[HN Gopher] Starlink Maritime
___________________________________________________________________
Starlink Maritime
Author : Yukonv
Score : 289 points
Date : 2022-07-07 19:26 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.starlink.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.starlink.com)
| hsnewman wrote:
| That's affordable!
| adingus wrote:
| "$5,000/mo with a one-time hardware cost of $10,000 for two high
| performance terminals."
|
| wow! Why cant you just take your normal starlink with you on your
| boat? Don't people do that with RVs?
| pigtailgirl wrote:
| https://www.starlink.com/rv
|
| -- If I had to guess part of the reason would maybe be carrying
| capacity - a house that doesn't move is predictable - RVs &
| boats move so the per satellite bandwidth predictability of
| that class of object is lower - i think meaning the
| requirements for redundancy are higher - redundancy is
| expensive? - just a guess --
| cronix wrote:
| Starlink RV is only currently meant to be used while
| stationary and can't track while in motion, which is why the
| hardware is identical to the home unit. They're supposed to
| be coming out with new hardware that allows use while in
| motion. It was only a week ago that the FCC approved the
| application for "vehicles in motion."[1] It will be on
| airplanes as well, soon.
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/30/fcc-approves-spacex-
| starlink...
| cjensen wrote:
| People do install normal starlink on boats [1]. The $10K/$5K
| price tag really has me scratching my head about what they are
| thinking. Does look like they plan to cover the entire ocean,
| so at least there is a specific benefit they can point to.
| They're definitely giving up a lot of everyday coastal business
| in hopes of making it up with a few whales.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHHCK6aARn0
| uf00lme wrote:
| Number one complaint from seafarers is lack of good internet.
| Ship owners are always looking for cheap ways to keep this
| crew happy and loyal, they will be lining up to get this
| installed.
|
| If the pricing is that low for commercial customers then it
| will sell out before you know it.
| mdasen wrote:
| I think Starlink is looking for more money. They've raised
| prices on everyone 11% after about a year. They've introduced
| Starlink RV at a 23% premium over their regular Starlink
| service (and a 36% over the original Starlink price point).
|
| I think Starlink doesn't want to use too heavy a hand with
| customers using their equipment not as intended (as is the
| case with most companies), but it does look like they're
| trying to increase their average billings.
|
| I'd guess that they're trying to pick up a lot of commercial
| business. While it only covers coastal areas at the moment,
| it'll cover the North America/Europe/North Africa/Asia parts
| of the ocean in 6 months and substantially everywhere in 9
| months. For a shipping company looking to replace their old-
| school satellite service, $10,000 for equipment and $5,000/mo
| is probably nothing. For every rich person with a yacht,
| that's basically nothing. It seems like a great way for
| Starlink to grab a lot of additional revenue in areas where
| there won't be a lot of congestion - and from people who are
| used to paying much more outrageous rates.
|
| And they haven't said that they're going to be heavy handed
| with people grabbing a $600 Dishy and putting it on their
| boat by the coast. Maybe they will be, but we haven't seen
| that yet.
|
| I'd also note that it's likely that the equipment is a lot
| better to withstand the motion and environment of being at
| sea. These are going to have to withstand a lot of salt-water
| air and spray while maintaining their motors in good working
| order. They'll probably also need to be rated for a longer
| lifespan given the amount of movement the motors will be
| doing compared to a stationary one (not just the travel of
| the vessel, but also the waves).
|
| I'd guess that Starlink is assuming that small boat owners
| will just grab a regular Dishy and service and Starlink will
| ignore it as long as they're relatively near land. This will
| add 45x the revenue for those who can afford it - shipping
| companies, rich people with yachts, etc.
| usrn wrote:
| I've seen videos of people using starlink on boats. Without
| compensation for the boat movement it performs
| poorly/unpredictably. I really wonder if they'll just
| tolerate the people that do it anyway since they're
| unlikely to convert those to the higher price point for
| something that works well.
| synaesthesisx wrote:
| A colleague of mine has Starlink on his boat using one of
| the clever stabilization modifications out there. It
| works "good enough" that I don't see him upgrading to
| Maritime...
| hef19898 wrote:
| Another option could be, so, that this is a somewhat
| realistic pricing. Assuming Iridium and co. do know what they
| are doing.
| plasticchris wrote:
| Would only work near shore, this must mean they have some
| capability to go beyond the one hop to a station. Edit: from
| the coverage map it looks like this is only coastal waters...
| adingus wrote:
| Interesting. I didn't know that coverage was limited. I
| assumed satellite == pretty much all of earth.
| plasticchris wrote:
| It will once they get the laser terminals up and running so
| the sats can talk to each other
| xxpor wrote:
| They can't do satellite to satellite yet. Just terminal ->
| sat -> ground station. Starlink is in low earth orbit, so
| the visibility any one satellite has is (relatively
| speaking) pretty limited.
| stephbu wrote:
| At 550km altitude, each Starlink satellite in low-earth
| orbit has a visible horizon of only about 700mi, and I
| suspect usable range that is much smaller, probably low
| 100's of miles. To extend range to a ground-station beyond
| that will probably take multiple peer satellite hops - I
| suspect that inter-satellite bandwidth is a a precious
| commodity - and priced as such.
| mlyle wrote:
| I think you're confusing the horizon of places on the
| surface of Earth that you can see with the distance to
| another satellite you can see.
|
| 6900km from the center of Earth. Figure you don't want
| the link to point within 150km (6500km) of Earth, to not
| pass through much atmosphere and to not see too much
| atmospheric glow (even with narrow filters, this
| matters).
|
| Effectively you have an isosceles triangle with 6900km on
| the common side and an altitude of 6500km (tangent to
| "top of atmosphere" at 150km.
|
| sqrt((6900^2 - 6500^2)) * 2 =~ 4600km
| ortusdux wrote:
| The majority of their satellites just bounce the signals
| back down to a nearby ground station. Their version 1.5
| sats, which they started launching about a year ago,
| include laser links to allow sat->sat communication. Their
| plan is for the remaining 3/4th of their fleet to have
| laser links.
|
| One interesting side-effect of the laser links is that they
| can open up connections between stock exchanges and trading
| houses that are faster than direct fiberoptic lines.
| Milliseconds count in high frequency trading.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The traders are already using HF radios with lower
| latency.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Yeah SpaceX will have a very hard time beating the
| current routes; they're further from the surface and the
| intersatellite links won't be travelling in a straight
| line all the time. The best bet is if they can provide
| those links across oceans that can't be rigged with
| microwave towers.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The HF radios are transatlantic and transpacific using
| 10-30 MHz radios. The terrestrial microwave links
| (several GHz) have been around for a decade, and HF radio
| is fairly recent. Starlink will have higher bandwidth,
| but also higher latency.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Predictability and stability count a lot as well. I think
| the starlink-as-low-latency-trading-medium is sort of
| like "blockchain for real estate" - it's not actually a
| real thing.
| vardump wrote:
| You can simply use multiple links to send same data. The
| fastest one wins, so if there's a temporary hickup on one
| of the links, you still get somewhat bounded latency.
| When things work fine, you get to reap the latency
| benefit.
|
| So I think it's plausible for intercontinental links.
| wolrah wrote:
| > Interesting. I didn't know that coverage was limited. I
| assumed satellite == pretty much all of earth.
|
| The low orbits that give Starlink its low latency compared
| to geostationary satellite internet services also mean that
| each satellite can only see a small part of the earth at
| any given time. This is why they need so many satellites to
| provide reliable coverage.
|
| Right now each satellite has to communicate directly to a
| uplink station, so it's only possible to provide coverage
| to areas where a satellite can simultaneously see the user
| and the uplink.
|
| This is where SpaceX's planned inter-satellite link
| capability comes in to play, they claim they will be able
| to use lasers in a free-space optical network (think fiber
| without the fiber) to relay data directly from satellite to
| satellite, allowing service more than a single hop from a
| uplink station. This will also hypothetically allow for
| direct user to user connections over the satellite network
| that do not traverse the terrestrial internet, which would
| be huge for both military and business applications. Lots
| of words have been written about intercontinental high
| frequency trading for example.
