of thing would add
| the equivalent of at least several hundred feet of
| additional cable, and is very difficult to fix en-masse.
|
| Honestly my gut feeling is that you pretty much have to
| run new cables to something like 80% of the U.S. to get
| good Internet service everywhere, and obviously if you're
| running new cables you should just run fiber. Looking at
| the cost of that compared to launching satellites - and
| accounting for the additional benefits of the satellites,
| like connectivity in extremely remote places and on the
| ocean - I'm not sure the satellites don't come out ahead.
|
| EDIT TO ADD: A comparison point on the 1000 feet number
| is that this is in the same ballpark as how close a 5G
| tower needs to be to get real 5G service to your home or
| your cell phone. Current 4G towers are _nowhere near_
| that dense, and it 's going to take huge amounts of money
| to get them that dense, even in the most densely
| populated areas.
| Alupis wrote:
| Part of the reason this type of network isn't already
| built, is likely most folks living in very remote places
| simply don't need or want 1Gbps internet (or even DSL) -
| or at least don't know they want it.
|
| There are folks with dial-up connections still,
| unfortunately, and not always because they have no other
| option. The more technically-inclined people here on HN
| wanting to work remotely and stream multiple 4k videos at
| once - they aren't majority of, say, AT&T's customer
| base. AT&T won't build this out if they think 1 in 100
| potential customers will actually upgrade.
|
| This will change over time, as a generation of folks that
| grew up with technology age and move into more rural
| areas. Hopefully demand will drive these network upgrades
| over time, and make it make financial sense to run new
| fiber in rural areas.
|
| This could even be expedited with some sort of National
| Infrastructure Bill to fund it today, subsidized by tax
| payers since the benefits are ultimately so great.
|
| I still think that's ultimately the better (and long
| term, cheaper) option verse thousands of satellites being
| launched every few years.
| grahamburger wrote:
| I don't think you're wrong here, but I would phrase it a
| little bit differently. I've worked in a lot of pretty
| rural areas, and from what I've seen in the last 10 years
| or so even folks in very rural areas want a lot of the
| same things from their service as techies do. Also, even
| places like the Bay Area with huge amounts of exactly the
| HN demographic the residential Internet infrastructure
| isn't exactly great and isn't improving very rapidly.
|
| My take on the situation is that what most people want is
| more Internet for the same or less money. That means the
| only way to get infrastructure improvements is with
| competition. If AT&T did a bunch of upgrades and then
| gave their customers better service for the same price
| their customers would take it, but the customers aren't
| going to pay more than they're paying now and they're
| only going to leave if there's something better.
| rtsil wrote:
| > And even in remote areas, building out VDSL2 networks
| with relatively decent speeds (200Mbps down and 100Mbps
| up[1]) would be better, honestly.
|
| I live in the suburbs of Paris and the length of the phone
| line is still too long for VDSL2 (it's only available for
| distance less than 1 km) so I am not sure how feassible
| that is in rural areas.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| True, but their first customer is the U.S. Army which tells
| me this networks primary purpose is the same as the
| original intent of the internet itself. A mobile network
| that is available and reliable anywhere. Civilians usually
| get to do all the beta testing and provide feedback that
| improves the technology.
|
| Also many of the places I have been looking at moving to
| don't even have POTS lines. This would fill the gap where
| POTS and VDSL is not available. I would certainly use VDSL
| if that were an option and use Starlink as a fallback in a
| very remote area.
| Alupis wrote:
| > Also many of the places I have been looking at moving
| to don't even have POTS lines
|
| Where are you, if you don't mind telling. I had thought,
| perhaps incorrectly, that in the US it was required by
| law to have POTS lines run to all homes - which led to it
| being installed during construction.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| The land I am looking at is in the south western part of
| Wyoming. Could you link the law? My understanding is that
| once a line is run, there is a process to decom the line,
| but that no line is required for a home. Many
| homesteaders do not have phone lines or on-grid power.
| The only requirements I am aware of are around septic
| systems.
| Alupis wrote:
| Interesting. I couldn't find the exact law to link to,
| but did turn up this WaPo article talking about 4 states
| starting to relax the requirement.
|
| > The universal landline requirement has been repealed in
| Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin. There, new
| homeowners have no guarantee that they could order phone
| service at affordable rates, consumer advocates say.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/landline-
| rul...
| LinuxBender wrote:
| That seems more like a plan [1] to ensure that people can
| get an affordable line if they want it. I can't find any
| laws saying that all homes require a phone line. It also
| appears that recent discussions in the government were
| about changing money allocation from pots lines to
| internet specifically. I suppose we would need a land
| developer here to chime in.
|
| [1] https://www.fcc.gov/general/universal-service
| Alupis wrote:
| I've dug everywhere and can't turn up anything
| definitive.
|
| The language, however, of "guaranteed access to an
| affordable line" does seem to imply a TELCO will have to
| run a line to your property at your request? Without fees
| (since that wouldn't be affordable)?
|
| Perhaps, in practice, this resulted in all new
| construction having lines run since that was cheaper than
| doing it ad-hoc upon demand.
|
| > I suppose we would need a land developer here to chime
| in.
|
| Yes, hopefully someone out there knows more! Honestly
| curious now, since I had always assumed this was how it
| was.
| awad wrote:
| There was a loophole in the various provisions created to
| ensure rural connectivity that allowed for companies to
| advantage of the fact that independent and competitive
| local exchange carriers were able to bill higher per
| minute fees than average. This led to a boom in free
| conference and long distance calling companies that would
| be spun up to terminate at one of these destinations,
| splitting the fee with the telco.
| jedberg wrote:
| I think they serve different purposes. Satellites serve
| areas where they can't run wires or it's insanely expensive
| for too few people. Think very rural areas and war torn
| areas. Imagine being able to get unblocked internet in
| China by using satellites? Or in Belarus. Or the middle of
| Amazon (rainforest)?
| Alupis wrote:
| Will Starlink even be able to legally sell internet
| services in China? Would they not have to comply with
| CCP's censorship policies and disconnect people at their
| will?
|
| I strongly disagree with CCP's policies here, but that's
| not for us to decide.
| jedberg wrote:
| I was thinking of the opposite use case -- an American
| traveling to China for work and getting uncensored
| internet.
|
| But I mean once a Chinese citizen gets their hands on the
| equipment, I'm not sure how China would stop them. I
| suppose they could have roving bands of listening posts
| looking for the uplink signals.
|
| I'm sure someone could figure out a way to take payments
| for them. Many rich Chinese citizens already have bank
| accounts outside of China.
| bdamm wrote:
| SpaceX isn't going to piss off China. The satellites are
| really just repeaters to the local base station. Starlink
| will be firewalled off from the world just like the rest
| of China (when the terminal is in China.)
| Klathmon wrote:
| >I suppose they could have roving bands of listening
| posts looking for the uplink signals.
|
| I think this is pretty likely.
|
| In the US the FCC has a whole set of systems designed to
| locate interference sources [1], and I've heard stories
| that they're extremely good at it. They even have a whole
| facility in Maryland dedicated to satellite monitoring!
|
| [1] https://www.fcc.gov/over-air-spectrum-observation-
| capabiliti...
| Alupis wrote:
| Pretty sure an American company deliberately subverting
| another nation's laws to make a profit isn't going to be
| looked well upon, even if it is unjust CCP laws.
|
| Regarding an American traveling to China - I think you're
| still beholden to the host country's laws, no? You can't
| break their local laws just because you're from out of
| town.
|
| Not to mention the punitive actions CCP could take
| against Tesla (as they try to build out a business there)
| to put pressure on SpaceX to stop allowing Starlink
| access in China. That wouldn't be fair either, but Musk
| is CEO of both organizations and I'm not sure the CCP
| would distinguish them separately.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| People keep bringing that up as a common use case, but
| how do you propose that people in China or wartorn
| countries will get their hands on the modems they would
| need to _use_ Starlink?
| Alupis wrote:
| Or even afford it?
|
| People earning an equivalent of a couple USD a day, or
| nothing at all, aren't going to be able to afford to pay
| some US corporation for fast internet.
|
| Fast internet probably isn't even a concern in wartorn
| countries, honestly.
|
| Let's be honest - Starlink is almost exclusively going to
| be used by people living in rural areas within developed
| nations.
| DudeInBasement wrote:
| Implying the US government won't pay for the cost of an
| open internet where people can search for 'bad people
| square'
| Alupis wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand your comment.
|
| Why would the US Government (aka. Taxpayers) pay for
| internet use in other nations?
|
| We already have expensive problems domestically that
| people would rather spend that coin on.
| bronco21016 wrote:
| Winning 'hearts and minds'.
|
| You drop access to the internet as whole in places where
| the internet is suppressed or non-existent and the
| populace learns just how bad they have things then they
| might revolt on their own.
|
| I wouldn't say I 100% advocate for the idea but thats the
| thought process behind it.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| That would generally be considered a violation of another
| country's airspace, and some countries would even treat
| that as an act of war.
|
| You would also have to deal with the real possibility
| that those countries would simply shoot down any planes
| observed dropping Starlink base stations.
| jedberg wrote:
| US government airdrops?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Do people not understand that satellite internet _already
| exists today_?
|
| We don't drop satellite modems into war torn countries
| now, and we're not going to start doing that just because
| Elon Musk needs to check off one of his PR claims.
| jedberg wrote:
| They're really expensive and big. Also, we actually do
| sometimes drop satellite internet into places.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Unless the pictures on Google are wrong, a Starlink base
| station is significantly larger than a satellite phone
| and is at least as large as a field base station.
|
| And at $2000/pop, they're at least as expensive as the
| equipment we're currently _not_ randomly dropping around
| the globe because of the expense.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| There are a bunch or articles that talk about people
| using balloons to send material to North Korea.
|
| The Human Rights Foundation even collects flash drives to
| load them up with content to smuggle into North Korea:
| https://flashdrivesforfreedom.org
| Alupis wrote:
| For private groups, or individuals, sure you can get away
| with this.
|
| For a government to do this? How could that not lead to
| an armed conflict?
