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FCC Authorizes SpaceX to Provide Broadband Satellite Services
- runesoerensen 9y agoAlso discussed when the application was filed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12973223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12973223
- walrus01 9y agoI am looking forward to seeing the test lab results for the rooftop CPE.
- bpd1069 9y agoThis is monumental - I claim every major advance in communication technology immediately precedes a major progress for society. This will make the 'Internet' truly global and ubiquitous. So excited for the developing world.
- ryanlol 9y agoIt's a sad state of affairs if this FCC approval is a major advance in communication technology.
- godzillabrennus 9y agoRegulation can enhance confidence and breed investment interest.
- wallace_f 9y agoPeople aren't perfect, and some are terrible, so it makes sense to have government. However, it is reasonable to be critical of government removing your rights to work. Actually, it is a civil duty. I am not sure where the line should be drawn, but it has certainly gone too far. Should you need gov approval to download an IDE, or sell an app? What about to braid hair?[1] I would bet that as soon as government begins infringing on the rights to work which affect HN usere, suddenly everyone here would be a civil libertarian. 1-https://www.theroot.com/tennessee-has-fined-residents-almost-100-000-for-braid-1823829972 https://www.theroot.com/tennessee-has-fined-residents-almost...
- kakarot 9y agoWhat does any of that have to do with launching satellites and distributing radio bandwidth, both of which need regulation in order to provide safety for the masses?
- wallace_f 9y agoI'm sorry, but it's completely self evident. The point was that the natural right to perform/produce a service/product should be the null hypothesis (as opposed to government removing that right and granting it at their discretion) in any such case; and while on the extremes the answers may seem obvious (launching communication satellites vs braiding hair), it's often not always so. Finally, I concluded that people should ideally care about this before it adversely affects them. In other words, the OP's post was not without reason.
- kakarot 9y agoI'll ask again, what does any of that have to do with launching satellites and distributing radio bandwidth?
- bri3d 9y agoAs many of us learned from the unauthorized Swarm Technologies satellites the other week, the FCC approve satellite launches. So this is effectively SpaceX getting the final sign-off they need to launch this service - I think that can count as an advance. I think there are a lot of arguments to be made about the world-changing nature of this project but I'm not sure FCC approval is the best one to downplay.
- greglindahl 9y agoDid you notice the part of the article that talked about this being a conditional approval, not the final one?
- walrus01 9y ago99.9% of the time FCC conditional approvals for new tech will eventually convert into final approval. It's just a procedural thing.
- etskinner 9y agoI dont think parent meant that the FCC approval itself is what should be celebrated, but rather that the technology needed FCC approval to move forward, and every step closer is something to celebrate
- mrep 9y agoThe Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government created by statute (47 U.S.C. § 151 and 47 U.S.C. § 154) to regulate interstate communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the media, public safety and homeland security, and modernizing itself. [0] Lots of that communication moves through electromagnetic radiation which practically anyone anywhere can use/interfere with. This is a textbook case of a common good which if unmanaged would be effectively destroyed due to the tragedy of the commons [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Communications_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Communications_Commiss... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
- jessaustin 9y agoFCC was formed to discourage competition in telecom, and that is mostly what it has done for over 80 years.
- mattsfrey 9y agoAgreed. While not as profound as bringing access to the developing world, this will also be a major win for people looking to live alternative lifestyles, i.e. perpetual traveling, van life etc, where keeping a consistent internet connection is the one thing holding many back.
- walrus01 9y ago> live alternative lifestyles I know exactly the meaning that you intend here, but at first I thought "how exactly is this going to be beneficial for polyamorous triads of hemp farmers who attend burning man every year?"
- olympus 9y agoYou can get decent 4G internet plans already in most parts of the world. While this will have better coverage of rural areas, mobile internet is very adequate for the van lifestyle.
- lev99 9y agoThat really depends on how much bandwidth you need. Several aspects of remote working like video conferencing large file transfers are too demanding for 4G in terms of bandwidth and transfer caps.
- IntelMiner 9y agoWouldn't the latency of a sat connection interfere with something real-time like video conferencing?
- neo4sure 9y agoI would like to know how this technology will affect the great firewall of China, does anyone have any ideas?