|
| Supposedly every satellite launched in 2022 has the
| capability but as far as I'm aware it hasn't been openly
| demonstrated to work yet. Making it work reliably within a
| single orbital ring is a hard problem and the claimed
| ability to cross-connect between adjacent rings is an
| absurdly hard problem. Neither are impossible, but I'll
| believe it when I see it.
| maccam94 wrote:
| > as far as I'm aware it hasn't been openly demonstrated
| to work yet
|
| They did a test in late 2020[0], and all launches since
| June 2021 have been Starlink v1.5 with lasers[1].
|
| 0: https://wccftech.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-laser-
| test/
|
| 1:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_launches
| Phlarp wrote:
| >I'll believe it when I see it.
|
| This whole "yea inter-sat free space fiber links are
| totally going to happen" charade smacks of the same hype
| baiting as "full self driving by end of year" nonsense
| that Elon has been spouting since 2018.
|
| The Starlink "team" did an AMA on reddit[0] last year and
| it was comical how empty the answers were. People asked
| about the space lasers and the answers were all "yea it's
| a really hard problem, BTW we're hiring!" which honestly
| felt like an admission from HR that they're looking for
| engineers willing/able to cash the checks marketing
| already wrote.
|
| [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/jzozv3/eve
| ry_answ...
| mlyle wrote:
| It's not that hard of a problem to do fast free-space
| optical in space within a single orbital shell. The only
| thing that makes it hard for SpaceX is the relatively
| small mass and volume budgets on their satellites to do
| precision pointing with, and that you'd really want each
| satellite to be able to do multiple links and that's
| taking up a lot of space.
| intrasight wrote:
| > Supposedly every satellite launched in 2022 has the
| capability
|
| Additionally there's the issue that their operating
| licenses don't allow inter-satellite communications.
| scrumper wrote:
| I think that offshore is Q4 2022, though very hard to tell
| from those colors in the coverage map. Really unhelpful
| visual design there!
| gvb wrote:
| "Starlink for RVs is not designed for use while in motion."
|
| Marine starlink needs to compensate for rolling, pitching, and
| forward motion.
| cronix wrote:
| Sounds like they added a gimbal or something?
| rasz wrote:
| phased array antenna, so its either a software switch or
| they simply detect if your station moves too much without
| paying for the privilege and disable/throttle you.
| deelowe wrote:
| Starlink uses beam forming. It shouldn't need a gimbal.
| madengr wrote:
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The phased array can probably only do so much and a
| gimbal might still be needed to compensate for movement
| outside of what the phased array can handle?
| dicknuckle wrote:
| These are common on radar systems, and nothing to sneeze
| at.
| gvb wrote:
| The antenna is electronically steered. The pictures do not
| show any gimbal but they probably had to add an IMU to
| measure the motion of the boat (antenna) and adjust the
| antenna beam steering to compensate.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_measurement_unit
| bri3d wrote:
| The Starlink Dishy already has an IMU in it. It does look
| like maybe the beam array is simply bigger.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| This guy has been testing it without one
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/SailboatCruising/comments/vovaxs/s
| t...
| roflyear wrote:
| Look at the coverage map: https://api.starlink.com/public-
| files/maritime-coverage-map....
|
| What a fucking joke. "coming soon" means nothing to me coming
| from a Musk company.
|
| Compare to the iridum network:
| https://www.groundcontrol.com/us/knowledge/calculators-and-m...
|
| Granted, iridium is much slower. But $5k a month for barely any
| coverage is an insult.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| They don't need any new development or that kind of stuff for
| wide coverage, just the intersatellite links, and they have
| launched 15 groups of them in the first 6 months of this
| year.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| "just" the intersatellite links, which is research-level
| technology given the speeds, distances and precision
| required.
|
| Tesla Autopot also requires "just" a few software updates.
| wilg wrote:
| I think they've already launched the new satellites with
| laser links.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| They've launched satellites that have lasers, but I don't
| think they've actually demonstrated they have the ability
| to aim those lasers precisely enough to actually
| communicate between satellites in orbit.
| maccam94 wrote:
| https://wccftech.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-laser-
| test/
| extheat wrote:
| Do you think running Starlink is cheap? Something seems to
| have struck a nerve.
| dieselgate wrote:
| It's only five boat units a month and ten boat units for
| setup. It's no where near worth it for me because normal
| phone/wireless data works well where I sail (in addition to
| iridium network fwiw) - the prices would need to be at
| least an order (orders) of magnitude cheaper for me to even
| consider it. Not sure about parent comment though.
|
| Boat ~~ bust out another thousand
|
| Edit: I took parent comment as a joke but ya never know
| pigtailgirl wrote:
| -- coverage is literally perfect for anywhere I take my
| (imaginary) yacht! - south of france? check! italian riviera?
| check! miami? Check! LA? Check! $5k a month? In YachtLand
| $5/mth is pocket change --
| bombcar wrote:
| Exactly. The customers who will buy this will add it
| _alongside_ their existing Iridium setup, for faster speeds
| when able.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| And for us actual realistic ones - a lot of anchorages
| around Europe have pretty decent LTE to work with. You
| won't be able to work while on passage anyway.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| - This is a more niche product (just due to sheer numbers).
| Therefore, supporting it for each user will have higher
| overheads.
|
| - Competition is expensive, e.g. BGAN at $284/GB of data
| transfer or more, while offering lower speeds (700 Kbps for a
| $6.5K Cobham Explorer 710, Vs. 350 Mbps for this).
|
| - Competition likely won't be able to directly compete on
| offering for a while.
|
| The next step will likely be commercial aircraft over the
| ocean. "Because they can [charge this]" is obviously the
| primary reason, but if you go look at what is available in this
| space right now, this isn't nuts, far from it.
|
| Internet over the ocean is an incredibly hard/expensive
| problem. You cannot directly compare it to over-the-land
| offerings where the consumers are 1:1M.
| hrgiger wrote:
| Astrospace is also planning mobile broadband trough the
| satellites, their target audience also rural areas, I wonder
| they will support ocean as well, if so that would help
| competition.
| extheat wrote:
| Seems like you can according to Starlink employees -
| https://twitter.com/JoeyScarantino/status/154515954230810214...
|
| https://twitter.com/joeyscarantino/status/154516393155921510...
| aml183 wrote:
| I work in the space industry and follow SATCOM closely. This is a
| very competitive space. Companies like Viasat, Iridium and
| Inmarsat already work in this vertical.
|
| SpaceX beats all these companies from a marketing perspective,
| but the big question is will a LEO operator provide better
| coverage than a GEO operator?
| samstave wrote:
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| I've done work video calls using my friend's starlink wifi on a
| remote mountain, and it's unlimited bandwidth so this didn't
| cost anything beyond the flat $110 monthly fee. Are
| geosynchronous services even capable of doing the bandwidth and
| latency needed for a two-way video call? And if so, how much
| would it cost?
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| One word: ping.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| Ping times of 20 ms against >1000 ms will be a pretty
| convincing argument.
| colordrops wrote:
| Any reason to believe that SpaceX isn't capable of getting
| global coverage using intra-satellite links? Assuming this, and
| they've already proven they can do it, SpaceX will be strictly
| better than any other solution out there.
| cft wrote:
| At least, It should give much lower latency, which is super
| important for all remote tech, system administration and
| anything near-real time.
| SteveGerencser wrote:
| You could be 2 cups and a long string and beat most of those
| providers. I've been trapped in their horrible world for over a
| decade and can't wait for "any" other option. I don't even care
| how much it costs anymore.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I would ask two things:
|
| a) if you've ever personally lived for months or years at a
| time 100% dependent upon geostationary based services costing
| anywhere from $165/mo to $15,000 a month or more, for internet
| access and links to the outside world
|
| b) if you've personally used a starlink terminal
|
| the actual _coverage_ isn 't there yet for things like mid
| ocean, because starlink satellites in the present architecture
| need to be simultaneously in view of a CPE and a starlink run
| earth station.
|
| what they've got right now is a viable competitor for the
| smaller geostationary based ku and ka band maritime vsat
| packages sold for coastal region use, which are limited to
| specific ku and ka band spot beams anyways. such as you might
| see used in the caribbean and Mediterranean oceans.
|
| when they have more polar orbit satellites and the satellite-
| to-satellite laser links are working they will have full mid
| ocean coverage, and I have no doubt it will beat the pants off
| a $200,000+, 2.4 meter C-band stabilized-in-radome maritime
| VSAT system with a monthly service cost of $8,500+.