| freehunter wrote:
| How do governments airdrop supplies into war-torn
| countries today? I'll admit I'm no expert but I see
| headlines all the time of neutral nations sending
| supplies to other countries who are fighting a war and
| that neutral nation isn't getting dragged into the fight.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Governments don't airdrop supplies into war-torn
| countries today, excepting designated UN or MSF refugee
| camps, and they do so with the knowledge of one or both
| sides of the conflict so that the supply planes don't get
| shot down.
|
| I would very much like to see a headline of a neutral
| nation airdropping supplies into a country engaged in war
| without getting dragged into the conflict. I'm not aware
| of that having occurred in the past 4 decades.
| closeparen wrote:
| Possession of unauthorized satellite equipment is as good
| as getting caught red-handed at a dead drop. A paranoid
| security state wouldn't blink at executing every such
| person as a spy.
| bdamm wrote:
| Even if DSL can get there, reliability of the connection in
| rural areas is often very suspect. A tree falls over in a
| winter storm, a bad crash that takes out an exchange box, a
| pole just plain falls over due to shifting ground, or maybe
| construction takes out a main trunk... these problems
| happen in cities too, but in a city you have maybe 1 km of
| infrastructure to worry about. In rural areas you could
| have 100 or 200 km of infrastructure just waiting for a
| calamity. Even just as a reliable alternative Starlink
| would be a big boon to rural users.
| Alupis wrote:
| > Even just as a reliable alternative Starlink would be a
| big boon to rural users
|
| Starlink is susceptible to cloud cover, rainstorms,
| lightning and other things that would interfere with
| signal quality (or render it unusable for periods of
| time).
|
| Seems buried lines (either POTS for DSL, Coax for Cable,
| or Fiber) is the best solution. We just need to figure
| out how to incentivize it being built.
| bronco21016 wrote:
| Given the cost of burying lines is mostly in the
| labor/right-of-way stuff, we should be incentivizing
| fiber all over the place.
|
| Helps that pesky Huwawei/5G problem the US keeps
| complaining about as well.
| bearjaws wrote:
| As someone who lived 50 minutes inland in Florida, no
| way.
|
| Our DSL and cable options were limited, Comcast said they
| offered cable, but when they got to the line near the
| house, the signal was so poor they were unable to make it
| work without 50k in labor.
|
| Then ATT came with DSL, the connection has routine
| outages for hours at a time. There is a technician
| servicing the DSLAM pretty much every week, there is
| literally no way ATT makes money where I used to live.
| Everyone owns 20+ acres, there's basically 10 homes in 1
| square mile. And then the Hurricanes... Every 4 years all
| of the lines get blown down and it takes ATT 1-2 months
| to get it back online... There is way too many advantages
| for satellite in rural areas.
|
| If I had to guess, there was over 200 outages (anything
| over 10 minutes IMO is an outage) in the 6 years I lived
| there.
| iagovar wrote:
| GPON done properly is much cheaper to operate than DSL or
| COAX, it's just longer cables, less equipment, less real
| state, less electricity consumption.
|
| Digging cables is what's expensive. You can use telephone
| poles for fiber too, but it exposes it to more outages.
| You can secure the lines with steel cables but that ads
| cost, and if you are deploying to poles then you were
| looking for going cheap.
| Alupis wrote:
| Sounds like you have experience with above-ground lines.
| I specifically said buried lines - which are mostly
| immune to environmental issues.
| manquer wrote:
| One satellite cannot route 900tbps of course , just like your
| local ISP cannot handle that either .
|
| However over 40,000 satellites that's just 22.5 gps per sat ,
| quite achievable
| riantogo wrote:
| Just ran speedtest:
|
| Wifi = 97 Mbps down 9 (xfinity) LTE = 57 Mbps down (att)
|
| Location = SF Bay Area
|
| 11 to 60 Mbps global coverage is totally acceptable speeds and if
| it holds up, would be a game changer.
| bearjaws wrote:
| My parents house has 2mbps DSL from ATT.
|
| This would be a massive upgrade, and for petty much anyone in
| rural America 1.5mbps has been the dream for years now.
| diimdeep wrote:
| I hope they provide global coverage despite totalitarian regimes
| !
| SCAQTony wrote:
| Will having Starlink prevent asteroid detections from ground
| based telescopes?
| jefft255 wrote:
| Pings and upload speeds seem impressive (although as someone else
| said we'll see when under load). I come from a place (rural
| Canada) where a non-trival amount of people who live far away
| from town centers do not have access to decent internet. This
| will be a good alternative to existing satellite ISPs, or 5mbps
| (on a good day) land ISPs.
|
| Also potentially amazing for people living off-grid.
| bargl wrote:
| It will also put pressure on land based ISP to either give up
| customers, or pay to increase infrastructure to get comparable
| internet to those areas.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| I'm fairly confident that the Canadian FCC will find a way to
| outlaw starlink judging by their track record with existing
| telecom companies & banning international investments.
| hello_tyler wrote:
| That's great. The pings not even that bad..
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| I just got back from an AirBnB where I worked remotely for a week
| and the internet was DSL. It was about 1.5Mbps up and down. Work
| was still possible. Even group video calls worked.
|
| Uploading and downloading large files was out of the question
| however. I had to do a lot of work SSH'd into a remote server.
|
| So, 11 to 60 is not great, but still useful.
| rckoepke wrote:
| When I worked on oil rigs in Saudi Arabia, ~300kbps seemed to
| be the minimum necessary for WhatsApp/Facebook messenger/low-
| intensity web browsing like old reddit or arstechnica. HN might
| work a little lower but probably not much before HTTP fails for
| other reasons (if your speeds are that low, likely your packet
| loss is far too high to keep things working over 2G/3G/4G).
|
| Truly even 0.3Mbps made all the difference in the world to the
| people who had been stuck on those rigs for the past 30-800
| days. Often it was the first time in over a week, sometimes
| over a month that they could talk with their families. It
| became a necessary part of my job to spend 6-12 hours/day
| rationing access to the WiFi hotspots so that each of the 60 or
| so personnel could talk with their families each day.
|
| I purchased with my own money all the WiFi modems and a set of
| 8 different antennas for various frequencies, with very long
| cables. Generally took about 2-6 hours to align everything
| correctly to get any usable signal. Used public cell tower
| databases to find the GPS coordinates of the nearest towers and
| used vectors to those positions as starting points.
|
| Some of the locations I never could get any signal and no one
| could talk to their families or keep up with the news.
| Hopefully Starlink eventually connects these people to their
| families on a much more regular basis.
| driverdan wrote:
| How was the LTE signal with a good quality antenna? LTE is
| already faster than this, assuming you can get at least a half
| signal.
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| Of several friends, we all got about 1.5 to 2mbps over LTE
| there. But the ping was worse... So I used the DSL :)
| Alupis wrote:
| Ya, the 11Mbps side of it is very disappointing. That's
| pretty in-line with slow DSL and existing satellite
| connections.
|
| The latency will be interesting to see too, since that was
| the boldest claim Musk made with this venture. The article
| seems to have cherry picked the best speedtests to show in
| their graphic - I'm curious what real-world in-application
| latencies are, ie. inside Call Of Duty Modern Warefare or
| something similar.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| 11mbps is amazing for what this is. Sure, it's "slow DSL"
| speed, but if you can get slow DSL you don't care about
| satellite internet. This is for all the places in the world
| that you can't get 4G cell service, let alone DSL.
|
| 11mbps plus a ping time of sub100 ms means that _most_
| people could telework anywhere in the world, even in the
| middle of an ocean. Unless your job requires you to
| download /upload huge amounts of data, it's more than
| enough for surfing, working, zoom, etc.
| Alupis wrote:
| OK maybe, but Elon promised 1Gbps speeds. 11Mbps is very,
| very far cry from that.
| loufe wrote:
| Ok, but at the same time this is the BETA period. Attacks
| on his claim should wait until the public availability of
| the service begins.
| Alupis wrote:
| Fair enough... except everyone here is in awe of 11Mbps
| satellite service, as-if satellite internet is some brand
| new thing.
| yencabulator wrote:
| If Hughes had been serving 11-60 Mbps at 31-94 ms ping
| without caps, Starlink wouldn't need to exist. Starlink
| is absolutely not the same as the previous generation of
| satellite internet. This _is_ a brand new thing.
| Alupis wrote:
| OK, but they've touted each satellite in the cluster
| being capable of driving 20Gbps all by itself.
|
| So why are people only getting 11Mbps? Beta or not,
| that's a very far cry from the promised specs.
| grahamburger wrote:
| 11 to 60 is actually really good. If you look at the total
| throughput on a residential connection, even a gigabit fiber
| connection, they will almost never burst above about 30mbps
| download. For most people 4K streaming is about the most
| bandwidth intensive thing they'll do, and that only requires
| about 20mbps per stream. As you indicated, video conference
| streams really don't use that much bandwidth (although they are
| very sensitive to latency.) The only real exception to this on
| residential networks (even during Covid with everyone working
| from home) is big game updates.
| driverdan wrote:
| For reference these are LTE category 3 speeds with better than
| LTE pings. A good start but nowhere near the Gb they've promised.
| I'm cautiously optimistic.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > better than LTE pings
|
| If you're getting latency worse than that on LTE, consider
| changing provider (and checking that you're _actually_ on LTE).
| These would be reasonable for the better class of 3G (HDSPA)
| but not great for LTE. Just did a speed test on my phone with
| wifi switched off (to a server in the same city). 20ms.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Better than LTE pings? That makes no sense to me. LTE ping
| should be <25ms if the target server is close to where it
| terminates which it typically is with speedtest.
| 627467 wrote:
| I can't wait to go live in the wilderness with this. seems like
| pretty good speeds, let's see what price it will get. Not in USA
| tho...
| iaw wrote:
| Latency runs 31 mS to 70 mS in the speedtests shown. I don't buy
| their claims that you can game with >100 mS latency, that is not
| a good experience.
|
| This is a great step forward for internet accessibility but I
| really wish they wouldn't oversell the capabilities before we're
| there.
| semicolon_storm wrote:
| As someone who lives in the middle of the ocean with ~70ms to
| the nearest major data center, you get used to it.
|
| You're at a disadvantage to people with low ping, but it's
| certainly not unplayable.
| smabie wrote:
| It really depends on the game. I would say 70-100ms is the
| upper acceptable limit for FPSs (though some like CS:GO or
| Valorant require even lower), but even like 150-250ms is okay
| for casual MOBA play.