- nradov 9y agoNot much effect. The Chinese government will prohibit import and possession of the ground terminals. Smugglers will bring in a few but not enough to really bypass the Great Firewall for many people.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Retric 9y agoIf you can get a 1Gbps up-link and VPN within China that's going to be harder to track down and could service a lot of people. However, I suspect SpaceX will however allow China to monitor/limit connections. Further, China has a lot more power to crack down on purely internal operations would deter many.
- walrus01 9y agoThe problem is twofold from a China perspective: a) the rooftop CPE needs to be reasonably large and have high gain to be used effectively, and needs clear unobstructed line of sight to as much of the sky and horizon as possible. and b) It needs to transmit, it will transmit in very known frequency ranges, and the chinese authorities have plenty of budget to buy portable spectrum analyzers, horn antennas and to reach people how to use them. It only takes a couple of hours maximum to reach somebody how to use a portable spectrum analyzer to physically locate and identify transmitters in almost any band.
- Retric 9y agoA) A thin tarp or pant etc could obscure the shape without blocking radio waves. B) These things need to transmit up, so you can reasonably block most signals in other directions. Aircraft would work, but again not cheap. The real issue is more on the human side and network monitoring. Lots of encrypted network traffic to a ransom location would be suspect. PS: For once tinfoil might actually be useful vs government spying :)
- hinkley 9y agoCareful. Major advances in communication technology also precede major military upsets. Only the victors labelled those as progress.
- IAmGraydon 9y agoA few examples?
- hinkley 9y agoSomething one of my history teachers used to go on about. I’m not sure I can do him justice now that I’m thinking about it. Big military upsets due to superior intel. Sometimes by new means. I’m wondering now if he was paraphrasing Napoleon (the secret of war lies in the communications). Roman roads, pigeons, semaphore, radio, all used to project military power in profound and overwhelming ways. Radar, sonar (if you’re willing to stretch the definition a little). CDMA (invented by Hedy Lamarr during WWII for torpedos, but not used until the Cuban missile crisis). Cryptanalysis to defeat the Germans. ARPAnet was built to be literally bomb proof.
- iamdave 9y agoYour earlier post seems to intimate that technological leaps like this precede the start of wars, but your follow up comment intimates that technological leaps like this help win wars, and now I'm not sure I'm exactly following which one is supposed to be your central point to this. Could you clarify this and help me understand your viewpoint a bit better?
- hinkley 9y agoHonestly my first reply was a moment of progress fatigue. Tech fatigue really. Tech is amoral. Tech means change, but change doesn’t mean progress. I’ve been watching tech for a long time and we tell ourselves a lot of half truths. My good friend showed me a private demo of the first web browser that supported images. I was around people who wanted to change the world and it was all thrilling. But I can still recall conversations about how we were all going to slay Big Brother, but instead we made him stronger than ever. It’s really painful to look at your role in that. I’d bet money that half of them still don’t. And that was why I started my post with “careful”. War is just a conterexample. Especially if you have sympathy for the losing side. Tech will only be good if you exert yourself toward making it so. Here we are with three threads a day talking about how Facebook used their technology for negligence or evil depending on your point of view.
- buvanshak 9y ago>This will make the 'Internet' truly global and ubiquitous... So does it makes the exploitation that comes with it... Providing internet to the unmotivated masses only results in their exploitation..not in their empowerment.
- erikpukinskis 9y agoYour claim seems too broad to be justifiable.
- buvanshak 9y agoThe idea is that most of the people (think around 99.5 percentage) of the people ll be hooked to the insta-gratification stuff provided by the internet, ending up perpetually distracted, manipulated, with new insecurities instilled and existing ones blown up, ad fed human beings... So as I said again, it ll result in the exploitation of 99.5 percentage and may be empower the rest to attempt something that was impossible before...
- wmf 9y agoIt's still going to be more expensive than wired Internet. In the developing world where PTTs impose crazy prices they will impose those costs on top of whatever SpaceX charges.
- adventured 9y agoNo chance it's going to be more expensive than comparable wired - fiber or cable - Internet. You're leaving out the vast cost to build & maintain the wired infrastructure. Tax payers & consumers in those developing nations have to pay for that. That cost has to be included with the monthly fees to do a serious comparison.
- lev99 9y agoThe cost of building wired infrastructure has an inverse relationship with population density. This might be more expensive than wired internet in dense cities. The metal of city buildings and the high density of transmitters might make the performance lower in cities than suburban/rural areas. The Manhattan and Tokyo speed tests are more important to me personally than The Grand Canyon and Indian Ocean speed test.