|
| anyone that's ever done the link budget calculations and seen
| the RF channel sizes and very simple modulations (very poor
| bps/Hz ratio) needed to make IP data over 2.4m size c-band
| terminals will know what I'm talking about. this is directly
| proportional to dollars in the monthly recurring costs for
| ongoing transponder space use.
|
| the performance and dollar per MB cost right now for coastal
| region use will absolutely beat anything inmarsat or iridium
| based by a ridiculous margin.
|
| I fundamentally disagree with you that it's a very competitive
| market, it's a market that's highly dependent upon the business
| model of launching 3500-6000 kg things into geostationary orbit
| at immense cost and trying to recoup the construction+launch
| cost of them before they die in 13 to 16 years. And
| military/government contracts. Traditional two way
| geostationary based satellite comms stuff is a very
| conservative and moribund segment of the telecom industry.
|
| you've got other things out there that are sort of viable like
| o3b (now owned/controlled by SES), but anyone that's ever
| priced an o3b terminal and ongoing service on something like a
| 36 month term will know that it's not a significant improvement
| in cost.
| usrn wrote:
| Yeah. Having lived for years with geosyncronous internet:
| it's not what people think of normally as internet, it's more
| of a consumerized interesting radio thing. It's not reliable,
| it's not fast, the latency is insane, the data caps are low.
| Unless you're working for yourself and doing most of your
| work on local machines you're not using it for anything
| interesting.
| walrus01 wrote:
| at the consumer level under $200/mo, assuming what we're
| talking about a consumer viasat/hughesnet/wildblue type low
| cost terminal and service, what you're getting is 32:1 or
| 64:1 or worse oversubscribed
| Mo3 wrote:
| You are absolutely spot on. The market isn't competitive,
| it's artificial highway robbery. The entry requirements and
| expenses are insanely high, preventing a lot of competition
| to begin with, and the few players are free to drive up their
| prices to disgusting altitudes while providing services of
| disgusting quality. I wouldn't even be surprised if they have
| agreements going on between themselves. SpaceX's going to
| have a field day and brutally rip some inflated executives
| out of their cozy decade-old comfort zone.
| jpgvm wrote:
| The problem is actually that most of those systems are on
| considerably less advanced tech than Starlink and as a
| result only have a fraction of the capacity.
|
| Thus each piece of capacity costs more.. thus the very high
| costs of Iridium and Viasat.
|
| Their profit margins aren't actually that good because
| their costs are so high compared to their capacity and the
| costs are so high that demand simply doesn't materialise -
| people just do without.
|
| Starlink will change this game because of their drastically
| increased capacity (assuming they get sat-sat links
| working). Until another mega-constellation comes online I
| fully expect them to do to satellite Internet what they did
| to the launch market.
| steveoscaro wrote:
| This is SpaceX, not Tesla, unless I'm misreading your
| comment.
| Mo3 wrote:
| Thank you, I miswrote.
| walrus01 wrote:
| To be fair, a non vertically integrated geostationary-
| satellite-owning company like intelsat, ses, eutelsat or
| arabsat or similar has little to no control over how much
| Boeing charges for a fully equipped 702 series satellite
| bus, or the disposable rocket launch costs.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It's incredible to behold. Can you imagine either being a
| satellite comms service provider or space vehicle
| provider trying to acquire or raise capital to acquire
| your compliment to vertically integrate and reap higher
| margins? And instead, SpaceX knocks it out if the park
| with reusability such that they say to themselves (or
| rather, Musk tells the board) "well, we're about to
| cannibalize the launch market and we're running out of
| TAM, can we launch our own satellite constellation and
| consume another TAM with these F9s we've got laying
| around not being productive?"
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Iridium's profit margins do not seem like those of a
| company engaging in artificial highway robbery:
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IRDM/iridium-
| commu...
|
| Neither do Viasat's:
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/VSAT/viasat/profi
| t...
|
| For some reason, Inmarsat has very nice profit margins
| though:
|
| https://craft.co/inmarsat/metrics
|
| Interesting that Viasat was able to purchase Inmarsat given
| the figures.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Viasat while it has a lot of consumer facing exposure
| (and contracts to do things like build teleports for the
| DoD) is not a major player in the market of actually
| owning geostationary satellites. Look at entities like
| Intelsat and SES.
| Mo3 wrote:
| I would argue that 25% or so net margin for a decade is a
| pretty significant sign considering how small their
| customer base must be and how much expenses they must
| have.
|
| But yes, I did in fact assume it to be higher.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I see a lot of volatility for Iridium with quite a few
| years with big losses and zero profit.
|
| Viasat simply has near zero profit margins, and quite a
| few years with losses.
|
| Inmarsat looks like it has 20% or so profit margin for
| the last few years, but I could not quickly find more
| years of data.
|
| Also, I would expect decent (10%+) profit margins for a
| business with few customers and extremely costly barriers
| to entry. Both of those factors add to volatility, and
| investors would require a commensurate return to make it
| worth investing in.
| Mo3 wrote:
| Iridium apparently had much more expenses for a few years
| around 2018, possibly mass upgrading their
| infrastructure, but before that a decade of near constant
| 20-30% net, recovering again now, unless I'm misreading
| this data.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The Mar 31, 2022 datapoint is -0.21%.
|
| They do make a good profit in the years they do, but my
| point is they also have quite a bit of volatility. I
| would not touch that business without the 10%+ profit
| margin opportunities.
| Mo3 wrote:
| Definitely agree, I probably wouldn't touch them at this
| point any more at all.
|
| Was just replying to the notion that this couldn't be
| artificial highway robbery just because their net margin
| isn't great. I believe it definitely still can be,
| because apparently the only way these companies are even
| in business right now is exactly by highway robbery.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Inverse square law issues?
|
| Naively, cost+speed+coverage=value?
| roflyear wrote:
| Mostly it's "Elon likes to promise things that he may not be
| able to do" issue
| Mo3 wrote:
| Depending on how this is priced this is still an extremely
| viable option for a good chunk of the maritime industry,
| even if coverage is limited to ports and national waters.
| ww520 wrote:
| For latency and bandwidth, LEO beats GEO hands down.
| niico wrote:
| I wonder if i can expense this as my WFH setup
| xoa wrote:
| Always a treat to see the urban HN crowd comment with great
| confidence on anything outside of their immediate area. While
| hopefully eventually SpaceX will bring this down and be more
| disruptive, right now they simply cannot possibly meet demand,
| they are very rightfully anxious to get revenue going for
| Starlink, they're in a completely unique level of performance for
| maritime, and HELLO FOLKS, here is a taste of what actual
| maritime internet costs, quoting myself from elsewhere:
|
| A BGAN terminal like an Inmarsat 9202 is ~$3k, which gets you
| capability of around 450 kbps. Something like an Iridium can
| bring that to 700 kbps for a ~$5k. Want multimegabit? No problem,
| KVH will be happy to help with something like a TracPhone for a
| mere $18000-50000! And then you pay a mere $5/megabyte, or you
| can get a monthly plan and save! SD 1........
| 0-20MB ............... $79.90/mo SD 2........ 21-100MB
| ............. $275.00/mo SD 3........ 101-250MB
| ............ $470.00/mo SD 4........ 251-500MB ............
| $775.00/mo SD 5........ 501-1,000MB ..........
| $1,1150.00/mo SD 6........ 1,001-5,000MB ........
| $2,295.00/mo SD 7........ 5,001-10,000MB .......
| $3,000.00/mo SD 8........ 10,000-Unlimited .....
| $4,300.00/mo
|
| Keeping mind this will have 500-1500+ms latency as well. This is
| what they are competing against. They're offering 2x terminals
| for this, probably based on those $2500 heavier duty much bigger
| business class ones, and they have to have at least some
| consideration for hardening vs saltwater which is the great
| destroyer of all things. Since I don't see any particular
| stabilization platform like others use my assumption is they're
| making use of 2x and electronic steering to maintain constant
| contact, though they may well have some additional sensors in
| there or interfacing capability with a ship's gyrocompass.