| bargl wrote:
| Starlink internet is not meant to replace hard line internet.
| There is no getting around the physics of cable being so much
| cheaper/easier. Even terrestrial cell towers are more efficient
| and cheaper than satellites.
|
| This is 100% meant to supplement existing infrastructure not to
| replace it. You will almost always get cheaper and faster
| internet (for both you and the company providing internet) over a
| cable to your house. If you can't get that, then maybe a cell
| tower is better, if that doesn't work, then a land based beaming
| internet may be better, after that I'd look to space based
| internet.
|
| It can probably supplant land based beaming internet, but I don't
| see this replacing ISPs/4g/5g anytime soon.
|
| The target audience for much of this infrastructure is the places
| you can't put a cell tower, but want to get signal. Ocean based
| travel being a big one.
|
| EDIT: I will contend. 5g could beat out ISPs at cost (which I
| thought I'd made more clear above). It's about the cost of
| infrastructure given the population density. I don't have as much
| knowledge in that area as I do satellite costs. But satellites
| won't beat out 5G at cost, not even with the reduced cost to
| space that SpaceX provides. It could with another couple orders
| of magnitude cost reduction in space. But there's a reason SpaceX
| is targeting only 5 million Americans and not 300 million.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Would this improve the internet quality on planes? Just
| wondering how that could get better... its absolutely crap most
| of the time
| mdorazio wrote:
| Poor quality of internet on planes is usually due to too many
| people on the plane trying to do high-bandwidth things at the
| same time when the connection was never designed for that
| level of saturation. Domestic flights usually connect to
| ground-based stations to provide in-flight wi-fi, which
| probably have similar throughput capabilities to Starlink, so
| I don't think this would help much. International flights use
| satellite connections, though, and this would definitely help
| there.
| alwaysdoit wrote:
| It also raises the baseline across the board by injecting a new
| competitor to every ISP and wireless service in the world
| bargl wrote:
| This is 1000% my point. There is now a baseline amount of
| signal per KM. That signal is now the same everywhere. It
| will be (about) the same speed everywhere.
|
| This is really great for more rural areas and over the ocean.
| cma wrote:
| We already had a baseline amount from geosynchronous and
| Iridium. This is increasing bandwidth and reducing latency,
| but is not establishing the first baseline.
| bargl wrote:
| Gah - I got so caught up in this thread. Finally
| something I know a fair bit about.
|
| Yes, there is a baseline. But that's like saying dail-up
| is a baseline. Everyone might have it but it doesn't give
| people access to the modern web.
|
| Geo, can be great in some services but it's again not a
| blanket. They have broad beams but they're moving to spot
| beams instead and those beams don't move.
|
| This constellation is really going to be the same
| bandwidth capacity across the globe within a given
| altitude band. Which is awesome.
| busterarm wrote:
| A lot of what you're saying isn't actually true here.
|
| Light moves significantly (47%) slower through optical fiber
| than through space. This drastically reduces the latency of
| long distance connections. We're talking NY round trip to Japan
| in the same time it takes NY roundtrip to the UK now.
|
| The cost of backhaul and ongoing maintenance of cables is a lot
| more than SpaceX launching their own satellites by an entire
| order of magnitude.
| pmlnr wrote:
| > Light moves significantly (47%) slower through optical
| fiber than through space
|
| The what?
|
| As far as I know c is a constant.
| akalin wrote:
| c is the speed of light _in a vacuum_
| kibwen wrote:
| The constant c is the speed of light in a vacuum. Different
| mediums have different speeds of light within them; in
| fact, it's actually possible for light to _not_ be the
| fastest thing in a given medium (for more precise
| definitions of all those words):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation
| busterarm wrote:
| When you refract light, you change its speed, slowing it
| down.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index#:~:text=The%
| 2....
| bargl wrote:
| >A lot of what you're saying isn't actually true here.
|
| You're talking latency not bandwidth. There is only so much
| spectrum to go around.
|
| My understanding is that there is only a certain amount of
| bandwidth to go around and there are diminishing returns on
| adding people beyond a set capacity. I am not arguing that
| fiber is faster, I'm arguing that fiber has is cheaper at the
| bandwidth/cost in more dense areas. I don't believe we will
| see satellite based communication in cities (at a large % of
| population) for a long time.
|
| Now I'm willing to believe someone who's worked closer to
| this than I have and to learn, but I've done enough in the
| satellite industry to not take what you're saying without
| seeing more evidence.
| busterarm wrote:
| I worked for an ILEC providing cable/dsl/fiber service and
| just the rough napkin math around SpaceX's launch costs
| makes it look significantly cheaper.
|
| Besides the whole digging and laying cable costs, last mile
| work is expensive. You have to employ huge crews.
| Construction crews constantly dig up & cut your
| infrastructure "by accident" and the cost of recovering the
| fines from them is as much as the fines pay out. Having to
| send an emergency crew of three guys out for 18 hours of
| work to re-splice a 72-ct fiber every other weekend adds
| up. That doesn't happen in space.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| The SpaceX approach also completely bypasses a _ton_ of
| the nonsense local bureaucracy, stonewalling by existing
| ISPs, etc that a company would have to deal with to put
| in cables, towers, etc in the first place, saving both
| time and money.
| busterarm wrote:
| Yup. This is actually one of the more important factors
| for consumers that is underestimated.
|
| I've been pegged at 1000% excitement since I first found
| out about this project a year ago. This is the best thing
| to happen to this service industry since probably ISDN.
| bargl wrote:
| >last mile work is expensive.
|
| What do you mean there?
| busterarm wrote:
| SpaceX isn't doing the install work work on these
| Starlink kits. They just sell you some hardware.
|
| If you're a terrestrial-based internet provider, you need
| a fleet of installers and they also have to do constant
| maintenance work. They have salaries and they make (lots
| of) overtime pay. At a lot of the smaller companies (like
| the one I worked at) they have pensions. We had a lot of
| guys who started with the company out of high school,
| retired at 20 years, came back as contractors for a year
| and then did another 20 years and got a second pension
| from the same company...
|
| And a couple of those guys are still contracting after
| their two pensions.
| bargl wrote:
| SpaceX can't scale regionally, they have to scale
| globally. The nature of their satellites is that if they
| want to accommodate 2x as many users in a city they have
| to double their capacity.
|
| The push I'm discussing is the cost to get a baseline
| internet out there for 10k people per 100 miles.
|
| I'm assuming the cost per last mile is higher in rural
| areas than in urban areas. If that's true right now the
| majority of our population is in cities so SpaceX will
| have trouble reaching them.
|
| That's the core of my point. For Starlink to hit everyone
| in a city they'd have a huge amount of wasted capacity in
| rural areas.
|
| Satellites also degrade naturally over time. They have a
| set lifetime and don't all last that long. Cables under
| the ground tend to last longer even if they require spot
| fixes. I'm assuming that bandwidth wise, the cables are
| more efficient at least until getting manufactured
| equipment to space becomes even more cheaper.
| busterarm wrote:
| Yeah but we're talking about a company that has in their
| near-term plans the capability to _launch 4 rockets per
| day_.
|
| They're completely capable of adding capacity like that
| and having a high satellite count.
|
| I'm not saying that it doesn't have a cost, but they have
| no middleman. They don't need to buy space on somebody
| else's rocket. They also don't have to pay any ongoing
| maintenance cost beyond equipment replacement and it's
| much cheaper than doing it on land. I know that you have
| satellite experience but their launch costs are a
| fraction of what other companies have done till now.
|
| I worked for a suburban, regional ILEC and our operating
| costs were around 100 million a year to cover like two
| counties of maybe 100k customers and the local
| businesses.
|
| ...
|
| I actually do agree with you about costs delivering in
| dense markets as providing locally has certain "economy
| of scale" benefits. It's also not going to compete on the
| "Gigabit in every home" front, because I do agree that
| the bandwidth is more limited. Operating a local provider
| in general though is extremely expensive and doesn't
| really provide any additional benefit to the provider.
| SpaceX themselves have uses for this network. I also hope
| that I'm right here :)
| bargl wrote:
| The bandwidth here is 100K per state not 2 counties.
| That's my issue with your calculations, we're probably
| somewhere in the middle. They might stop servicing people
| outside of town. I'd probably use the metric, if you're
| on septic you're probably better served by SpaceX than
| Comcast. If you're on sewer then Comcast will probably be
| better (no not always, I'm no sith).
|
| We'll have to agree to disagree. Honestly, I hope you're
| correct and I'm wrong. I think ground based
| infrastructure is still going to be much cheaper at
| medium to high population densities. You don't agree with
| me, but I learned a lot in this back and forth. Thanks.
| rconti wrote:
| _are_ the physics of cables cheaper and easier? Took me, what,
| over a decade to get fiber internet in the middle of Silicon
| Valley.
| hpkuarg wrote:
| > over a decade to get fiber internet in the middle of
| Silicon Valley
|
| This is not a physics problem. This is a local government
| problem.
| rconti wrote:
| The comment was "physics being cheaper/easier"
|
| I'm just not convinced the "physics of trenching and
| stringing cables from poles" (whatever we're taking this to
| mean) is cheaper and easier than wireless points popped up,
| either terrestrially or in space.
| bargl wrote:
| Let me be super clear about what I meant in my first
| comment.
|
| Satellites are VERY susceptible to overcrowding, this is
| what I mean by physics. Co-Channel interference and
| Adjacent Satellite Inteference play a big role. The more
| signal you use the more of a problem it becomes.
|
| Think about it like this. Your car radio, has how many
| available stations? Have you ever gotten multiple signals
| at the same time? This is all a really big problem for
| space based communication you just can't solve with more
| signal.
|
| Don't get me wrong we can do a lot with our spectrum, but
| there is a limited amount and if we both want to
| communicate with a satellite and we live 100 feet apart,
| our signals will interfere much more than if we live 1000
| feet apart.
|
| I'm not saying stringing cables is cheaper, I'm saying
| laying fiber from hub to hub and then connecting to those
| hubs is cheaper if you're within 50 mile radius. Maybe
| cellular is cheaper, maybe a wire to your house is
| cheaper. It depends on how many people you have close to
| you.
|
| There just isn't enough spectrum for everyone.
| bargl wrote:
| Yes.
