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For those of you in the know here. Is this a realistic project/enterprise he is working on? Seems both costly to deploy that many satellites and risky in the s

For those of you in the know here. Is this a realistic project/enterprise he is working on? Seems both costly to deploy that many satellites and risky in the sense that you can't count on getting a lot of customers. Especially with the new super speedy 5G networks and so on.

rkangel 9y ago
Even in the developed world, coverage of high speed wireless broadband (e.g. 3G and up) isn't complete. In the less developed world the coverage is even worse[1]. I don't know the costs to set up and run the network, but I do feel like there is a large possible customer base. [1] https://opensignal.com/reports/2016/08/global-state-of-the-mobile-network https://opensignal.com/reports/2016/08/global-state-of-the-m...
- mtgx 9y ago
  I think there was a recent report from the FCC that said only ~60% of Americans have access to 25+ Mbps internet. So, at least in theory, SpaceX has an enormous market.
- swarnie_ 9y ago
  Well populated and tech heavy parts of the UK have spotty and unreliable 4g which is baffling to me. If Elon can deliver a low latency satellite network even just for peering it will be a big step potentially.
  - vidarh 9y ago
    Even parts of London have spots where even 3G coverage is poor.
    - zimpenfish 9y ago
      Can confirm that there's a radius of about 600m around my flat (SE3) which has spotty 3G coverage on Three with the inner ~100m being as good as zero (and my flat has had nailed-on zero 3G signal since 2010.)
    - swarnie_ 9y ago
      Yeah fully agree. Going down the M4 from London to Bristol i will constantly drop between 2g 3g and 4g. Really disappointing situation for one of the richest areas of the world
derekp7 9y ago
I was at Motorola when Iridium went up, and witness first hand the changing market dynamics that were happening even before their first satellite was deployed. Was thinking then that if they mad the satellites generic data switches instead of a flying phone switch, they would have had a much bigger market. So for Musk's network, it really depends on if 80% of the potential customers (people with money to spend on the service) get saturated with ground-level 3G - 5G by the time the network is operational or not. Something else to consider, if the system allows for land-based carriers to tap into it and re-broadcast it on 5G (with different pricing). Imagine if there is no coverage in your area, and anyone can purchase a box to put on their roof that pulls down the satellite Internet and makes it available to everyone's 3G - 5G phones in the area. You lease the box from someone, and you get a commission on every client connection.
- zaarn 9y ago
  It would be most interesting indeed if the satellite network allowed operating your own ISP for extremely low cost. Making 3-5G available to phones and peering to existing networks maybe? (I'm not that familiar with Mobile ISP Politics, unlike BGP Politics)
  - vidarh 9y ago
    An "ISP in a box" is something I've toyed with, but on the basis of connectivity options ranging from a leased line, a microwave link and high gain wifi, but that stills ranges from expensive to "just" allowing you to extend out from the borders of nearby services. Having a cheap satellite option so that people can start providing that in rural locations where they are effectively an island of coverage would certainly be very interesting.
Quarrelsome 9y ago
it avoids all of the annoying issues that cartels spent a lot of time setting up on a state-by-state basis in the US (which results in limited choice). Effectively you could connect to this anywhere in the world without the approval of local (e.g. Chinese citizens could get an unfiltered internet and the only "tell" is that they have a satellite dish). That makes the potential of this reasonably neat but it will depend on bottoming out the price and having enough capacity.
- ec109685 9y ago
  And governments not interfering with its operation.
- geomark 9y ago
  The equipment will no doubt be illegal to own in places like China. So it would get smuggled in or produced locally and sold on the black market. So far so good. But even if you install it surreptitiously I am pretty sure it will not be a LPI signal. So the government has a fleet of vans driving around sniffing for the spurious emissions and away you go to the gulag.
sho 9y ago
Hell of a lot of places without 5G, or any, mobile internet. Don't forget aviation and to a lesser extent maritime either. People love their onboard wifi. Owning the launch platform could mean that he's able to significantly undercut current players, although funnily enough soon-to-be competitor Iridium recently launched a whole bunch of new satellites using SpaceX. Good position to be in when your competitors are dependent on you! There are certainly challenges, though. Latency is a huge problem with satellite internet, for obvious reasons. I'm not sure what the intended bandwidth is but satellite will always "feel" slower than mobile data of equivalent speed. The fact that it's a mesh network with who knows how many "hops" presumably makes it even worse. So it won't ever compete with mobile, not even 3G probably.
- jelder 9y ago
  StarLink will be mostly in LEO, so latency will be competitive with terrestrial services.
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    Depends on the terrestrial service. When I used to have FIOS, many places on the web were sub-10ms. HFC ISPs however are typically in the range Starlink will be in though (25-35ms) which is already better than many cellular data networks by a factor of ~2.
- mrep 9y ago
  > Don't forget aviation and to a lesser extent maritime either. And trains, busses (it might be orders of magnitude cheaper than paying for cell data to provide those local hotspots people use on busses to/from work everyday), cars (I could easily see teslas using it over cell for data in the future), and rural areas where laying fiber is expensive.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  1) Starlink will be in LEO around 800mi up unlike most communications satellites (like HughesNet) which are in geostationary orbit at ~22,200mi. Expect 25-35ms latency as compared to 600+. 2) due to having a lot more birds in the air at lower altitude with newer tech, they should be competitive with 5G networks speed wise as compared to existing satellite internet. Edit: fixed distance typo for HughesNet
castratikron 9y ago
For a while the Trump administration considered building a government 5G network to prevent Chinese companies from doing it first. American telecoms are dragging their feet so much that they are starting to pose a threat to national security. They say building a nationwide network could take three years, so I don't see much threat to SpaceX now. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-memo-urges-big-push-on-5g-wireless-technology-1517200319 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-memo-urges-big-push-on-5g-w...
endymi0n 9y ago
Thinking at the scale of Musk's ambitions real quick, this makes a lot of sense. At Tesla: Think about every Tesla car worldwide being able to phone home with self-driving learning data. Being able to remote operate them in the 0.001% of cases where human intervention is neccessary, no matter whether in the Australian outback or the Alps (without "no network"). At SpaceX: Being able to communicate with every Mars-bound spacecraft 24/7 by laser transmission, without having to rely on NASA's expensive Deep Space Network.
- andygates 9y ago
  The antennas for this are the size of pizza boxes - which puts a question over the car connectivity. That's a lot of flat sky-facing surface to hide.
  - yeldarb 9y ago
    They will be to start. But think about how big the first briefcase cell phones were. They’ll shrink over time.
  - onion2k 9y ago
    Putting it on the roof (or the hood) in a color that matches the car would work well enough.