|
| But at any rate this looks extremely competitive once the full
| intersat mesh rolls out, and it's interesting to see hard numbers
| on that. While it'd have been cool if they could have launched
| something suitable for users right down to sailboats (officially
| vs unofficial use of residential ones), I doubt that'd be the
| right business decision until well after they have v2 flying on
| Starship for a while. What they're charging actually doesn't even
| seem to put much if any premium on the massive bandwidth
| advantage and flat out beating fiber optic in latency over enough
| distance. Plenty of businesses will be interested in this. And
| while sure no doubt it'll become standard on rich yachts, think
| more serious cargo shipping, oil/gas drilling platforms, etc.
| SpaceX themselves will be eager to dogfood this and have already
| been doing so for their drone ships, but they have plans for
| refurbing old platforms into Starship sea launch as well. The
| military will absolutely be very interested if they aren't deep
| into discussion already. I could see a major premium being
| charged there for priority in ports or other congested areas,
| maybe even special hardware.
|
| Also having the mesh up also means a lot of other cool stuff,
| from coverage to remote islands or other areas for which no close
| ground station is feasible to special low latency
| intercontinental offerings on land (HFT and enterprises may be
| interested in).
| walrus01 wrote:
| Having worked in two way satellite for many years it is always
| very amusing to see the HN crowd who've never implemented
| remote terminals in physical reality...
|
| They should definitely go price some Inmarsat I-4 or I-5 based
| BGAN services or gyro stabilized maritime C/Ku/Ka band VSAT
| terminals before thinking this is expensive.
|
| You can easily spend $130,000 on a fairly basic geostationary
| VSAT terminal for something like a small cruise ship or large
| yacht.
|
| Also lots of amusing comments from people who've never been
| 100% dependent for months or years at a time on 1:1 SCPC or
| oversusbcribed, contended geostationary based access at latency
| anywhere from 492ms to 1250ms and $ per Mbps cost of $2000 per
| dedicated Mbps as a floor figure.
| xoa wrote:
| Thanks so much for your comments over the years on this, I've
| read a lot of them with great interest and to my edification
| since I'm not remotely as deep in the field as you are. It's
| a little frustrating though to see comments just rushing to
| compare it to their cable modem or something, like even if
| one has zero knowledge surely there'd be some intellectual
| curiosity over the cool and difficult problems one would have
| to solve to get packets to the middle of an ocean and back?
| If going to geostationary like ViaSat that's ~36000km out,
| that's a long ways for a wireless signal! The conditions are
| fairly intense, ships travel all over the place through
| massive storms and temperature differences and very heavy
| seas, saltwater is massively corrosive. Wondering about that
| would lead someone to a bit of basic searching and in turn to
| pricing, platform stabilization etc. Or wondering how
| Starlink can possibly track LEO sats, just 500km away but
| moving at something like 17000 miles per hour, and then
| learning about electronically steerable phased arrays. The
| terminals themselves already represent a really cool
| achievement in bringing something like that down to consumer
| prices. Heck, I'd love to see that brought elsewhere, it'd be
| a treat for terrestrial 11-60 GHz PtP/PtMP links even if they
| could just perfectly aim themselves and correct with near
| zero technician requirements, merely roughly pointing it in
| the right direction, for $500. Doing intersat optical links
| is also amazing, everything about the system really helps to
| reinforce other aspects, it's a heck of a vision executed
| well.
|
| "[A]imed at the champagne caviar, St Barts crowd" really? :(.
| And Starlink is an amazing experience, it's been life
| changing for a few clients even just in rural New England.
| The only "high speed" improvement they'd gotten over 20 years
| was the offer of a 10 Mbps connection for $300/month. People
| dump on even regular Starlink pricing anyway. Having to live
| constantly on dial up or regular MEO/HEO satellite then
| moving to Starlink is eye opening already and gave me at
| least a tiny taste of what it might be like for people on
| ships or platforms way out there (I've done multiweek zero
| connected expeditions too but that's not doing "regular
| business" or work it's a different mental space). And at
| least in this case it's possible to drive an hour and then
| have a solid net connection somewhere, so like for big
| software downloads one could work around it a little. No such
| luck at sea.
| notahacker wrote:
| It isn't a BGAN terminal competitor until and unless the
| intersat mesh rolls out though.
|
| At the moment it's a competitor for specialist yacht 4G
| packages, and whilst they're also eyewateringly expensive to
| anyone benchmarking them against mobile phone contracts,
| Starlink certainly isn't undercutting them.
| xoa wrote:
| Which they've now put a hard number on for end of this year
| in primary latitude band and global first quarter of next
| year, and they've gone ahead and filed with FCC for
| permission to activate polar satellites which depend on it
| [0]. If we were talking years out sure, but this is an early
| launch for something they're promising in <6 months and looks
| more like a matter of regulatory approval. They're launching
| satellites with updated optical links regularly and look to
| be reaching MVP for mesh density at this point. Obviously
| anyone who'd depend on using it blue water would wait for
| that to be ready, but in terms of what they're aiming for
| global is absolutely the target and always has been.
|
| ----
|
| 0: https://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_ke
| y=...
| notahacker wrote:
| We'll see if they their mesh fulfils its promises in the
| next couple of years. _If_ it does and there 's ocean
| coverage which is reasonably robust, I think we'll see
| prices rise accordingly though...
| usrn wrote:
| Interesting. If I moved on to my boat and managed to get by
| with the 5GB option I'd be just about breaking even because of
| how high rent is.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Presumably you'd spend most of your time close or in
| harbor/coast, which would mean that you would have other ways
| of internet access (starlink RV, normal 4/5g, harbor wifi,
| etc).
|
| I'm of course guessing that if you moved onto your boat you
| wouldn't spend the majority of the time far out at sea.
| master-12 wrote:
| Beware, their price automatically switches to local currency
| based on IP address, but keeps the $ sign. It's not that
| expensive.
| _Microft wrote:
| The maritime coverage map shows coastal coverage around countries
| with inland coverage right now, i.e. they are bouncing the
| connection via one of their satellites to a nearby groundstation.
|
| Starting in Q4/2022 they want to cover mid-latitudes around the
| globe. That might mean that they plan to enable inter-satellite
| links then? (This is a bit surprising - on one hand, this step
| extends coverage towards higher and lower latitudes but on the
| other hand not as much as they already have inland-coverage (cf.
| Brazil). It also extends longitudinally around all of the
| globe?).
|
| Coverage above mid-latitudes requires satellites in polar orbits
| to join the network. (Their non-polar orbits have an inclination
| of 53deg which means that satellites go no further north or south
| than that (plus a bit whatever their range is)).
|
| https://api.starlink.com/public-files/maritime-coverage-map....
| coffeeblack wrote:
| They need to have a minimum number of satellites before they
| can enable inter-satellite communication. Apparently its
| getting there.
| roflyear wrote:
| Yeah I don't see this getting pushed back at all lol
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _That might mean that they plan to enable inter-satellite
| links then?_
|
| Or maybe they'll have stationary ships with "ground"-stations
| until the inter-satellite thing is working.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| That wouldn't solve the problem. Those ships would still need
| a backhaul.
| sathackr wrote:
| If they stationed them near the edge of current coverage,
| the ship could be the inter-satellite link until the actual
| inter-satellite links are working.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| That would only buy you one increment of offshore range
| gain; it wouldn't cover the whole ocean unless you had a
| huge network of ships and used multiple up/down hops. And
| at that point the overall latency would suck so bad your
| customers might be better off with GEO.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| The idea is that the ships go up to another starlink and
| then down to a base station.
| jwagenet wrote:
| Call me confused, but if these satellites are not
| geostationary, why are the both the inland coverage and coastal
| coverage mostly limited to political boundaries? Shouldn't
| coverage be available anywhere there are satellites overhead?
| jcims wrote:
| It's purely a regulatory issue.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| Technically: yes.
|
| Legally: no.
| cptaj wrote:
| Like other mention, its regulatory.
|
| But its also related to groundstations, the satellites bounce
| the signal down to land. They're transitioning to satellites
| with the capability to network between themselves which will
| reduce the need for groundstations.
|
| I don't know how much they really limit coverage due to
| borders. Like if you get one in colombia and just move it to
| venezuela, does it still work? They dont have permission in
| venezuela but they might just not region lock it until
| venezuela actually complains or something.