|
| All this beaming technology is available on earth (4g/5g) but
| we don't use it for our home internet... Why is that? Cost of
| bandwith per person to infrastructure.
|
| If you're in Silicon Valley then you probably get GREAT cell
| service, why not use a hotspot as your internet. That signal
| to your phone is orders of magnitude cheaper than space based
| signal.
| nradov wrote:
| If you go just a few miles into the hills south and west of
| Silicon Valley there are huge dead zones.
| rconti wrote:
| I was arguing against the parent post that was claiming
| wires are cheaper and easier. Not terrestrial wireless vs
| satellite.
| jedberg wrote:
| > If you're in Silicon Valley then you probably get GREAT
| cell service
|
| You'd think so, but we have the same problems as everyone
| else. In fact, I get much better reception in Sacramento
| and Las Vegas than in the Bay Area.
| bargl wrote:
| No, you don't have the same problems as everywhere else.
| You said it took 10 years to get fiber, there are rural
| places where that's not an option.
|
| There are places where there is no sewer and houses must
| have septic.
|
| There are places where there is no water and houses must
| have wells / rain capture.
|
| Those are the target audience for this technology. Not
| people who are waiting to go from 60 -> 100 -> 1000 Mbps.
| This won't compete there, not based on the specs of these
| satellites and their 10 year plan.
| jedberg wrote:
| I was specifically addressing your claim that one could
| just use an LTE hotspot. I'm aware that there are rural
| communities that have worse infrastructure than the bay
| area.
| bargl wrote:
| You have better access to hotspot data than someone who
| is further from the nearest cell tower. I'm using a more
| physical infrastructure discussion to draw an analogy to
| what you might experience. It might make sense for
| someone in a city to build a well or water capture
| system, but in general it's not the same calculation as
| in more rural areas, where 1 mile of cable may reach 0.5
| people vs 20.
|
| What you have could easily be too many people per cell
| tower in your area, which would be the exact same problem
| that these satellites will encounter. The physics of
| adding a cell tower is much cheaper than adding more
| satellites.
| rconti wrote:
| You seem to be confusing posters and issues.
|
| I'M the one who said it took 10 years to get fiber. I'm
| not convinced wired infrastructure is cheaper/easier to
| deploy, when it means digging up millions (billions?) of
| miles of trenches across the country.
|
| Nobody claimed "having fiber in silicon valley today" is
| not better than "having crap internet in rural america"
|
| I have good LTE at my house. That doesn't mean I can get
| terabytes/month of transfer for a reasonable cost.
|
| And by the way, my ENTIRE POINT was that "the physics of
| wires" is NOT "cheaper and easier".
|
| Reply to my parent if you're looking for an argument as
| to why wired is better than wireless.
| chris_va wrote:
| A cell tower today is basically a selective directional
| broadcast of ~2.5GHz backed by a microwave backhaul, conforming
| to local topography and about ~3 miles away.
|
| An internet satellite is a phased array broadcast of ~20Ghz
| with a microwave backhaul without regard for local topography
| and about ~600 miles away.
|
| ... I am not sure there is obviously a better choice here, if
| the launch costs no longer dominate.
| bargl wrote:
| >... I am not sure there is obviously a better choice here,
| if the launch costs no longer dominate.
|
| I'm basing my entire comment on existing costs due to SpaceX
| efficiency. We'd need (IMO) more cost reduction.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" You will almost always get cheaper and faster internet
| (for both you and the company providing internet) over a cable
| to your house."_
|
| Not true for me, and I live 10 minutes walk from the financial
| centre of a major world city. Because there's no fibre
| installed to my building, unlimited ~300 Mbps 5G wireless
| internet is both cheaper and faster than any available fixed
| alternative. Even if fibre was available, the 5G would probably
| still be cheaper!
| boyter wrote:
| Sydney?
| jagger27 wrote:
| The sad part about what you said is that there is definitely
| fibre in your area. After all, there's a 5G tower within
| spitting distance.
| bargl wrote:
| >If you can't get that, then maybe a cell tower is better, if
| that doesn't work, then a land based beaming internet may be
| better, after that I'd look to space based internet.
|
| It is cheaper for a company, to run fiber to your house than
| to build a cell tower that handles ALL the people within that
| region given a certain density of houses.
|
| It doesn't mean it's cheaper for your building to do it.
|
| In the context of space vs ground infrastructure. Ground
| (including cell tower) is much cheaper. And they'll add 5G to
| the financial centers of the world before they add it to
| Wyoming.
|
| The reason companies don't "advertise" hostpots as an
| alternative to fiber/cable is bandwidth. It works great if
| you read HN, but if everyone did it, they'd start running
| more fiber, or cost of cell data would go way up.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" companies don't "advertise" hostpots as an alternative
| to fiber/cable"_
|
| They do around here!
|
| http://www.three.co.uk/store/broadband/home-broadband
|
| https://www.vodafone.co.uk/gigacube/
| bargl wrote:
| Sorry, My experience is mostly US based. I looked into
| this heavily in my area 2+ years ago.
|
| T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon say their hotspots
| are not meant for this in my region. At least that was 2
| years ago in Sub-urban Seattle and 3 years ago D.C.
| iRobbery wrote:
| Weren't they also going to track airplanes with it, to avoid
| new mh-370 cases where they don't know where it went and where
| it crashed?
| [deleted]
| bronco21016 wrote:
| The problem is you're basing your argument solely on the
| physical act of running cable/wires everywhere. When you look
| at the cost of just hiring a crew to dig the ground or string
| wire on a pole you are correct. It's significantly cheaper and
| more reliable.
|
| However, add in the human factor, government. The mess of
| rules, regulations, and right-of-way make it considerably more
| expensive to run wires everywhere.
| bargl wrote:
| I worked at a GEO company. They have a HUGE department just
| to work with governments to buy or keep their spectrum. The
| rules and regulations for spectrum are insane, and not just
| build this cable here in my county/state/country, but now
| this beam goes across borders what do I do? Oh wait, this
| region is contested by China/India we have to sell
| differently to each government.
|
| Cost of labor => It's a calculation of how many people can be
| served per 1 mile (any unit) of cable. If that number is 20,
| cable wins. If it's 5, hotspot may win (which also uses cable
| FWIW). If it's 0.5 then these new satellites win. 5G may try
| to take more market from ISPs but they know they'll have to
| innovate to keep customers. I can 100% see cell towers being
| cheaper than cable, but not in every situation.
|
| It's about supplementing not replacing infrastructure.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The cost of hiring a crew to dig up the ground runs to
| hundreds of dollars per foot. At $1MM for a satellite that
| can serve thousands of people is a lot cheaper.
| wolco wrote:
| If they all lived in the same location. If the cost is
| hundreds per square foot and each customer is 1000ft away
| from each other than thecosts become hundreds of thousands
| per address.
|
| Line of sight or cell tower might work but when it doesn't
| a satellite will.
| xutopia wrote:
| If the price is 5 times cheaper though... what then?
| bargl wrote:
| There is a set capacity for these satellites, they can
| accomodate X number of users per satellite which would be a
| region (I'm making an educated guess) about the size of New
| Jersey. I think the size is larger than that which means
| fewer users but I'm trying to ballpark during my lunch break.
|
| So if they expect to have 10,000 users (again ballpark) in
| New Jersey, but they instead get 40,000 they'll increase
| their costs. If they get 1000 users in say Wyoming, then
| maybe the costs in Wyoming will be lower.
|
| The issue is they have a world wide capacity of 10,000 users
| at 11 MBs over the size of New Jersey. Again, I haven't run
| these numbers but these are the kinds of calculations GEO
| sats make to set prices for say, airplanes traveling from US
| -> Europe. The difference is that GEO targets specific areas
| more rather than blanketing the entire earth due to them
| being stationary.
|
| The benefit of Starlink is that it'll have approximately
| equal signal all over the earth. So if you're in a city it
| can cover the same number of people per mile as it can in the
| middle of the ocean.
| t-writescode wrote:
| I believe the satellites are moving, so there's no "Wyoming
| satellite customers" in the same way as existing satellite
| internet. The Wyoming customers will be sharing satellites
| with several other places as they move in and out of their
| regions
| e12e wrote:
| The bandwidth calculations work out about the same, as
| the users are pretty much stationary - users will be in
| an area handled by ~one satellite at a time (with
| handover between satellites).
| bargl wrote:
| The constellation is moving but they are moving in a
| formation. Meaning you have a rotation of 2-4 satellites
| above your head at any give time. Each satellite can
| service a radius the size of Wyoming.
|
| So you have a limit on the number of satellites and the
| number of customers per satellite.
|
| The article says 5 million in the USA. That makes sense
| given what I'm thinking. That's about 100,000 per state,
| but it's not going to work like that. It's a good
| ballpark for the service they'll provide.
|
| My main point, is if it's 100K per (1/50th the US) there
| will be less bandwidth in cities than in rural regions.
|
| This is a HUGE boon to rural areas and will be amazing.
|
| This will probably not affect you if you are urban or
| even suburban.
| [deleted]
| manquer wrote:
| Their current plans talk about a constellation of 40,000
| says.
|
| While there is limit to number of connections per sat
| that applies to any routing equipment really, there is
| not much limit to how many sats can be there .
|
| Sure spectrum is limited today ,however if 5million
| people use it already, other spectrum could be freed up
| for this purpose , if there is demand .
|
| The constellation _today_ is not ready for high density
| usage , it is not that it will never be ready .
| bargl wrote:
| This type of constellation won't be able to do it.
|
| They are planning on picking off the users who cable has
| to run the furthest to off of the ISPs not the close
| users. If we started spreading out evenly I could see
| this, but while we've got the population density we do, I
| don't see this happening.
|
| Each house will interfere with it's neighbor, the more
| they spread the easier it is.
|
| >The constellation today is not ready for high density
| usage , it is not that it will never be ready .
|
| I am no sith, I shouldn't speak in absolutes. But, I'd
| bet that this technology won't disrupt ISPs within 50
| miles of a city. I hope it would, but I don't see that
| happening.
| millettjon wrote:
| Nothing would stop them from tracking access based on
| location.
| btian wrote:
| What sort of physics?
|
| You can multiplex wavelengths for wireless just like cable
| right? Granted you'd need to buy the licenses for those
| frequencies, which should be fairly cheap in rural areas.
