6 ms·
It will be expensive bandwidth no matter what. The way they can make this work is if they 1) are targeting traditional satellite internet customers (ships on
by Nokinside 10y ago
It will be expensive bandwidth no matter what.
The way they can make this work is if they
1) are targeting traditional satellite internet customers (ships on the sea, commercial aviation, etc) and
2) integration with 5th generation mobile networks trough wireless network virtualization. Mobile network provider can sell a service where traveling customer pays extra for connection that works in the middle of nowhere. When the device is within normal cell network or WiFi, connection goes trough those networks, when they are sailing with their yacht, it can jump from the picocell in the boat or backpack to the satellite network. At any given time there may be
millions of customers who pay little extra for coverage and just few tens of thousands who actually use it.
- bigiain 10y ago"commercial aircraft carriers" That made me stop and think for a bit...
- AceJohnny2 10y agoYou mean like the Raft? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash
- bigiain 10y agoExactly where my head started going... Then "No hang on. The rest of this comment isn't making sense now, back up bak up backup. Oh... _that's_ less interesting." :-) (Gah - and don't you hate it when people stealth-edit their comments and make you look insane? For the record, the parent originally said "commercial aircraft carriers" instead of "commercial aviation". I may be insane, but there's a completely plausible explanation for this comment thread and it can't be used as evidence of my lack of sanity, ok?)
- Tuna-Fish 10y agoThe frequencies they intend to use limit them to antennas roughly the size of a pizza box, which is a little bit too unwieldy for a backpack...
- Nokinside 10y agoThere are already satellite antennas larger than pizza box that fit into a backback.
- bigiain 10y agoQuestion: what sort of antennas would they use for this? A 1/4wave dipole at 10GHz would be _tiny_ (like 8mm or so, right?) - but presumably insufficiently sensitive for a satellite 800 miles up? I've got a 5.8GHz "patch antenna" for FPV video from a quad copter which claims 12db gain - but I've got no idea what shape it is inside (it's small, maybe 70 or 80mm square, but it's a literal "black box" with an sma connector on it from my perspective).
- legolas2412 10y agocan the receiver/transmitter fit in a smartphone?
- andars 10y agoUnlikely. It will be a phased array so they will need some spacing between the antennas. I've heard mention of ~pizza box size
- mentat 10y agoThey could sell bandwidth to LTE providers too who will upsell to cell consumers.