|
| I know for a fact that other sat internet providers do work
| cross border in this exact situation.
| firekvz wrote:
| My family is using a directv antena bought in colombia and
| paying service in colombia, in Venezuela, so I'm pretty
| sure the market will try to do that as soon as they lunch
| in colombia
| tvszzzz wrote:
| Just because something is technically possible doesn't make
| it legally possible, yet. They still need regulatory
| approvals where they operate because EM spectrum is a public
| resource.
| ehPReth wrote:
| Is it just me or is this map super heard to read? Three shades
| of similar blue?
|
| Is it saying that in Q1/2023 the top of the earth (rest of
| Canada, etc) should be covered?
| _Microft wrote:
| > Is it saying that in Q1/2023 the top of the earth (rest of
| Canada, etc) should be covered?
|
| That's how I read it.
| dingosity wrote:
| Just curious. Does anyone know anyone who has received their
| terminal who is not a SpaceX employee or opted for Mobile/RV? I
| keep hearing about how they're being deployed, but the only
| people I know who have received their terminals are SpaceX
| employees or people who agreed to the more expensive Mobile/RV
| service.
| rythmshifter wrote:
| Yes. I do, someone in south east Michigan.
| adra wrote:
| I was visiting some rural family in Alberta Canada and there's
| a bunch of them running with starlink setups now. I feel
| they're prioritizing rural first because there isn't really
| service to compete with / target demographic?
| xoa wrote:
| Me (for a client). I got it in January 2021 and deployed a few
| weeks later. At 10 below zero F in a fairly stiff wind natch,
| quite memorable :). Deployed up near 45deg. This was of course
| a generation 1 circular unit, which actually turned out to be
| superior IMO since it has zero need for their router though it
| does have a fixed cable. I used an SFP<>ethernet adapter to
| bring the signal the rest of the way to our OPNsense router and
| bypass any grounding issues in that respect, it's functioned
| continuously ever since. First few months as warned there were
| occasional dropouts, but I could watch those steadily become
| rarer and rarer as the weeks went by, and the bandwidth go up
| as well as more sats came online. There was nothing significant
| long before it went officially public.
|
| Less anecdotally, Starlink passed 400,000 customers as of a
| month and a half or so ago [0]. I wouldn't be surprised if it
| was pushing towards the half million mark now or fairly soon.
| They're limited now in terms of terrestrial cell density
| primarily, and that cannot be solved without more and more
| powerful sats which can actually shrink the physical cell size
| and improve beam count and bandwidth. Mobile/RV is therefore
| useful for them because it's lower priority with no guarantees,
| but that's ok for that usage model. The times where it will
| tend to be very important are in remote areas where cells are
| not full, and the times where cells are full there is also more
| likelihood of LTE, and RV can by definition move around if
| necessary. Maritime (or aircraft for that matter) obviously
| also fits those current limits, the oceans are near empty of
| Starlink right now and it's high revenue per user given the
| competition.
|
| ----
|
| 0: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/25/spacexs-starlink-
| surpasses-4...
| smoldesu wrote:
| I received mine in the first batch, have been using it for ~a
| year now. Have used it for everything from 4K Netflix to gaming
| to work, ama I guess. My experience has been overall good
| relative to the rest of the options in this space (most other
| companies are still offering limited 500kbps/high-latency plans
| for twice as much), but you can definitely still push it hard
| enough to reveal that it's still satellite internet underneath.
| It's worth it if your other options are HughesNet or a data-
| capped WISP.
| leuty wrote:
| That's awesome!
| kordlessagain wrote:
| Only $5k a month! What a bargain.
| happytiger wrote:
| Yea, I found the price point really disappointing. This only
| makes sense for large commercial users - leaves cruisers and
| small commercial customers high and dry.
| mrep wrote:
| Yeah, I'm surprised they didn't try and at least segment
| commercial pricing versus personal. I cannot imagine many
| people with personal boats under like 60 feet would stomach
| 5k a month for internet and there are far far more boats
| under 60 feet than ones bigger than that (At least in chicago
| harbors where I am at).
| [deleted]
| RF_Savage wrote:
| I wonder what Inmarsat or Viasat bill for comparable service
| and terminals.
| extheat wrote:
| Definitely subsidizing the losses in the consumer business.
| Without Starship Starlink is on a path to bankruptcy like the
| companies that came before.
| elif wrote:
| Please share your math. At $15M to launch 50 v1 satellites
| costing $250k each to build, they are looking at $320k per
| satellite
|
| At $110/mo with 500k customers, they can afford to launch
| roughly 170 satellites per month. That is about break-even
| for their average launch cadence over the last 3 months.
| dibujante wrote:
| $5000 a month? That's pretty embarrassing, isn't it? That
| indicates they aren't doing satellite-to-satellite and are using
| some kind of specialized hardware to simply send the signal to
| coastal satellites from farther away.
| lxgr wrote:
| Compared to what?
|
| Inmarsat is the only viable alternative for smaller boats that
| offers unlimited data plans, has higher latency due to being
| geostationary, much lower bandwidth, and charges about $8000
| for a gigabyte...
|
| I'm not sure what Ku or Ka band GEO providers charge, but I
| doubt you can find anything competitive there either, and these
| require very large antennas.
| dibujante wrote:
| Compared to what their architecture should enable. Sure, it's
| more satellites consumed per request but there aren't _that_
| many satellites between some random point in the Pacific and
| the nearest base station. Certainly seems like it's not
| scaling that well if the price jumps from ~$120 to $5000.
| sithadmin wrote:
| Considering the coverage map is mostly coastal waters,
| private LTE and 5g are the 'budget' competition (for now). In
| some areas like the Gulf of Mexico, a not insignificant
| portion of the water is serviced by LTE that you can roam
| onto using a conventional TMobile, Sprint or AT&T SIM, often
| without an additional cost.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Or maybe it's the Tesla Roadster of this particular long-term
| plan. Some scoff, others wait for the price on the upcoming
| tier that's not quite 350 Mbps...
| cheeze wrote:
| Not really embarrassing when nothing else exists like it.
|
| 350mbps is _insane_ for this
| dibujante wrote:
| It is! But their architecture should enable them to hit a
| much lower price point. Maybe it's just charging what the
| market will bear? If this is what they need to charge to be
| profitable, though, that indicates the satellite-to-satellite
| approach doesn't scale well, or they've been losing money.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| If you selling a service that doesn't yet exist (or where
| you are an order of magnitude cheaper than the
| competition), usually you want to charge as much as you can
| while still selling all your inventory.
|
| Your actual cost is irrelevant.
| omni wrote:
| The only thing a $5000/mo price tag indicates is that they
| think their target demo will pay $5000/mo
| tengbretson wrote:
| I find it entertaining that Jeff Bezos is the ideal customer for
| this service.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| The second sentence in the paragraph at the _top_ of the home
| page is pricing.
|
| Bravo. _All_ web sites selling a product should make the pricing
| this prominent. At the least, have a pricing page with actual
| prices on it and not a "Call us for pricing" call to inaction.
|
| Me spending time on your site researching a product which turns
| out to be out of my price range is just wasting your time and
| mine, and I don't like you when you waste my time.
| notahacker wrote:
| Not if you're loading from a UK IP they don't (I'm assume they
| geotarget pricing; the non-maritime pages display prices in GBP
| and the maritime just gives a max download speed)
|
| Not all products are as much of a commodity as bandwidth.
| [deleted]
| WJW wrote:
| This is something SpaceX does extremely well in general. Check
| out https://www.spacex.com/rideshare/ for example: fill in your
| orbit, payload mass and earliest launch date and it will give
| you a quote. This is to me the gold standard of what I would
| love to have (but is remarkably difficult to get) from any
| industrial supplier.
| geekrax wrote:
| Wow! A form to send a payload to space is faster to fill than
| sending an envelope through USPS.
| macintux wrote:
| It's amazing we've reached the point where that's possible.
| infthi wrote:
| Looks like they have finally caught up with ULA : )
|
| https://www.rocketbuilder.com/start/configure went up in 2016
| [deleted]
| Flankk wrote:
| Call for pricing is usually B2B. Best case they want a
| salesperson to twist your arm, worst case the price is as much
| as they can squeeze out of you. If you ask why they waste
| people's time like this they'll say they're actually delivering
| maximum value. It's dishonest and archaic.