|
| I don't think Elon would approve this project if cable is
| always cheaper and easier.
| bargl wrote:
| Why not? He doesn't have to reach everyone, just some portion
| of the population that's profitable.
|
| My argument should have been this is only (imo) going to get
| at most 10% of the worlds population.
|
| That's based on the signal interference in space. Scale gets
| costly.
| asldkjaslkdj wrote:
| I think you're underestimating the number of people that live
| in places where cell companies don't want to be arsed to build
| a tower.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Cell companies are also the last people you want to get your
| "main internet" from. Bandwidth caps, throttling, accounts
| shut down because actually what they meant is that
| "unlimited" means "200 GB/month".
| codecamper wrote:
| aykm?? wasted the sky with this ugly crap for what we already
| have with 4g? somebody please kick Elon in the nuts for me.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| "...that said, we'll make sure Starlink has no material effect on
| discoveries in astronomy. We care a great deal about science."
| Elon Musk
|
| A long exposure of Comet NEOWISE by Photographer Daniel Lopez:
| https://imgur.com/a/rDI1Onn
|
| N.B. The white streaks are Starlink constellation passthrough
| trajectories
|
| Starlink currently has 597 orbiting satellites they plan for more
| than 12k to be deployed. Amazon just got an approval for their
| own constellation of another 3k low orbiting satellites. Facebook
| and Alibaba will probably join this trend.
| chris_overseas wrote:
| That NEOWISE photo was 17 photos deliberately stacked to
| emphasise the problem rather than minimise it, so it's not
| really a fair datapoint. Astrophotograhy stacking software will
| generally remove items that don't appear in all photos in the
| stack rather than retain them (previous discussion on the
| topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23926699). That
| said, I love taking photos of the night sky myself and had some
| Starlink satellites affect a single exposure photo of mine
| recently, so it is a real issue - just not quite as crazy as it
| looks from that photo.
| johnmaguire2013 wrote:
| > it is a real issue - just not quite as crazy as it looks
| from that photo
|
| Aren't they planning to add a bunch more satellites?
| chris_overseas wrote:
| Yes, but they're also trying to darken them so later
| launches should end up significantly less problematic than
| the initial ones[0]. I'm not trying to defend them here (in
| fact I'm quite annoyed from a photography perspective) but
| appreciate there's two sides to the story and they're at
| least trying to minimise the problem.
|
| [0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/24/21190273/spacex-
| starlink-...
| ColanR wrote:
| Do the satellites in the photo have the new shades on them? I'd
| be interested to know how much the situation has improved with
| the improved anti-reflection.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Do they plan to retrofit the coating on the +500 deployed?
|
| Are there regulations that prevent future constellations from
| Amazon or Facebook, or any other giant, to implement albedo
| reduction on their constellations?
| busterarm wrote:
| Those won't be up forever. They're all in a decaying orbit.
| They will get replaced in about 5 years.
| mdorazio wrote:
| As has been stated many, many times, the satellites are in
| very low orbit and naturally degrade over time to burn up
| in the atmosphere. The ones in the first batches that do
| not have a shade will only be up for a few years (5 at
| most).
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The visor satellites are supposed to be invisible to the
| naked eye. They're still orbit raising, so we don't have
| results yet.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| A non-reflective coating on the satellites will not stop them
| from blocking the light from astronomical objects.
| [deleted]
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The concern astronomers raised was blooming caused by
| oversaturating their sensors, not blockage.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Once we can colonize Mars and set up astronomy observatories on
| Mars, Starlink satellites orbiting Earth won't get in the way
| of astronomy discoveries.
| crazysim wrote:
| The starlink satellites orbiting Mars might!
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The photographer has admitted that he used stacking to create
| the image.
| iNate2000 wrote:
| But isn't stacking used for astro-photography all the time?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Yes. The same tool can be used to either remove or
| emphasize streaks.
| voisin wrote:
| Yes, it absolutely is.
| sudhirj wrote:
| This image was pretty thoroughly panned as being either
| ignorant or malicious - there's as much light coming off planes
| in the sky, yet astronomers don't complain about that. That's
| not to say the satellite aren't irritating, but astronomers
| have mitigation mechanisms.
|
| SpaceX doing well is also a net good thing, because it's
| getting cheaper to put the telescopes in orbit, which is where
| we really want them to be. Earth's surface has light pollution
| from cities, planes and drones; is dark enough for astronomy
| only a fraction of the time; and has constant occlusion from
| birds and bees.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _there's as much light coming off planes in the sky_
|
| If you live right outside of an international airport, maybe,
| but there are areas where this is not true at all.
| Observatories are strategically built to be far away from
| such light pollution. StarLink encircles the globe, and there
| is no way to build around it.
| [deleted]
| ecf wrote:
| High-quality satellite internet that isn't hamstrung by
| ridiculous download caps is one of the things I'm waiting for
| before attempting a nomad lifestyle.
|
| I can't wait until it's more available.
| loktarogar wrote:
| What i'm more interested in is longer term (well, longer than a
| speedtest) consistency. 11mbps is fine if it's never less than
| 11mbps. Aiming for "20ms latency for gaming" etc is useless if
| the thing drops out even once in a game.
| aSockPuppeteer wrote:
| It should be fine unless a helicopter hovers over your dish,
| wind makes your dish unstable, the satellite reaches end of
| life, weather affects your frequency(rain/fog/snow), or
| predicted sun spots occur.
|
| The price may be concerning if we compare to the current offers
| of competition. There are caps and bandwidth limitations.
| Satellite time is expensive.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| If a helicopter is hovering over your dish, close enough to
| be noticeable amounts of wind (more wind than you say get
| normally)... you have bigger problems... Like a military
| group is fast-roping into your home.
| easton_s wrote:
| I super excited for the students at my small rural school
| district. This will be a game changer!
| mintyc wrote:
| Once all tesla vehicles use starlink for sending back data to
| Tesla HQ I'm not sure much will be left for 'rural' broadband.
|
| Nice to pick up the grants though.
| bananaface wrote:
| Won't these speeds dramatically reduce once there are a lot of
| users saturating the connections?
| augusto-moura wrote:
| If the network keep up in this state probably. But the plans
| are to launch some thousand more satellites
| garblegarble wrote:
| >the plans are to launch some thousand more satellites
|
| 1000 more in that shell, but overall 11,578 more satellites
| (most of them lower than the current shell). Their target
| number is 12,000 satellites, with possible expansion to
| 42,000 (!!)
|
| The sheer scale boggles the mind
| topkai22 wrote:
| I suspect it will be really serving areas where that is
| unlikely to happen (rural areas and over ocean transportation).
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'd switch to Starlink JUST to spite Comcast.
| joezydeco wrote:
| If you have comcast you're probably in range of a T-Mobile
| tower. Maybe consider their fixed 5G instead. It's coming
| to my area and Comcast started launching a flurry of deals
| to try and lock existing customers into a two year
| contract.
| jsperson wrote:
| While I totally agree with your sentiments, there is a
| large section of the population that don't even have the
| bad option of Comcast. I hope they put some curbs on
| adoption by those who have alternatives. Source: farm owner
| in the middle of nowhere KS. We have fixed wireless, but if
| it was hilly here we'd be stuck with Hughes and their
| geosynchronous satellites. The latency is huge - the speed
| of light isn't fast enough.
| atlgator wrote:
| It's just a limited satellite network right now. I suspect
| bandwidth limitations may be due to limited ground station
| exposure.
| zaroth wrote:
| There's no way to know how much per-user throttling is
| currently in place. E.g. a single connection might be limited
| to 0.1% of a given bird's total throughout. There could also be
| artificial limits for the ground station's uplink.
|
| Current belief is that each satellite can forward 20Gbps max.
| But I'm doubtful that a single client could ever access a
| significant fraction of that total.
| arrty88 wrote:
| Can anyone tell me why this was not previously possible? Both
| latency and speed? What did Starlink do differently
| neckardt wrote:
| I believe the innovation is that the satellites sit in low
| earth orbit.
|
| Traditional internet satellites operate in geostationary orbit,
| which is around 35,000km above the surface of the earth. This
| was preferable because with only a handful of satellites you
| could give the entire globe internet connection. However you
| have much higher latency due to the distance. Not exactly sure
| why the bandwidth is so slow, distance probably doesn't help
| here either. Maybe those companies are also running outdated
| systems.
|
| Starlink satellites operate in low earth orbit which is around
| 400km, which is way closer, leading to far lower latency.
| However, at that distance you need to basically cover the sky
| with satellites in order to always see one. That's why they're
| planning to launch thousands of them.
| jokoon wrote:
| what about upload?
| supernova87a wrote:
| What is the pricing?
|
| No one ever seems to answer this all-important question...
| dencodev wrote:
| Surely less than $100 a month, which is how high some existing
| internet can be anyway
| vmception wrote:
| you already know why.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22940781
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Shotwell has said that it will be competitive with existing
| Internet pricing at $80. She didn't say it would be $80, but
| competitive with that pricing. Read that as you will. I'm sure
| that's only the starting price, that you'll be able to pay a
| lot more for more bandwidth.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| $100-150/mo for satellite based service would be totally
| reasonable (depending on data caps, etc). When you figure the
| average home (wired) internet connection is in the $80/mo
| range, cell phones start around there too.
|
| The people who _need_ this service are the ones whom are so
| far out that they have no option for DSL, Cable or even 4G
| tethering.
| awesomeideas wrote:
| I wonder if it will have location-modulated pricing; $80
| wouldn't be competitive where I am.
| duskwuff wrote:
| If anything, I can imagine them ramping _up_ prices in
| higher-density areas (where other more competitive
| broadband providers are available) to avoid
| oversubscription.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| The latency here is the main takeaway for me. It's phenomenal for
| a space based system.
|
| I spent some time at my parents cabin during the quarantine and
| the only option there is satellite internet. SSH with a ping of
| multiple seconds is rather frustrating. That and all the systems
| which have bad bandwidth because that much latency makes them
| think they've lost connection.
|
| As my parents are both techies, they are desperately hoping
| they're accepted into the beta.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Once they have inter-satellite links I'd expect long-haul
| latency over those links to beat cable latency for equivalent
| hauls.