- lovemenot 9y agoA key strength of the proposed network is its ubiquity, which makes it most competitive in un(der)served markets than in high-density cities. They can't just hover more satellites over Tokyo, so the service would inevitably become fully loaded there.
- walrus01 9y agoIf you really want to get excited for the developing world - research the number of new submarine fiber cables that have connected coastal cities in many major African nations in the time frame from 2004 to 2018. That's a lot of capacity. Now a big part of the problem is outdated regulatory regimes and government-controlled telecoms that are keeping prices artificially high, and keeping out competition in the 4G/LTE market and ISP market.
- bjelkeman-again 9y agoAs some who sells B2B SaaS in Africa (among other places): There is no question that a lot is happening, but there are huge swats of countryside in many parts of Africa that are not covered yet. The question is, who gets there first, and at what price.
- madushan1000 9y agoI'm from a third world country(Sri Lanka) and we already have really cheap LTE access, the connection I'm using right now(on my phone) gives me something like 1GB/1.5USD at average 4MBPS. What sucks is the speed and reliability, speed always fluctuate and even though most of the island is now covered by 3G, LTE is not a given. It has been improving a lot though because we have relatively good competition between mobile ISPs(something like 10 providers all island) and more than a quarter of the population has smartphones and demanding bandwidth.
- slr555 9y agoI was visiting a friend in Sri Lanka in 2004 and he was checking cricket scores on his phone in the middle of the jungle. I still can’t get a signal the whole way between KC and Omaha. We Americans sometimes ave a distorted view of the world.
- pharke 9y agoIt's funny you mention that route, it's about 185 miles which is about how wide Sri Lanka is. Living in the US also gives us a distorted view of how large the typical nation is.
- jandrese 9y agoFor reference for Americans that's about the distance from Providence to New York City. Or San Diego to Oxnard for left coasters. Drives that people wouldn't think anything about, and where you would probably have cell service for the vast majority of the drive.
- stingraycharles 9y agoCan confirm. My Cambodian wife’s family lives in the jungle and have 4G and she has perfect skype video calls with them. It costs them $1 a month and they get 5GB for that. These developing countries are going all-in on mobile and it’s a good thing. They really don’t need these sattelites, but for Americans apparently it’s good for leveling the ISP playing field.
- gnarbarian 9y agonot just the developing world. there are large swaths of the US without decent broadband either. Also large areas with no internet whatsoever beyond satellite. (and I mean really shitty really expensive satellite) ubiquitous internet will make remote weather stations, drones and a multitude of other things far more cost effective or possible. (especially here in Alaska)
- walrus01 9y agoACS and GCI have recently spent a great deal of (partly subsidized) money to build high capacity point to point microwave to reach a number of fly-in type communities: https://www.adn.com/business-economy/2017/03/19/with-federal-help-alaska-telecoms-plan-big-expansion-of-rural-broadband/ https://www.adn.com/business-economy/2017/03/19/with-federal... https://www.adn.com/features/business-economy/2017/03/18/for-rural-alaska-broadband-the-middle-mile-is-everything/ https://www.adn.com/features/business-economy/2017/03/18/for... The goal for these is to build network bridges to alaskan terrestrial fiber, getting to Fairbanks and/or Anchorage, from where connections are possible into Alaska's subsea fiber cables to WA state and the Seattle area. Implemented properly this can be significantly faster than satellite, bringing a 1 to 2 Gbps full duplex connection to each town with licensed microwave bands. From the perspective of ACS and GCI and similar operators, it can pay for itself pretty quickly because they can stop paying monthly-recurring geostationary satellite transponder kHz leases.
- mozumder 9y agoThe developing world needs fiber instead of satellite. This isn't going to change much over their current LTE speeds. This type of satellite internet is far too expensive far far too limited bandwidth to be useful for them. The energy cost of RF broadband is so much higher than fiber. Really, the audience for this are ships and other remote regions, not anyplace that has a road going to it.
- Robotbeat 9y agoNah, You’re thinking of different constellations like OneWeb. This constellation is being way overbuilt by SpaceX. They want gigabit speeds and way cheaper data than LTE. They want to compete with fiber (at least in non-super-dense areas). From Spacex’s perspective, they’re happy to build it so large that it only breaks even (even though I think it’ll do better than that) because it gives them something to launch on their huge, fully reusable rocket that they’re building.