| blevin wrote:
| B2B sales is a different game that can be a two-way
| conversation rather than just supply and demand curves
| intersecting at a price. Often there is competitive analysis
| involved before choosing among alternatives and a vendor will
| want to make sure their product is best represented in that
| view. It's also a chance for them to learn any other decision
| factors (besides price) they might be able to address. In
| this case, I suggest the novelty of pricing out a rocket
| launch is partly clever promotion, though also aspirationally
| a first step towards regularly booked space services.
| bradrydzewski wrote:
| I think this is a matter of perspective. I founded a company
| that sold b2b software and experimented with removing pricing
| from my website. The challenge is the cost to complete each
| sale was highly variable which made it difficult to advertise
| fixed pricing. Consider the following:
|
| If the buyer is an enterprise they expect a discount. The
| buyer may require the seller to use a supplier management
| tool like Arriba which has a monthly subscription fee. The
| buyer may purchase through a reseller, in which case the
| reseller expects a percentage of the transaction. The buyer
| may require custom contracts which can cost thousands of
| dollars in legal fees. The buyer may require extensive
| audits, pages of questionnaires and more which can take
| significant time and resources to complete. The buyer may
| hold back payment for up to 180 days.
|
| So from my perspective, the problem is not the seller, the
| problem here is the enterprise buyer. If the buyer was
| willing to purchase from a website, with a credit card, and
| accept standard terms and pricing without modification, you
| would probably see much more transparent pricing and
| encounter fewer "contact sales" buttons.
| infogulch wrote:
| Honest Pricing/Licensing Plans Personal |
| Business | Enterprise $5/user/month |
| $8/user/month | $8/user/month |
| | + $200/hour custom license business development rate
| Features | Features++ | Features++
| notahacker wrote:
| I take it you haven't sold to enterprise customers...
| Flankk wrote:
| You can't have both? Have clear pricing with a variable
| enterprise discount. Big companies appreciate transparency
| too.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| I appreciate seeing a perspective from the "other side" on
| this. Still, as a small business operator occasionally
| making B2B purchases, I still find "call for pricing"
| annoying and assume it will mean that the product is way
| out of my price range.
|
| Could there be some middle ground? Could you do something
| like "prices start at $X; additional fees may apply?" At
| least give us a ballpark number; something from which I can
| decide if it's worth my time to investigate further.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Could you share a screenshot? I don't see pricing anywhere on
| the page, though near the bottom it says "PAY AS YOU GO".
| Likely geolocation, though I'm curious what I'm missing.
|
| EDIT: used VPN.
|
| Canada version: High-speed, low-latency internet with up to 350
| Mbps download while at sea.
|
| US Version: High-speed, low-latency internet with up to 350
| Mbps download while at sea. $5,000/mo with a one-time hardware
| cost of $10,000 for two high performance terminals.
| Nux wrote:
| No pricing from UK ip either.
| extheat wrote:
| Probably something to do with different currencies.
| js4 wrote:
| Probably just split testing.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Not available to order in my country even when it's
| technically already covered!
| Cyberdog wrote:
| Interesting. I wonder why. If it really is a problem with
| pricing in local currencies, they could have explicitly
| listed the prices in USD/US$ or something.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| My favorite is when they have a form to fill out for them to
| contact you and the form explicitly asks your preferred method
| of contact. Despite selecting email they immediately disregard
| your preference and call you.
| Natsu wrote:
| The usual reason for that pattern is that they want to do
| variable pricing depending on how much their product is worth
| to you, but yeah, it's never a good sign...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tigerBL00D wrote:
| $5K a month? The dream of affordable internet at sea will have to
| wait. Bummer. I expected a disruption from SpaceX.
| elif wrote:
| Wow they are now clearly selling a product that depends upon
| starlink 2.0 satellites which depend upon starship for launch.
| Starship tests haven't even attempted a static fire on their
| launch platform let alone a stacked launch attempt.
|
| Not to mention, their launch calculations include re-use based
| upon a completely invented and also untested catching apparatus.
|
| Talk about going all in...
| gamegoblin wrote:
| The V1.5 Starlink sats have the laser interconnects, and I
| suspect they would be able to launch enough of those with
| Falcon 9 to cover at least the most popular corridors (North
| America <-> Europe crossing).
| elif wrote:
| Good catch!
|
| They have almost 1000 laser satellites up now. I had no idea.
| ianschmitz wrote:
| Do you have a citation for them being too big for SpaceX's
| current rocket lineup? Very curious about this
| elif wrote:
| Elon on everyday astronaut:
|
| "Falcon neither has the volume nor the mass [to] orbit
| capability required for Starlink 2.0," Musk said.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| It's not clear to me whether this means physically or
| economically; i.e., could the 2.0 satellites be put into
| orbit by Falcon but not at a cost that would make it worth
| it?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Musk companies have a habit of going all in, then claiming they
| didn't when the bill comes due. So far it has worked, but I
| wouldn't bet on the coverage expanding much for the next 2
| years.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Why do they depend on Starship for launch?
|
| Are the new satellites too big for the current rockets?
| remorses wrote:
| Yes, and you cannot use current starlink in middle of the
| ocean
| maccam94 wrote:
| Starlink v1.5 has lasers, and that is what they have been
| launching since January of last year.
| mlindner wrote:
| This doesn't depend on 2.0 satellites at all. I'm not sure what
| you're referring to.
| elromulous wrote:
| $5,000 a month, and $10,000 initial hardware costs? So basically
| a product for cruise ships and $100M+ millionaires?
| williamcotton wrote:
| And countless commercial vessels!
| zeristor wrote:
| No Antarctica? They could show that there are no plans for
| Antarctica, not just ignore it.
| swarnie wrote:
| Antarctica is maybe 4000 people and some penguin shit.
|
| Why does it matter if they are covered or not?
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| Pretty sure it was a joke.
| swarnie wrote:
| Its very hard to tell on this website.
| zeristor wrote:
| It's land, isn't it?
|
| I thought there were plans for polar orbiting Starlink
| satellites to cover polar bases.
|
| Even so it should be a map of the full planet
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Service for airplanes coming soon, too, apparently.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have a friend who used to live in the Outer Hebrides islands. I
| called it his "God-Forsaken Scottish Rock."
|
| Fairly bleak place, and he had crap Internet service.
|
| Looks like his [former] place is ... _juuuuusssst_ ... out of
| band.
| dboreham wrote:
| Going to need a bigger boat.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Can anyone explain how the ping is so low on starlink? I always
| assumed satellite internet was always going to be inferior for
| online gaming, but everything I find online says that starlink is
| great for it.
|
| I guess I don't have a specific question. It's just one of those
| engineering marvels that I never thought I'd see. No wires, but
| still frag people at <90ms ping.
| bri3d wrote:
| Low orbit and it's currently just a bent pipe / single hop
| design. Your message just bounces off of a single LEO satellite
| and lands at a ground station nearby to you, as though you had
| a fixed-wireless point to point link to that station.
| _moof wrote:
| Starlink sats orbit at around 550 km altitude; other services
| are over 35,000 km high. That's 2 ms for a transmission to make
| it up (or down) versus 120 ms. Multiply by four to get the
| theoretical minimum ping, not including any
| computation/processing or routing on the ground, and the
| difference becomes enormous.
| shmerl wrote:
| Ping depends on physical distance and quality of the signal.
| Low orbit satellites are much closer to Earth than
| geostationary ones. So latency is lower as well. And in space
| itself signal travels between nodes faster than through any
| cable.
| joewadcan wrote:
| The Starlink satellites orbit closer to the earth than other
| comms satellites (iridium, oneweb). Closer distance = faster
| times, in addition to laser links between sats and other
| spectrum differences.
|
| Downside to lower orbit means they won't last as long (a few
| years) before they are pulled down into earth's atmo. Which is
| fine since their rocket company will just send up some more
| cheaply.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| Sounds cool. Btw. The person who came up with the rebranding of
| linear pricing as "pay as you go" should get the Noble prize in
| marketing.
| obloid wrote:
| I've been looking forward to marine starlink with the thought of
| being able to work remotely while sailing. Then I saw the
| pricing! I guess they're aiming for the megayacht crowd not
| average shmoes on small boats.