| crorella wrote:
| 11 mbps in the middle of a rural location in the heart of Chile ?
| Count me in!
| [deleted]
| LinuxBender wrote:
| More useful to me would be bufferbloat [1] tests. Any starlink
| beta testers on HN? Also useful would be nuttcp or iperf3 tests
| just in case they optimized / prioritized for sites like
| dslreports and other speed test sites.
|
| [1] - http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest
| mey wrote:
| Some of these links start a speed test on page load beware. All
| of them collect IP info/metrics about you.
| https://fast.com/ http://speed.ui.com/
| http://speedtest.googlefiber.net/
| https://www.speedtest.net
| wtallis wrote:
| Yep. It's pretty much a given that if you want to compare
| Starlink to a good terrestrial ISP, you'll be disappointed. But
| compared to any other satellite ISP, Starlink should be
| impressive, especially in terms of latency. So testing and
| media coverage of Starlink should focus more on latency than
| throughput, and testing latency _properly_ means testing
| latency under load.
| taf2 wrote:
| The latency numbers look really good- under 100ms is similar to
| ground based connections
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| Anyone complaining about this has never experienced the
| frustration of rural living when it comes to internet. This is
| absolutely amazing, and it will just get better.
|
| Even a reliable 10mbps would be a godsend in many places.
| jobu wrote:
| My Xfinity "Up to 1Gbps" plan never tests above 60Gbps on any
| speed test other than their own. If nothing else Starlink
| should light a fire under Comcast, CenturyLink and others to
| start providing actual fast internet.
| xienze wrote:
| Bandwidth is great and all, but satellite latency is a killer.
| Been there, done that.
| hackstack wrote:
| This is mentioned on literally every Starlink thread I read,
| and the response is always that unlike previous satellite
| internet offerings, Starlink operates in low earth orbit,
| drastically reducing the ping time. Do you have more to add?
| yencabulator wrote:
| This ain't your grandpa's Hughes.
|
| > latencies or ping rates ranging from 31ms to 94ms
|
| That's on par or better than what I can get with either
| point-to-point wifi to small ISP or LTE.
| rubber_duck wrote:
| And 30-100 ping is usable as well - wonder what the packet loss
| rate is.
| graham_paul wrote:
| To me that frustration comes from a lack of understanding that
| living in a sparsely populated area comes with the good (less
| people around) and the bad (worse infrastructure)
| quink wrote:
| I am with one of the world's biggest telcos, Telstra, on a
| fully owned and operated fibre-to-the-premises network. I live
| in a decade old estate half an hour from the centres of the
| third and sixth largest cities in the country.
|
| The maximum upload speed currently on sale on that network is 1
| Mbps. And it's a monopoly. Inequality in Internet access aside,
| that maximum is below the average fixed upload speed of 170 out
| of 170 countries listed by Speedtest.net.
|
| 1 Mbps. I did three months of complaining and got 5 Mbps. The
| local regulator doesn't care because even though they're not
| actively selling it, said monopoly network is "capable of 5
| Mbps".
|
| Contention aside, this and 5G will be important for those
| jailed by infrastructure monopolists. Here an extreme example,
| but the same is true across North America too, for instance.
| Rural users sure, but this can extend beyond that.
| apendleton wrote:
| Unfortunately it seems like Starlink in particular probably
| won't be useful for urban areas with poor competition. I'd be
| interested if it were, but from the sounds of it, they won't
| be able to handle lots of users in a small area.
| quink wrote:
| Likely, but Australia might have a bit less of that because
| all the big cities are very distant from each other. A
| Starlink satellite with a view of Perth, for example, is
| going to have close to absolutely nothing else on its
| horizon. Above the US, for instance, that's unlikely with
| many people living in between too.
| SyneRyder wrote:
| _> I am with one of the world's biggest telcos, Telstra..._
|
| You have my condolences :(
|
| That's so bizarre to have that kind of low speed on fibre,
| though. I'm half an hour by car / bus from the 4th biggest
| city, and I'm reliably getting 10Mbps upload over the copper
| lines. (I was getting the full 20Mbps of my plan, until NBN
| recently botched the repair of a temporary line fault - their
| repair guy even said it was the legal required minimum speed
| and he wasn't going to try any harder than that.)
|
| Is iiNet not available where you are? Though since it's all
| NBN now, the reseller telco shouldn't make any difference.
|
| That 6th biggest city is awesome though - if I didn't live
| here, I'd move there. 3rd biggest is a nice place too.
| quink wrote:
| It's "Telstra Velocity". It just got a special exemption to
| not make it operate like the NBN renewed because, and I
| paraphrase the federal government's words: "because they
| couldn't be arsed and if we didn't renew it they'd turn off
| the Internet and blame it on us". I too would like to have
| regulatory exemptions extended indefinitely with the excuse
| being that I can't be arsed, but elected officials can just
| tell people to use mobile data instead like my local one
| did. Charging taxpayers more than $30,000 over a year.
|
| No other providers are available. Technically OCCOM and
| probably still Exetel, but they can't offer faster speeds
| and have to charge more than even Telstra.
|
| My most recent communication with the federal
| communications department included this wonderful phrase:
|
| > "Please note that this legislation applies only to the
| capabilities of the network. The plans offered to
| individual consumers may be limited to slower speeds."
| puranjay wrote:
| If I can get those kinds of speeds in rural areas, I would
| legitimately uproot my life and move. I can work from anywhere,
| and I reckon, there will be more and more people like me in the
| post-Covid world. This has the potential to reshape our world
| and turn the tide away from mass urban migration.
| actuator wrote:
| Agreed. I have travelled to remote places where this speed
| would have been a godsend, not just for internet but for
| telephony as well with VoIP. Imagine the kids living in such
| places finally getting access to all the stuff internet has to
| offer.
|
| The only thing to watch out would be pricing. I hope there is
| more competition so the price remains competitive.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| Honestly, one of the barriers to my moving to a more rural area
| and working remotely was broadband access, but Starlink could
| very well solve that problem...
| medion wrote:
| In Australia I moved to a very rural place, buying a house
| based on where I could get wireless broadband as part of our
| nationwide broadband rollout - I now live in a beautiful
| remote place overlooking the ocean with 50/20mbps Internet.
| Before here, I lived in another rural place near the ocean,
| however there was no broadband and 4G was too expensive. I
| ended up making friends with someone who had a 1gbps
| fibrelink 10km away - we spent weekends building a point to
| point network, and I ended up with an extremely reliable
| 20mbps connection for about $300 in parts over Mikrotik
| routers.
|
| As other people have said, you can make it happen if you
| really want!
| choeger wrote:
| Ok you got me with "overlooking the ocean". I will admit, I
| was a little bit envious. But then I recalled the great
| Terry Pratchett quote that you are living on a continent
| where pretty much every animal, except for maybe some
| sheep, is equipped with some venom and actively trying to
| kill you. Plus some of the plants. So I guess it's fair
| play.
| randomdata wrote:
| As long as you are willing to be somewhat discriminating, you
| can find rural areas with great internet service. My farm has
| a fibre connection and the ISP offers 100/100 service. If you
| travel a few miles down the road, the ISP there will provide
| gigabit service.
| Maximus9000 wrote:
| You're not alone there. I wonder if starlink will increase
| property values in rural areas.
| trothamel wrote:
| Especially with COVID showing the downsides to living in
| urban areas.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| I'd rather live in an urban area during a pandemic. It's
| counter-intuitive but the access to testing and hospitals
| is very important.
|
| https://theconversation.com/rural-america-is-more-
| vulnerable...
| fuzxi wrote:
| I'd argue that there's less need for testing in the first
| place when your nearest neighbors live a mile away.
| medion wrote:
| I guess it depends on whether you are vulnerable health-
| wise. If you're fit and healthy and not of retirement age
| I really can't understand this kind of thinking.
| thewebcount wrote:
| Yes, this is so true. My spouse has a rare chronic
| condition and moving anywhere rural is a non-starter.
| Even with great doctors in a big city, it's still a
| struggle getting the care she needs. I can't imagine if
| we lived somewhere with less than stellar healthcare.
| badloginagain wrote:
| Larger amounts of people mean more chances of exposure.
|
| Being in urban environment means higher dependence on
| fragile supply chains- food security is totally dependent
| on JIT grocery store inventories.
|
| Rural homes, by virtue of being isolated, are easier to
| self isolate.
| macintux wrote:
| However, if you're able to work from home, you can self-
| isolate pretty much anywhere, and drive wherever you need
| to get food.
|
| If urban environments start seriously breaking down due
| to a food supply chain problem, rural areas won't be safe
| from desperate people.
|
| Anyway, both approaches have their pros and cons, but as
| someone who has a fairly severe back problem and not much
| inclination to try to live off the grid, I'd rather be in
| an urban area.
| simonh wrote:
| This may be a pandemic, but it's not a zombie apocalypse.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| A friend of mine who served in Afghanistan said that the
| Afghanis living in the mountains had no idea America had
| invaded and no idea about a war or 9/11. At first they
| had thought the Americans were Russians. I think you over
| estimate how big America is and how remote some places
| can be.
| Frondo wrote:
| I've traveled through some pretty remote places in both
| hemispheres, and the US has nothing on isolation compared
| to the mountains in Central Asia. Remoteness won't really
| protect people here, not like it would there.
| mmm_grayons wrote:
| > rural areas won't be safe from desperate people
|
| At least for America, most city folk don't seem to
| understand just how armed their rural counterparts are.
| They'd be pretty darn safe.
| Frondo wrote:
| I don't know if rural folks may realize how well-armed we
| are in the cities. Nearly everyone I know has a gun, and
| none of us is the crowd you'd normally associate with gun
| owners in cities.
| kortilla wrote:
| Well the the stats don't lie. Gun ownership is
| significantly lower in cities than in rural areas/small
| towns.
| [deleted]
| est31 wrote:
| > rural areas won't be safe from desperate people.
|
| That's why you need to buy yourself a private, remote
| island, or at least a farm on a remote island. Also, if
| you don't live on it alone (regardless of ownership), it
| may not import more food than it exports, otherwise the
| other inhabitants will want to get your food.
|
| Of course this is hard to find such an island as there
| aren't many such places and unless you're very rich it'll
| be beyond your budget anyways.