- mozumder 9y agoNah, they can want infinite speeds, but they're only going to get a few megabits of speed. It will be much slower than LTE, since the satellites are going to be about 100 miles away. LTE towers are only a few miles away. How do you expect it to have higher bandwidth than LTE with communications a hundred miles away? It doesn't matter that they're putting in 4000 satellites, since those satellites are still 100 miles away from the terminal. Again, I want everyone to be clear: This is going to be MUCH slower and more expensive than LTE. Like Iridium, this project is only useful for remote areas that can't be reached by roads. Very few people will benefit from this project. It won't change society. This is another one of Elon Musk's garbage projects that doesn't really advance the state-of-the-art.
- lorenzhs 9y agoLatency and bandwidth are two separate things, and the distance to an LTE tower has approximately nothing to do with latency to the server you’re connecting to, which btw is likely much further away than 100 miles. Now factor in that light moves 50% faster in air or vacuum than it does in fibre optic cables. The satellites are also going to be at a height of around 1000km (600 miles). But I t takes light only about 3.3ms to travel that distance. 30ms latency end-to-end should be realistically achievable this way. That’s more than a good residential connection but good enough for just about any application other than latency-sensitive multiplayer games. There’s valid skepticism of SpaceX’s plan, but none of your points are among it.
- grecy 9y agoI've just driven through 21 countries in West Africa. [1] Every single country has 3G, a few have 4G. Often the speeds were faster than what I get in Canada. A pre-paid SIM costs $1, data is anything from $1-$10/GB in a pre-paid bundle. So I think the biggest difference the SpaceX Constellation can make is price. A huge percentage of the population in virtually every dirt street town has a smartphone with facebook and whatsapp. [1] theroadchoseme.com
- NullPrefix 9y agoThis service could be aimed at "Internet third world" countries like US or UK.
- tomcooks 9y agoI don't see how corporations meddling with the government can produce any good for the developing world, apart from generating profit for themselves masked as charity. Digital natives will be offered a walled garden, terrorcorp version of "the internet" as we know it (e.g. Facebook meddling with Albanian government). Decentralized alternatives, like Freifunk, are the best option in my opinion.
- icc97 9y agoBare in mind that Space X doesn't really care about trying to control the internet - their focus is making money from putting stuff in space so they can build the BFR. So a better comparison as others have said is comcast and mobile broadband providers. The more competition the better as far as I'm concerned.
- hordeallergy 9y agoDoubt it. I was downloading Linux distros among various other things in a developing country in the 90s. This might be useful for the most isolated areas.
- jagger27 9y agoHas SpaceX indicated that this network is meant to cover every home and business directly or connect to a hub to distribute locally? In terms of democratization, space to the home with commodity hardware is such a game changer it's not even funny. My napkin math says that latencies across the Earth (like NYC to Melbourne) would beat existing fiber.
- walrus01 9y agoBoth, I think. I would be surprised if there is not a higher-bandwidth, larger, more expensive high gain rooftop CPE which can be used by a small ISP/WISP in a remote area. They would use that for their uplink to the internet and then distribute access locally via point to multipoint 5 GHz radio systems, GPON fiber, whatever is feasible.
- kbaker 9y agoAlso, remote LTE towers could provide cellular connectivity anywhere.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- walrus01 9y agoyes, fixed wireless LTE (baicells, other competing LTE based products for WISPs), or traditionalmobile wireless... Whatever local methods are possible to distribute service from an islanded ISP's local 'core' routers. As an example an ISP in a town in Nunavut that was previously dependent on C-band geostationary satellite capacity. When I say 'islanded' ISP I mean an ISP that has no access to terrestrial point to point microwave, or fiber, to reach any sort of upstreams or major IX points. Either physically islanded (such as an ISP on the island of Nauru) or somewhere in a terestrial location, but logically islanded because it would cost at minimum several million dollars to build PTP microwave or fiber to the nearest medium sized city. One example might be any of the communities on Hudson Bay which are fly-in access only. In previous discussions of the spaceX system, I have mentioned o3b as an example of a new, clean sheet of paper design satellite network that people should familiarize themselves with. The ordinary internet user will rarely if ever see an o3b terminal, since it is at minimum about $45,000 in hardware costs and is a pair of 1.8 meter motorized, multiple axis tracking antennas, modems, BUC + SSPA, etc. o3b is intended for high capacity trunk links to replace a setup like a 6.3 meter Ku-band antenna and dedicated geostationary transponder KHz. Satellite architecture wise one of the interesting things of the spaceX plan is that the satellites will be in polar orbits (orbital inclinations anywhere from 82 to 105 degrees, not sure exactly). Whereas o3b orbits its satellites at low inclinations around the equator, meaning that their effective coverage area reaches from +/- 45 degrees latitude only.