|
| Interestingly it does look like people are putting starlink on
| sailboats with ok results:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/SailboatCruising/comments/vovaxs/st...
| McAtNite wrote:
| I've been doing the same, and I was personally hoping it would
| follow the same standard price + $30 that the RV crowd has
| gotten. I'm pretty disappointed with the cost, and I would fear
| that they'll use geolocation to force you to maritime billing
| if they detect you're on a boat.
|
| It looks like my sailboat remote life is still on hold for the
| time being.
| lbrindze wrote:
| I worked remote while sailing. my personal advice.... cruising
| is relatively cheap once you leave the dock. turn off your
| computer and go sail a while and plan on taking contracts
| during extended periods in port.
|
| Also having packed a few offshore miles at this point... I have
| never had much luck being productive doing "work" while
| actually on passage. The ocean has a funny way of sticking to
| its own agenda anyway, despite our best plans.
|
| Most of your time cruising is hanging on the anchor anyway.
| Depending on where you are there is pretty decent cell coverage
| a lot of places, or hotel wifis you can get from your
| anchorage.
| moralestapia wrote:
| The writing is on the wall.
|
| RIP Garmin, Iridium, etc...
|
| As to why it is expensive? Well, they did their homework and
| found out is a lucrative market (one doesn't need a lot of
| hindsight for that, though).
| p_j_w wrote:
| Garmin and Iridium will still sell well with the people who are
| cruising in relatively low cost sailboats. These people can't
| afford $5000/mo just for internet access.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| yardie wrote:
| "$5,000/mo with a one-time hardware cost of $10,000 for two high
| performance terminals."
|
| Definitely aimed at the champagne caviar, St Barts crowd rather
| than the hard scrabble, cruiser on a fixed income.
|
| In other terms, Iridium Go is still the best value around and
| truly global for the time being.
| shmoe wrote:
| There's very little value with Iridium -- do you work for them
| or something?
| adrr wrote:
| I thought they went bankrupt and had to deorbit all the
| satellites so I googled them. They have 1.7M subscribers.
| Seems they are doing something right.
| gehsty wrote:
| Or vessels working offshore industry... having that kind of
| uplink speed could really change how the industries work. More
| 'over the horizon' control for equipment, immediate upload of
| huge point cloud files from as built surveys, constant video
| comunication with onshore engineers and project managers...
| silisili wrote:
| I had the same first impression, but then realized there can't
| even be that many superyachts around to make the venture worth
| it.
|
| Probably targeted more are commercial shipping vessels, cruise
| ships, and even militaries. I imagine that number would make
| the venture worth it.
| steveoscaro wrote:
| And oil rigs
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Iridium Go is 2.4 Kbits/s compared with 350 Mbps here, and data
| is charged in minutes (i.e. the slower/worse the connection the
| more it costs). Apples and oranges.
|
| Iridium GO is cheap, but that's all you can really say
| positively about it. It is arguably not even offering
| "internet" in the normal sense, since loading a website would
| be incredibly expensive/bad and is therefore restricted to low
| data rate messaging and plain text weather updates.
|
| Is $5K/month a niche product? Undeniably yes, and I hope to see
| more flex offerings later, but this isn't a good comparison.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| I doubt there are many other options for internet in the
| ocean
| jml78 wrote:
| People are using starlink on their boats currently for the
| standard price plus $30 to allow movement
| dweekly wrote:
| Don't forget Inmarsat.
|
| https://www.inmarsat.com/en/solutions-
| services/maritime/serv...
|
| Or Globalstar.
|
| https://www.globalstar.com/en-us/blog/articles/satellite-
| sol...
| walrus01 wrote:
| globalstar is a bad joke and not a viable option for
| maritime services (or over-ocean aviation services)
| because unlike iridium or inmarsat because its satellite
| terminal-to-earth-station architecture is a bent pipe.
|
| there is zero globalstar mid ocean coverage.
|
| there is a reason you will see lots of competing options
| for people integrating the iridium embedded modems into
| things designed to go on top of $40 million business jets
| and just about zero globalstar.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Can I get 10 Mb/s for $142/mo?
| roflyear wrote:
| No but are you going to pay $5k? Lol
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Any given ship in the shipping industry probably burns that
| in fuel per day. Or half day. I think the value proposition
| is in line. I'll admit it seems expensive from the
| perspective of our dream sail around the world whilst coding
| and collecting benjamins from various hustles.
| roflyear wrote:
| Doesn't matter. No person outside the mega wealthy are paying
| for this.
| yardie wrote:
| Iridium Go is designed to hit a price point. Whats the
| cheapest way to get data out in the middle of the Atlantic
| and is basically plug and play. It has leapfrogged SSB packet
| radio as the preferred, low cost data service.
|
| Also data is not charged in minutes, it's theoretically
| unlimited. The voice plans are charged in minutes and I don't
| think worth it.
|
| Just like the RO water-makers in the past, I believe this is
| the opening salvo in bringing data prices down on the high
| seas. A few providers have been the only players in this
| field (Inmarsat and Iridium) and it shows. Prices haven't
| budged in ages.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Also data is not charged in minutes, it 's theoretically
| unlimited._
|
| If you buy the 'medium plan' for $119/month [1] you get 150
| Minutes of 'Data, Standard Voice or combination of both'
| and can buy additional data for US$0.42/min. And the 'light
| plan' [2] at $57/month includes just 5 minutes.
|
| Data seems to a "call via the Iridium GO! Access number"
| like old school dial-up.
|
| It's only if you buy the 'heavy plan' for $149 [3] that you
| get the 'Unlimited Data'
|
| Or am I misunderstanding things?
|
| [1] https://www.satphone.co.uk/product/iridium-go-post-
| paid-serv... [2]
| https://www.satphone.co.uk/product/iridium-go-post-paid-
| serv... [3] https://www.satphone.co.uk/product/iridium-go-
| post-paid-serv...
| ncallaway wrote:
| If we're comparing price to a $5,000/month offering, I
| think it's totally reasonable to compare it to the
| $149/month package of Iridium.
| sk8terboi wrote:
| alkonaut wrote:
| Is that price also for commercial? It seems like a decent deal
| for a cruise ship or monitoring offshore equipment worth
| millions of dollars.
|
| 350mbit can be sold ands split across 1000pax in on a cruise
| ship at $5/day so you'd have the fee covered on day 1.
| ok_dad wrote:
| > Definitely aimed at the champagne caviar, St Barts crowd
| rather than the hard scrabble, cruiser on a fixed income.
|
| More like: commercial and military vessels
| notahacker wrote:
| Commercial and military vessels have contracts with
| Iridium/Inmarsat etc for mission critical stuff.
|
| An extra box which based on current coverage map provides GSM
| level coast-only coverage of unproven reliability doesn't
| hold much appeal, even factoring in how expensive satellite
| broadband is.
| baq wrote:
| Neither iridium nor Inmarsat provides capabilities of
| starlink: low latency, high bandwidth, asat-resistant,
| jamming-resistant infrastructure, all this proven in a real
| world conflict. They are 'only' missing coverage. Military
| will pay top dollar for this, Musk is in the name-his-price
| territory here. It's become mission critical overnight. If
| they manage to cover the full globe, you'll see the DoD
| quietly spending billions to have access and more billions
| to deny any other military the option.
| madengr wrote:
| WJW wrote:
| I used to be a naval officer in the Dutch navy, this is the
| type of capability that we would love to have. It was
| always a mess to divide satcom bandwidth between
| operational and recreational purposes, so if we could put
| all non-essential traffic on Starlink (for only
| 5k/month/ship too!) that would be a huge win and free up
| massive operational bandwidth on the more serious satcoms.
| kbenson wrote:
| Would there be any concern that you are essentially
| advertising your location at all times to some third
| party corp? Or is that only a concern during certain
| times and you can just turn off the commercial system at
| that point?
| wefarrell wrote:
| All surface maritime vessels, military or not, need to
| advertise their location to anyone who can listen for the
| purpose of collision avoidance. If they didn't that would
| probably violate a treaty.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Military ships routinely run with AIS off in peace time.