|
| Also want to stress again that it won't be enough to just
| have an island, it has to be remote as well otherwise
| people just swim over. The number of boats is limited
| usually so likely few people will get to you.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I 'd rather live in an urban area during a pandemic._
|
| Consider yourself an outlier. I subscribe to several
| regional real estate newsletters, and for the last five
| months they've been all about people moving out of the
| cities and into small towns.
|
| _It 's counter-intuitive but the access to testing and
| hospitals is very important._
|
| As with any disease, the best treatment is prevention.
| Which is what being rural gives you.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Or yacht prices, once it works on them. Right now tho, with
| not much to go I'd say they should drop. I have a scraper,
| but analysing data is pain.
| yencabulator wrote:
| What he said. From the article:
|
| > While 60Mbps isn't a gigabit, it's on par with some of the
| lower cable speed tiers and is much higher than speeds offered
| by many DSL services in the rural areas
|
| LOWER?! Cable doesn't even serve non-television use near me.
| Phone lines can carry 5 Mbps DSL _if you 're lucky_. I happen
| to have a line-of-sight to a major radio tower so I get wifi
| from a mom-and-pop ISP, with a 10 Mbps cap. If I was on the
| other side of a hill, I'd be screwed.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Modern VDSL can reach around 200mbps at distances something
| around 3-5 km from exchange. DSL obviously lower but possibly
| similar to Starlink.
|
| All that said you can those speeds with Starlink anywhere,
| for much less than installing a phone line.
| keanebean86 wrote:
| My grandma in rural Arkansas would get 26.4 kbps over dialup.
| Cell service is passable outside so she could get a house
| mounted antenna but the data caps are so low it's not worth it.
| Sat internet was crazy expensive last time I checked.
|
| Also she refuses to learn computers so I gave up trying to get
| her internet but that's not related to this conversation.
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| Maybe she's on to something with the no computers thing.
| ingenium wrote:
| There are ways to get unlimited service still, which is what
| my parents do. It's just a bit... hacky. Basically you get an
| LTE modem and SIM swap to it. The ROOTer mod of OpenWRT is
| specifically for using LTE modems and works quite well. There
| are some drawbacks, but it's certainly better than the 1.5
| Mbps DSL alternative (which they keep as a backup / automatic
| failover).
|
| On AT&T (technically a tablet plan) it gets deprioritized
| after 22 GB, but that's never been an issue for them, even
| the one month they did 500 GB. I've never seen their speeds
| affected. Costs about $20 or $25 / month. This is a riskier
| plan, in that AT&T could check the IMEI and shut it off at
| any time if it doesn't match (as they've done in the past).
|
| The Sprint plan (hotspot plan with a public routable IP,
| $41/month effectively, but prepaid for a year at a time) does
| not get deprioritized, but it's probably not worth it unless
| you can get band 41. If you do get band 41 you'll see some
| very nice speeds though, at least download. But T-Mobile is
| beginning to shut down Sprint's band 41, and to my knowledge
| this plan is not permitted to roam onto T-Mobile yet. It's
| keyed in their system as a mobile broadband plan with a 20 or
| 25 GB bucket of data, however it has unlimited overage. I
| done hundreds of GB on it no problem. It exists only because
| of the licensing arrangement for Sprint to use the EBS band
| 41 spectrum.
| pseudosavant wrote:
| I'll throw a mention in for OpenWRT too. I tether my iPhone
| to my OpenWRT router when I've had meaningful internet
| outages. I've done it using wifi and USB/lightning. Being
| wired is more reliable obviously. I'm sure my carrier can
| tell it is tethered data though. Which has its own
| caps/throttling.
| zbrozek wrote:
| I know someone on that tablet plan (which, BTW, you can no
| longer get - go check ebay) who lost it by consistently
| hitting 1TB every month.
|
| What's the Sprint plan?
| tetha wrote:
| Reliable 10mbps is a stable full hd stream and 5ish mbps to
| spare. Easily one stable video call or two at lower quality.
|
| It'll be annoying if you want to download the latest AAA
| shooter coming in at dozens and dozens of gigabytes, sure. But
| you can do a lot at 10mbps as 1-2 people needing the uplink.
| That's really nice.
| gregmac wrote:
| If you're already used to scheduling this overnight, having
| it done in only one night is going to be a significant
| improvement.
| ideals wrote:
| In KC you used to be able to get free Google Fiber at 10mbps.
| Free as in beer.
|
| I never needed anything better than that to watch Netflix or
| program or enjoy basic internet browsering. It was awesome!
|
| To get that out in a rural area and have it reliable is a
| game changer for a lot of people.
| curiousllama wrote:
| Totally agree.
|
| Also - my frustrations over the last few days compel me to
| point out that the latest AAA shooter is in fact 227 GB, plus
| >100GB of updates.
| kickopotomus wrote:
| Has anyone come out with a reason for the size? I mean they
| seem to reuse a lot of the same textures throughout the
| game so I have a hard time understanding how it managed to
| swell to that.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I assume it must be a massive refusal to deduplicate. For
| example in the Verdansk map, many of the houses and
| buildings are cut and pasted. In theory, these could be
| aliases of the same model, but I suspect they are all
| baked in.
|
| Other than that I just don't know. Maybe they used bad
| settings for whatever is their compression algo and they
| don't have any experts who could actually identify the
| problem? It's a preposterous idea but I can't explain it
| otherwise.
| felbane wrote:
| People keep paying for it. That's pretty much it. There's
| no legitimate reason for a game at the resolutions common
| to modern consoles to be that big.
|
| Then again, I guess you have to store all those textures
| for the $9.99 exclusive hot pink and baby shit yellow
| digital camo shotgun skin _somewhere_...
| csharptwdec19 wrote:
| IDK if they do this for PC versions...
|
| But a lot of these games not only Reuse textures but also
| duplicate them. They do this to improve load times for
| levels/etc (less seeking).
|
| Playstation DOOM is an early example of this pattern. The
| WAD files were actually 'per-level' and contained all
| sprites/textures/etc used in said level.
| antris wrote:
| Wouldn't duplicated textures get de-duplicated by any
| halfway-decent compression algorithm though? I'd assume
| the game is sent over the wire compressed
| enkid wrote:
| That's not how compression would work. Think about if
| they are adding a new level. The algorithm would have
| nothing to compare the files against except what is
| actually being sent. If the texture appears in each
| level, and each level comes in a separate update, there's
| no way for the algorithm to reference or incorporate the
| files that are already in your computer, so it has to
| compress it like it's a brand new file. That is unless
| you have a costume installer which duplicates the file
| once it runs, but that would probably be a ton more work
| for the developers.
| csharptwdec19 wrote:
| That MIGHT be happening, honestly not sure.
|
| There are possibly challenges in that however, my
| understanding of most compression algos (which may be
| inaccurate or incorrect) is that you'd run into
| limitations either with size of data overall or the
| memory requirements.
|
| Of course, I'm sure there's other ways around that (And I
| have no clue if they are in use). One option would be to
| send over the assets in a master 'assets' package and
| then duplicate/assemble the data as intended during
| installation.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > and it will just get better.
|
| Won't it get worse when it's generally available? More
| congestion on the same channel means less per-user throughput
| right?
| Traster wrote:
| And when it's at scale it'll actually have to make a profit.
| abledon wrote:
| I get ~2 mbps in my rural area (Canada). This is a major
| upgrade for me. RIP Bell.
| serf wrote:
| >Even a reliable 10mbps would be a godsend in many places.
|
| my first foray into 'rural' internet was during the late 90s,
| using a satellite+modem setup.
|
| The bandwidth was fairly decent -- equivalent to a fast ISDN
| line -- but the reliability was _horrendous_.
|
| Drops constantly, only to wait for a whole new modem
| negotiation and reconnect. Think about the idea of an analogue
| phone modem but over an unreliable aerial connection.
|
| My point in this anecdote : don't take the upstream/downstream
| values at face value -- there are more things that go into a
| connection that's actually worth using.
|
| That said , I have nothing but hope for Starlink. I still
| frequent rural areas that , if broadband is available, it's
| severely limited bandwidth. I'm glad there will soon exist an
| alternative -- let's hope that efforts are made to keep the
| astronomers happy so that this network can be a real boon to
| humanity.
| buu700 wrote:
| Agreed. Maybe it's gotten better, but when I used HughesNet in
| the middle of the woods in Maine, I would say it was comparable
| to dial-up except with worse latency and reliability. Anything
| in the ballpark of a 4G connection would have been phenomenal.
| pier25 wrote:
| Totally.
|
| A couple of years back we lived in some mountains in Mexico and
| the best connection around for miles was less than 5Mbps. Most
| people had less than 1Mbps.
|
| We then moved closer to civilization and I remember being
| amazed to be able to watch Netflix in 4K with a 20Mbps
| connection around 2015 or so.
| mc32 wrote:
| It's better than the DSL AT&T provides in some parts of SF
| where "you're too far from the CO, you're maxed out at 12".
| francis_t_catte wrote:
| LOL, try Verizon-level of rural infrastructure neglect. I
| paid for a guaranteed 3,300Kb/s down, 768Kb/s up. I usually
| got 900Kb/s down, and 150Kb/s up. to quote the linesman who
| had the shit job of patching together the literal 1930's(!)
| phone lines," I was told by corporate to absolutely not
| replace any lines unless they're taken out by a drunk or a
| tree. the cable on that spool I pull behind my truck is going
| to go white from sunfade long before I ever get to use it."
|
| I non-jokingly asked him which tree I should cut to
| 'accidentally' nail the worst sections of wire. his response
| was essentially 'they're all so bad you'd need to cut down a
| lot of trees'. Verizon DSL was my only choice beside
| Hughesnet or dial-up. I ended up moving instead.
| znpy wrote:
| Lol here in .it I get a 1 Gbps ftth connection for 24,95
| EUR/month
| francis_t_catte wrote:
| I was paying in excess of $112 US a month for the
| priviledge of DSL that had about a 60% uptime on fair
| weather days, and 0% uptime on rainy days.
|
| I also forgot to mentiom how my DSL speeds got that low;
| one section of telephone wire on my rural street had
| literally no usable pairs left (they had all corroded
| into nothing). the linesman had to reroute our phone line
| about 1.5miles out of the way in the opposite direction
| of the CO to get us reconnected. after that, if you
| picked up the phone, all you'd hear was a ghostly
| whistling instead of a dial-tone. the only reason I still
| had a 'working' DSL connection was from modifying the
| firmware on my D-Link DSL modem to do horrifying things.