- tyingq 9y agoWould probably fix the now somewhat "limited by cost constraints" inflight WiFi for airlines. Lots of capital to switch over though. And perhaps more complicated tracking/pointing. Smaller, less wind resistance, and so less fuel burn cost though.
- geerlingguy 9y agoAnd long-term contracts. I remember hearing GoGo signed on for an exclusive 10 year contract with airlines who use them, with no plans to upgrade bandwidth during that time.
- tyingq 9y agoThe Gogo deals require consumer pricing that is revenue positive too. The airlines that chose their own unbranded satellite can subsidize prices if they want. And, of course, Gogo doesn't work over the ocean or other large water bodies, unpopulated areas, etc. Though the gogo antennas are simple and way less capital expenditure, faa certification time, and aircraft downtime for installation.
- dawnerd 9y agoGogo works over water on their new(ish) 2ku band installations. Two years ago I flew to Hawaii on one of the first Delta flights outfitted and got some pretty good speeds (and oddly enough it was free because of "limited connectivity"). Also pro-tip, if you have T-mobile you can use Gogo for free. There's a small upgrade fee to make it work the entire duration of the flight. It's intended to be mobile only but I'm sure some people here can figure a way around that ;)
- tyingq 9y agoWell, yes, but Ku band means all the benefits of the simple antenna are gone. Do they try to enforce "mobile only" solely with a MAC prefix database?
- LeoPanthera 9y agoDo they have to get a license from every country in which they intend to operate?
- celticninja 9y agoNo, you need to get authorisation to launch a payload based on where your company is headquartered.
- LeoPanthera 9y agoDoes that mean, once you have a satellite in orbit, you can transmit anything into any country?
- drcross 9y agoMost likely you'll need to buy spectrum wherever you plan to do this.
- LeoPanthera 9y agoSo you do need a license from every country?
- avtar 9y agoI'm assuming the parent was asking if licenses are required to provide service to people in other countries.
- celticninja 9y agoThe linked site is for the FCC giving them permission to launch and operate the service. They may need individual licenses to operate in each country but I answered in the context of the submitted post. This article https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/03/california-startup-accused-of-launching-unauthorised-satellites-into-orbit-report/ https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/03/california-startup-accuse... Also provides more context, this company launched from outside the US but as a US company they needed authorization from the FCC for the payload and operating.
- sneak 9y agoThe last fifteen years I have been lamenting the fact that we happen to be living in that tiny slice of history between the internet being invented and the internet being everywhere, having to deal with things like “long distance” and “no service” and underhanded last mile monopolies. I could not be more excited about this.
- gingernaut 9y agoWhat the implications are for countries that severely restrict and monitor internet access? Would Chinese citizens be able to sign up for this service? Would SpaceX comply with foreign governments asking to ban connections or new customers from their countries?
- walrus01 9y agosee here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16712540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16712540 Unless the rooftop CPE can be significantly disguised, it'll be difficult for places like Iran. The Iranian government periodically goes on (not very successful) campaigns to get people to remove rooftop Ku-band TVRO, Rx only satellite dishes. Those don't transmit. With a portable spectrum analyzer it will not be difficult to identify starlink rooftop CPE radios. This is ultimately the same problem that applies to rubber hose cryptanalysis. From a network engineering perspective, if an authoritarian state can use sufficient local resources to control the OSI layer 1, it doesn't matter how good your L2 to L7 are.
- the-pigeon 9y agoIt would be subject to local wireless spectrum control. So like for your example it would have to sell to Chinese customers illegally if it wasn't going to comply with their censorship regulations. Which the Chinese government could then do a lot to fight. So basically no, satellite internet is unlikely to have any impact on censorship.
- seiferteric 9y agoHere's a wild idea... They could disable transmit in these areas, but allow reception. Someone in a hostile area with access to an antenna could send one way messages up with useful info.
- hyperpallium 9y agoGood idea, but just as easy to detect (send a message).
- 9y ago
- cft 9y agoWill it work inside cars without a special antenna?