| This was the case in at least one of the recent US Navy
| collisions as I recall.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| I think you should be able to just turn off Star Link in
| those instances too
| WJW wrote:
| Military vessels are exempt from that particular treaty.
| That would not be a significant worry. But yes, when you
| go into serious operations, the ship typically enters
| "black hole" operations where all non-essential
| communications are blocked. In the ships we were at they
| just pulled the network cable for the non-operational
| comms, very effective at preventing anyone from emailing
| back home.
| notahacker wrote:
| All the existing commercial maritime comms providers will
| happily sell separate bandwidth for crew use, or let them
| meter/throttle it, so I assume the challenges the Dutch
| navy has with their existing setup are related to
| specific security and/or procurement restrictions
| preventing them from just installing the same solutions
| commercial vessels use. Probably less about broadcasting
| location and more about what is and isn't allowed on
| their vessels
| WJW wrote:
| By the time NATO partners can no longer trust each other
| with the position of their naval vessels you have serious
| problem already. The official satcoms are all NATO-shared
| satellites anyway, so you could probably derive their
| positions from that.
|
| With regards to SpaceX ratting on our location, I don't
| think that would be a serious worry but in any case
| whenever shit gets serious a warship will go into "black
| hole" operations that block any non-essential comms. I no
| longer work for the navy but I can imagine that would
| involve physically cutting power to the starlink dish.
| mjlee wrote:
| These vessels still have people on board who want to watch
| YouTube.
|
| This will be amazing for retaining crew while sitting at
| anchor outside of Panama for day 27 of who knows how long.
|
| You can prepare for a 7 day cruise between ports when
| you're going to be pretty busy anyway. The madness of
| seeing land and not being able to do anything for weeks on
| end is hard to describe.
| notahacker wrote:
| > The madness of seeing land and not being able to do
| anything for weeks on end is hard to describe.
|
| I sat through a Vodafone presentation at a maritime comms
| conference a couple of years ago and he quoted just how
| high a percentage of the world's commercial shipping
| traffic was within range of his LTE networks. The ability
| to provide high speed internet within sight of [most]
| land has been around for a while, at lower costs than
| Starlink. If providers haven't added it to their crew
| internet provision, it's not because they've been waiting
| for Elon.
| inasio wrote:
| The Starlink donations to Ukraine has probably been about
| showing Starlink capabilities to the military, now going
| after navy contracts?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| They're not going to all switch to Starlink overnight.
|
| But over a few years, if Starlink delivers on it's
| ambition, I'd expect a steady stream of converts.
| xeromal wrote:
| I feel like cruise ships will use this a lot. They're one of
| the last things on the planet that don't have cell service or
| internet that isn't 25$ a minute.
| yardie wrote:
| You can already get these speeds on Ku-band satellites, just
| higher latency, with real global coverage.
| Havoc wrote:
| Still super cheap compared to what yachts are currently doing
| baybal2 wrote:
| It's better than InMarSat, or any other regional fixed
| satellite communication system big time
| bexail wrote:
| I have the regular $600 hardware and $135/month on my live-aboard
| sailboat on Sea of Cortez. Happy to answer any questions if you
| are considering getting one for your boat or RV.
| shmerl wrote:
| That price...
| aerovistae wrote:
| $5000 a month? Who is this for? I'm a little confused. Seems like
| even the military would be reluctant at that price point, let
| alone private boat owners who aren't multimillionaires.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| While I agree that the military would be unlikely to use this
| civilian service on warships, it's not because of the price
| where $5000 would be a rounding error in the operational cost
| of the ship.
|
| I see this more for commercial operators, like the Ferry
| between Seattle and Victoria BC - they could sell high speed
| internet for $10/trip and make a profit if they can sell it to
| 500 passengers/month.
| Stevvo wrote:
| It's for those vessels already paying $5000+ a month for
| inferior service. I'm a coastal cruiser myself; obviously I
| will use the RV package on my boat.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| People who own $1M plus boats.
|
| This isn't for ski-boats at the local lake.
| paulsutter wrote:
| Genius price segmentation. Of course it costs them little more to
| provide the service than for home users on land, but easily worth
| the 50x higher price for this market
|
| The Starlink IPO will provide hundreds of billions in funding for
| Starship and Mars
| pugworthy wrote:
| I would have killed for this back in the 80's and 90's working on
| oceanographic research ships...
| [deleted]
| SergeAx wrote:
| Starlink RV is $135/m and looks exactly the same. I wonder what
| happens if I put one on the boat? Will Starlink turn it off for
| usage violation?
| stephbu wrote:
| Seems unlikely, more probable is that you'll have other
| problems. I suspect there are other differences in the
| equipment and service delivery to tolerate ocean conditions.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Don't know, but it will definitely stop working once you get a
| few miles off shore in an ocean. That requires intersat
| communications which the RV plan doesn't provide.
|
| (Inland lakes should work fine except perhaps for the very
| biggest ones like Lake Superior or the Caspian Sea. If lakes
| don't work with the RV plan, it's not for any technical
| reason.)
| venti wrote:
| Is anything know about the power consumption of the Starlink
| antenna? Does the maritime version use less power than the
| conventional unit?
|
| The fixed-location version of Starlink consumes around 60 to 100
| W constantly which is problem if you want to e.g. use solar
| panels on a sail boat to supply the device.
| joeyh wrote:
| You can approximately half the power consumption by eliminating
| starlink's wifi router and using a DC POE injector to power the
| square terminal. I have not done it yet but have seen others
| report ~30 watts.
| rngname22 wrote:
| If you can afford $5000 a month for internet maybe you're more
| likely on a Silent 60 (17 kWp solar) than a Catalina 30.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| FWIW if they ever to offer 10 Mb/s plans for ~$150/mo, the
| power use becomes a question again.
| scrumper wrote:
| I think at those prices you'd have a boat big enough to have
| the power budget. It's clearly aimed at commercial or
| scientific use with a side of super yacht.
|
| I'm guessing a more affordable version more like the RV product
| will become available for cruising sailors in time. I think the
| mammoth price delta over RV is because it'll be usable offshore
| (starting Q4 this year) and presumably that requires some more
| complex satellite-to-satellite data exchange (which at a guess
| they want to limit usage of until it works well.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > I think the mammoth price delta over RV is because it'll be
| usable offshore (starting Q4 this year) and presumably that
| requires some more complex satellite-to-satellite data
| exchange (which at a guess they want to limit usage of until
| it works well.
|
| Sure, just like Tesla Autopilot is right around the corner,
| Starship will be flying this year, the Cybertruck has been
| released 2 years ago etc.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| This is different. The problem of providing offshore satcom
| with LEOsats is a quantified engineering problem. IOW, the
| industry knows quite well what technologies will solve the
| problem and Starlink has those technologies in place. The
| only unknown is how fast, accurate, and reliable the laser-
| based intersat comms will be.
|
| None of that is true for the self-driving car problem. That
| problem still contains a multitude of unknowns, including
| unknown unknowns.
|
| Cybertruck is yet another kind of problem. I don't know
| what the issue with that is but I'd guess it's about
| manufacturing capacity.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > The only unknown is how fast, accurate, and reliable
| the laser-based intersat comms will be.
|
| Those communications are still an unsolved and hugely
| difficult engineering problem. It will be awesome if
| SpaceX has actually achieved this: getting the kind of
| precision required to communicate over direct laser links
| between specks of dust hundreds of km apart traveling at
| thousands of km per hour is no easy feat.
| venti wrote:
| Yes, you are right. I had not seem the price tag when I posed
| the question. This product is for merchant ships or yachts
| and does not make any sense for small boat owners.
| usrn wrote:
| If you're set up for electric propulsion that's not too bad.
| That plus my work machine would be under half what a properly
| sized motor should draw at 50% throttle. It only needs to work
| for ~6-7 hours a day.
| simplecto wrote:
| You probably would not run it 24x7 on a boat.
| brk wrote:
| You probably would. At that price point they are targeting
| boats that are going to have multiple gensets, and be
| carrying 1,000+ gallons of fuel.
|
| The additional load of the Starlink, relative to the
| chillers, water makers, and other onboard systems would be
| nothing.
| zanethomas wrote:
| I recently acquired Starlink RV for my camper van. Camped out at
| Lake Powell with zero cellphone and 85mbs of internet!
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