| :|
| nix23 wrote:
| Man that's bad, here in Switzerland my Line was upgraded to
| 10Gbs from 1 and i was mad that the router just had four
| 1Gbs and one 2.5Gbs cable ports...so i had to buy the
| business model router with fiber LAN (witch i like much
| more..thinner cables).
| znpy wrote:
| Nice, what canton are you in?
| iagovar wrote:
| Don't you have unlimited data plans in the US? Or local
| Wimax ISPs?
| francis_t_catte wrote:
| doesn't matter if there's no LTE (or even 4G) out there.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| I can't speak for the rest of the nation, but a couple
| years ago the big ISPs in the midwest started phasing in
| 1tb data caps.
| Alupis wrote:
| Pretty hard to eat up a 1TB Monthly Data Cap using a cell
| phone (the OP's situation).
| markholmes wrote:
| This also makes remote work more viable in non-traditional
| locations.
| blocked_again wrote:
| > Even a reliable 10mbps
|
| What are some applications that requires more than 10mbps speed
| in rural places?
| abledon wrote:
| WINDOWS 10 OS.
|
| The amount of updates you have to download weekly is insane.
|
| cripples my connection to do anything else for hours at a
| time. Have to switch to "metered connection" to trick it into
| thinking im connceted to internet on a smartphone with super
| expensive$$$ dataplan, so to leave any updates as 'frozen'.
|
| (for a non tech saavy person, they would be driven nuts...
| every day their computer would just grind to a halt doing
| network stuff and not know why)
| CloudNetworking wrote:
| A family.
| vinw wrote:
| Probably same applications that require more than 10mbps in
| non-rural places.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Same applications as anywhere urban. We folk living out in
| the sticks may appreciate the outdoors more, but there's
| still those of us who do use computers.
|
| Example: Downloading modern software over anything at 10mbps
| is a royal pain- VMs, docker containers, bloated IDEs,
| gigabytes worth of OS updates, tens of gigabytes for games,
| you name it.
|
| Streaming services cap quality, or stutter out horribly.
| Don't even bother trying to stream over satellite (even at
| 25mbs with hughsnet, for example), you'll blow your cap out
| of the water in a hurry and it'll make you resent leaving the
| 90's.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _What are some applications that requires more than 10mbps
| speed in rural places?_
|
| Why do rural areas need any lower internet speeds than you do
| in the city? What are you doing in the city that they aren't?
| eddieh wrote:
| Viasat is already available and provides 12-100 Mbps service.
| Viasat only uses 4 satellites. HughesNet provides up to 25 Mbps
| service and I think has 5 satellites.
|
| Caveat: Of course I've never used either service myself, so I
| can not speak to the actual download speeds vs advertised
| speeds.
| AmbientNomad wrote:
| I live in a rural area where both of these services are
| available. They both come with seriously outdated data caps.
| Hugesnet, if I recall, charges $150/month for their fastest
| tier, but after 50gb, your speed is reduced to 300kbps.
|
| I haven't experienced either service, but I regularly read
| that they are riddled with disconnects and spotty service.
|
| Currently we're paying a ridiculous amount, $200/month, to
| Unlimitedville for what is literally just a 4G hotspot in our
| house, but with an actual, usable data limit (1tb/month).
|
| I have some serious concerns about Starlink, but until we
| decide that internet is a utility and rural people need
| access too, I guess I'm happy to see at least somebody is
| trying to make rural internets better.
| vardump wrote:
| "I have some serious concerns about Starlink..."
|
| Curious, what kind?
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Curious, what kind?_
|
| Maybe that you might be forced into an NDA for a service
| that never ends up delivering on promises?
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Absolutely! As someone who lived in a third world country for
| 2.5y (2014-2016), I had to resort to satellite internet for
| semi-reliable uplink. I have to admit that I'm not too familiar
| with the differences between Starlink and what's already
| available, but what I do know is that I had to settle for
| 4/0.5mbit and was really happy with it.
|
| Reliability of the connection was much more important than the
| throughout.
| bdamm wrote:
| Main advantage of Starlink over existing satellite is a
| (much) lower latency. Starlink constellation is flying by
| with a new satellite overhead every 10 minutes or less, and
| they're operating just above the atmosphere. Musk has claimed
| 20ms latency, which if true, would be absolutely a smash
| victory for rural Internet users everywhere.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| That would have been absolutely awesome. If memory serves
| me right, my latency was around 150ms on average, which was
| ok-ish but not great.
| SNACKeR99 wrote:
| On satellite right now. I'm getting ~600ms latency :(
| [deleted]
| pier25 wrote:
| Where did you live?
| ExtremisAndy wrote:
| You've got that right! I taught remotely all summer long on
| 6mpbs down/ 0.3 up. Dreadful. Just enough upload speed for
| PowerPoint + my voice. I'd love for something like Starlink to
| work.
| Animats wrote:
| Plus you have it all to yourself. Anyone remember the early 3G
| "high speed" demos, when 3G was just coming up?
| dougmwne wrote:
| This is already quite an achievement! In just 10 launches, SpaceX
| is operating the world's largest satellite constellation and can
| already provide broadband of reasonable quality to some
| customers. In rural areas, I have struggled to catch weak LTE
| signals with fixed antennas that often didn't hit these speed and
| latency numbers. This absolutely seems on track to be an
| excellent alternative to rural LTE or existing satellite internet
| providers. If it gets better from here with more launches, it's
| all gravy as far as I'm concerned.
| derekp7 wrote:
| I would like to see a kit from SpaceX which provides a solar
| powered Starlink to LTE bridge. Such kits could be installed
| anywhere, and provide service to places such as farm
| communities (install them on top of grain silos, for example).
| That way Starlink could be available to more customers without
| them having to have their own premise equipment (beyond an LTE
| hotspot).
| SEJeff wrote:
| I'd sort of expect LTE operators to pay SpaceX for kit to do
| literally this.
| grecy wrote:
| I worked for the Telco that services all of Northern Canada
| (world's largest operating area for a telco).
|
| We installed one of the world's first 3G towers that uses
| only satellite as backbone. Think fly-in only communities
| that are thousands of kilometers away from anything in the
| Arctic. Many of our sites are served by radio backhaul for
| that reason.
|
| The sat backhaul tower is extremely expensive and
| temperamental. It does work, but not very well. 3G (and LTE)
| are not very fault tolerant, and phones drop calls when the
| quality of the call drops below thresholds that can't be set.
| AFAIK they have not installed another one because of all the
| problems.
|
| For data the cost is astronomical - many thousands of dollars
| per GB. Hopefully starlink can at least fix that.
| ianai wrote:
| This is what turns me away from the astronomers complaining
| about the constellations. They're not interested at all in
| the community whose problems satnet helps resolve. Society
| has had plenty of time to run data lines out to the hardest
| to reach areas and clearly cannot and will not do it any
| other way.
| shajznnckfke wrote:
| I wouldn't blame the astronomers for that. People who
| lead different lives get affected by technology in
| different ways. It's good for everyone to tell the world
| how they are being affected. Ultimately people in
| positions of power are going to make decisions and it's
| good for them (and activists, lobbyists, and advisors who
| they talk to) to have all the relevant information. It's
| not necessary or possible for everyone to know how
| everyone else is affected before they speak about their
| own concerns.
| labster wrote:
| And in 10 years, Starship should make it possible to put
| more space observatories in orbit, so it should get
| better for the professional astronomers eventually. It'll
| still suck for amateur astronomers and photographers,
| though.
|
| Although, with the way 2020 is going, we'll probably miss
| observing the asteroid that kills us all because a
| Starlink got in the way of the observation.
| gamegod wrote:
| The reason we don't use space observatories as much
| anymore is because we have adaptive optics now and don't
| need them. The concerns of astronomers are real. It's not
| for Starlink to ruin our ability to observe the sky for
| all of humanity. Incredible entitlement.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Seems like dealing with satellites is a truly trivial
| application of "adaptive" optics.
|
| You can't possibly expect me to believe that you have the
| processing power and technical know-how to remove the
| influence of atmospheric distortion, but that you're
| helpless when confronted with discrete fast-moving
| objects for which you have ephemerides. Sorry, that dog
| just don't hunt.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| You can easily turn that last part around.
|
| It's not for astronomers to ruin our ability to provide
| essential (and yes, internet is essential at this point)
| services for billions of people around the world that
| otherwise can't get it. Incredible entitlement.
|
| It just depends on what you value more, observing the
| sky, or providing internet.
| labster wrote:
| What right do you have to turn that statement around?
| Incredible entitlement. /s
|
| But really adaptive optics is nice, and lets us
| compensate for atmospheric distortions. But not light
| filtered by the atmosphere. Or clouds. Or daylight. And
| we still have to compensate for quakes and vibrations,
| and temperature change. It's simply just cheaper to do on
| land than in space.
|
| Imagine if it wasn't an order of magnitude more expensive
| than space. Or imagine a large telescope array on the
| Moon, where you get stability, ability to repair, and no
| atmosphere to get in the way. With SLS and Starship, all
| of that starts to look possible in the next 20 years.
| quercusa wrote:
| I'd like to hear some of your install stories.
| [deleted]
| seanwilson wrote:
| What's the limit for how many internet users can use Starlink at
| the same time?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 50Gbps aggregate per satellite (actually 25 since you have to
| go up and down). 12000 satellites in the constellation. Those
| satellites will be over the ocean or unoccupied land most of
| the time, so estimate about 1% utilization ratios to be
| conservative. Standard ISP oversubscription allocations allow
| about 1Mbps per customer.
|
| That math gives me 300M customers.
| netcyrax wrote:
| What hardware is required to use the Starlink network? Would that
| be expensive?
| noodle wrote:
| I've read somewhere else that its in the territory of $250. But
| that was reporting from a while ago, and things might be
| different now.
| vondur wrote:
| This is awesome to hear. This will enable more people to move out
| to more remote places and get some nice speeds. 60MB/s is good
| enough for most remote work and TV streaming services. I can't
| wait to see what the major players will respond to this if it's
| opened up to major cities.
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