- tyingq 9y agoFrom one of their early FAQ docs: https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/7zqm2c/starlink_faq/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/7zqm2c/starlink_f... "What kind of antenna does it use? It will use a flat Phased Array antenna about the size of a pizza box or laptop computer and expected to cost between $100 and $300. You will need line of sight to the open sky, mounted on your roof or anywhere outside. The antenna handles both upload and download and is capable of gigabit speeds."
- spullara 9y agoSounds a lot like you could get it installed when you are putting in your solar panels......
- dawnerd 9y agoMakes me curious, would a larger panel make for better service? Would be interesting if they made their solar roofs all in one.
- tyingq 9y agoMore gain == more bandwidth, up to a certain point, so probably. Though they've probably considered this in their business model and throttled or charged appropriately. Like, do they just let high altitude customers in Denver get more bandwidth for free, or ?
- tyingq 9y agoYes really. More gain means higher S/N ratio, therefore more bandwidth. Again, up to a certain point. Providers don't necessarily deliver an optimal antenna. See cheap home wifi routers for a real world example. Swapping their shit stock antennas for better clearly boosts bandwidth.
- vvanders 9y agoReading the full document[1] is really interesting. Lots of details about the potential technical problems, timelines and a couple requests to deny the application. [1] https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2018/db0329/FCC-18-38A1.pdf https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/201...
- walrus01 9y agoOneweb and Telesat intend to build LEO polar orbit satellite networks that are, architecturally, very similar. Their objections are mostly about interference and spectrum use. If all three projects come to fruition and actually build thousands of satellites and launch them, we could be looking at not just spacex's 4,000+ satellite in polar LEO, but several thousand more from oneweb and telesat as well.
- clay_the_ripper 9y agoPlease tell me that this means Comcast will go out of business. Oh man. The excitement I would feel at watching them go down...
- stjohnswarts 9y agoGood luck with those ping times if you're a gamer.
- foota 9y agoI believe they plan to improve upon current satelite internet latency by using lower satelites.
- hesdeadjim 9y agoTheir satellites will be low-earth orbit and have latencies ~50-70ms supposedly. Current internet satellite systems are much, much higher in orbit and thus have horrendous lag. What remains to be seen is what packet loss will be like with environmental disturbances. That latency is perfectly fine for gaming, but bursts of 20%+ packet loss will quickly flip it back to "sucks for gaming" territory while still being perfectly fine for browsing or Netflix.
- doh 9y agoI was just looking at Iridium and they seem to have very low latency of around 40ms roundtrip [0] but very small throughput. If SpaceX (or whoever else) can address the latter, then 40ms will challenge any ISP. If you combine this with the adoption of new protocols like HTTP/2, the user experience will be definitely comparable. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access#Medium_and_Low_Earth_Orbits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access#Medi...
- walrus01 9y agoIn real world practice Iridium's current satellites (not the next generation) have latency from 700ms to 1400ms to the gateway. It's also 2400 baud for data, something like 2400baud+1200bps of FEC for voice. Actually kind of amazing that they can fit intelligible voice through that bitrate with voice codec technology that was finalized 19 years ago. The raw RF latency of Iridium in its present state does not correspond with the network topology at layers 2 and 3.
- VadimSheen 9y agoGreat News!
- caryando 9y agoWhat is China going to do when their citizens have access to the Internet via these Satellites?
- wongarsu 9y agoThe same thing they do today with VPNs: outlaw it, put reasonable restrictions in place, accept that some amount will slip through (or heavily police it and hand out lots of jail time, depending on local situation, political climate etc.)
- neolefty 9y agoSpaceX will obey local laws and geo-fence the service.
- paul7986 9y agoWhat is the big advancement here compared to say Hughes Satellite Internet that is slower then DSL?
- toomuchtodo 9y agoLower latency and much higher data rates.
- shaklee3 9y agoYou're comparing current satellite technology to something that is scheduled to come out in about 3 to 4 years. That's not very fair considering that there are many other geosynchronous high-bandwidth satellites scheduled to come out before SpaceX is ready.
- lev99 9y agoLOE will always provide faster latency than Geosynchronous orbit. I suspect that total bandwidth will go to the person with the most satellites, and LEO has much cheaper launches than GeoSync. Geosynchronous orbit is more than 15 times farther away. That is why the communication will be quicker, and why the launches are cheaper.
- shaklee3 9y agoI specifically said high bandwidth since the latency is obviously better with leo. I don't know what you are implying by much cheaper launches. They need many, many more launches to hit the same capacity/coverage as a geo satellite. One launch may be cheaper, but SpaceX will need dozens.