rkangel 9y ago

Even in the developed world, coverage of high speed wireless broadband (e.g. 3G and up) isn't complete. In the less developed world the coverage is even worse[1]. I don't know the costs to set up and run the network, but I do feel like there is a large possible customer base. [1] https://opensignal.com/reports/2016/08/global-state-of-the-mobile-network https://opensignal.com/reports/2016/08/global-state-of-the-m...

mtgx 9y ago
I think there was a recent report from the FCC that said only ~60% of Americans have access to 25+ Mbps internet. So, at least in theory, SpaceX has an enormous market.
swarnie_ 9y ago
Well populated and tech heavy parts of the UK have spotty and unreliable 4g which is baffling to me. If Elon can deliver a low latency satellite network even just for peering it will be a big step potentially.
- vidarh 9y ago
  Even parts of London have spots where even 3G coverage is poor.
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    Can confirm that there's a radius of about 600m around my flat (SE3) which has spotty 3G coverage on Three with the inner ~100m being as good as zero (and my flat has had nailed-on zero 3G signal since 2010.)
  - swarnie_ 9y ago
    Yeah fully agree. Going down the M4 from London to Bristol i will constantly drop between 2g 3g and 4g. Really disappointing situation for one of the richest areas of the world

derekp7 9y ago

I was at Motorola when Iridium went up, and witness first hand the changing market dynamics that were happening even before their first satellite was deployed. Was thinking then that if they mad the satellites generic data switches instead of a flying phone switch, they would have had a much bigger market. So for Musk's network, it really depends on if 80% of the potential customers (people with money to spend on the service) get saturated with ground-level 3G - 5G by the time the network is operational or not. Something else to consider, if the system allows for land-based carriers to tap into it and re-broadcast it on 5G (with different pricing). Imagine if there is no coverage in your area, and anyone can purchase a box to put on their roof that pulls down the satellite Internet and makes it available to everyone's 3G - 5G phones in the area. You lease the box from someone, and you get a commission on every client connection.

zaarn 9y ago
It would be most interesting indeed if the satellite network allowed operating your own ISP for extremely low cost. Making 3-5G available to phones and peering to existing networks maybe? (I'm not that familiar with Mobile ISP Politics, unlike BGP Politics)
- vidarh 9y ago
  An "ISP in a box" is something I've toyed with, but on the basis of connectivity options ranging from a leased line, a microwave link and high gain wifi, but that stills ranges from expensive to "just" allowing you to extend out from the borders of nearby services. Having a cheap satellite option so that people can start providing that in rural locations where they are effectively an island of coverage would certainly be very interesting.

Quarrelsome 9y ago

it avoids all of the annoying issues that cartels spent a lot of time setting up on a state-by-state basis in the US (which results in limited choice). Effectively you could connect to this anywhere in the world without the approval of local (e.g. Chinese citizens could get an unfiltered internet and the only "tell" is that they have a satellite dish). That makes the potential of this reasonably neat but it will depend on bottoming out the price and having enough capacity.

ec109685 9y ago
And governments not interfering with its operation.
geomark 9y ago
The equipment will no doubt be illegal to own in places like China. So it would get smuggled in or produced locally and sold on the black market. So far so good. But even if you install it surreptitiously I am pretty sure it will not be a LPI signal. So the government has a fleet of vans driving around sniffing for the spurious emissions and away you go to the gulag.

sho 9y ago

Hell of a lot of places without 5G, or any, mobile internet. Don't forget aviation and to a lesser extent maritime either. People love their onboard wifi. Owning the launch platform could mean that he's able to significantly undercut current players, although funnily enough soon-to-be competitor Iridium recently launched a whole bunch of new satellites using SpaceX. Good position to be in when your competitors are dependent on you! There are certainly challenges, though. Latency is a huge problem with satellite internet, for obvious reasons. I'm not sure what the intended bandwidth is but satellite will always "feel" slower than mobile data of equivalent speed. The fact that it's a mesh network with who knows how many "hops" presumably makes it even worse. So it won't ever compete with mobile, not even 3G probably.

jelder 9y ago
StarLink will be mostly in LEO, so latency will be competitive with terrestrial services.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  Depends on the terrestrial service. When I used to have FIOS, many places on the web were sub-10ms. HFC ISPs however are typically in the range Starlink will be in though (25-35ms) which is already better than many cellular data networks by a factor of ~2.
mrep 9y ago
> Don't forget aviation and to a lesser extent maritime either. And trains, busses (it might be orders of magnitude cheaper than paying for cell data to provide those local hotspots people use on busses to/from work everyday), cars (I could easily see teslas using it over cell for data in the future), and rural areas where laying fiber is expensive.
jsjohnst 9y ago
1) Starlink will be in LEO around 800mi up unlike most communications satellites (like HughesNet) which are in geostationary orbit at ~22,200mi. Expect 25-35ms latency as compared to 600+. 2) due to having a lot more birds in the air at lower altitude with newer tech, they should be competitive with 5G networks speed wise as compared to existing satellite internet. Edit: fixed distance typo for HughesNet

castratikron 9y ago

For a while the Trump administration considered building a government 5G network to prevent Chinese companies from doing it first. American telecoms are dragging their feet so much that they are starting to pose a threat to national security. They say building a nationwide network could take three years, so I don't see much threat to SpaceX now. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-memo-urges-big-push-on-5g-wireless-technology-1517200319 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-memo-urges-big-push-on-5g-w...

endymi0n 9y ago

Thinking at the scale of Musk's ambitions real quick, this makes a lot of sense. At Tesla: Think about every Tesla car worldwide being able to phone home with self-driving learning data. Being able to remote operate them in the 0.001% of cases where human intervention is neccessary, no matter whether in the Australian outback or the Alps (without "no network"). At SpaceX: Being able to communicate with every Mars-bound spacecraft 24/7 by laser transmission, without having to rely on NASA's expensive Deep Space Network.

andygates 9y ago
The antennas for this are the size of pizza boxes - which puts a question over the car connectivity. That's a lot of flat sky-facing surface to hide.
- yeldarb 9y ago
  They will be to start. But think about how big the first briefcase cell phones were. They’ll shrink over time.
- onion2k 9y ago
  Putting it on the roof (or the hood) in a color that matches the car would work well enough.