- greglindahl 9y agoYou're correct about coverage -- 3 GEO sats can cover most of the planet -- but not about capacity, which kinda scales with satellite mass, and benefits from being closer (less power needed per bit.)
- zapita 9y agoWhat will the latency be like? My understanding is that these satellites will be in lower orbit, allowing for shorter round-trips... But how much shorter exactly? And how would that translate to real-world latency? Presumably there would be multiple hops involved in traversing the SpaceX network?
- hinkley 9y agoGeosynchronous orbit is 35k kilometers up, which a calculator tells me is 119 light milliseconds from the surface. Iridium satellites were the first set of satellites I could find numbers for that made any kind of relevant example. They orbited at 781 kilometers, or 2.6 light milliseconds away. Over 45 times closer.
- walrus01 9y agookay... so i work in two way satellite and will expand a bit on what this looks like in real world practice, with currently available technology and satellite architectures. geostationary orbit dedicated (1:1) transponder capacity, in real world use with large earth stations and SCPC modems, has latency of around 485ms to 490ms for a return trip ping. That's a figure from remote earth station (example: Nauru) to the other end of a link (example: Singapore). 119 x 4 = 476 ms add anywhere from 10ms to 20ms for a combination of modem Tx encoding, framing, adding FEC, and then the reverse on the Rx side. example: nauru router with a 1000BaseLX link into a satellite modem generates one ICMP ping nauru --> satellite --> satellite --> singapore singapore modem does decode, passes IP traffic to a router or something else that can answer ICMP singapore --> satellite satellite --> nauru nauru satellite modem decodes, passes traffic to router
- hinkley 9y agoI was very careful not to draw any conclusion besides "closer" because this is not my wheelhouse. Some of the low cost wireless broadband projects have proposed the use of a ground station fairly nearby as the upstream network provider but I haven't the fuzziest what SpaceX has planned. In your opinion what fraction of the overall delays in the network are attributable to the diameter of the orbit (great circle distance and ground-to-satellite distance) instead of the limitations of the hardware?
- Consultant32452 9y agoI wonder if you'll be able to get a device small enough for this to replace satellite telephony. I enjoy backpacking and would like to get a sat-phone for emergencies, but it's kind of cost prohibitive.
- ArlenBales 9y agoAs a hiker who likes to spend many nights camping out in the remote wilderness, this will be a blessing but also a curse. I'll be able to stay connected to family and friends, and have emergency services and information available if necessary, but at the same time I'll have Hacker News and Reddit distractions - but inevitably this is the way the future will be, so it's time to get used to it. At least when going on a cruise I won't have to pay for their shitty expensive satellite Internet.
- natethinks 9y agoThis is where I would love my old Samsung's "ultra power saving" mode. Nothing but calls and texting on a black and white screen. Almost a week of battery life.
- fwgwgwgch 9y agoWhat phone is that?
- noonespecial 9y agoMy S7 has that. In my area (with good coverage) it lasts 9 days! in standby.
- GordonS 9y agoMy S7 had it, and so does my S8. Very cool feature that I haven't seen in other phones.
- kawfey 9y agoThe Nokia 3310.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- InclinedPlane 9y agoThis service won't do that. This is not for satellite phones, that would be Iridium (or more accurately, Iridium NEXT which will come online soon), this is for fixed installation or perhaps vehicle based broadband. It'll require a fairly substantial, sophisticated, and expensive antenna (think pizza box sized) to use, and a lot of power as well. This won't connect directly to handsets. It'll be helpful for providing broadband internet access to remote or less developed locations, it'll be helpful to set a cost/performance baseline across the globe for broadband service, and it'll also likely be useful in providing broadband service for various vehicles such as planes, boats, and automobiles, if they are large enough to have the spare power and area to run the antenna.
- hinkley 9y agoBackground section from one of the attachments to that announcement: On November 15, 2016, SpaceX filed an application requesting authority for its proposed NGSO FSS satellite system, comprising 4,425 satellites in 83 orbital planes, at an approximate altitude of 1,110 to 1,325 kilometers. In this application, SpaceX proposes to operate in the 10.7-12.7 GHz, 13.85-14.5 GHz, 17.8-18.6 GHz, 18.8-19.3 GHz, 27.5-29.1 GHz, and 29.5-30 GHz bands. SpaceX also requests waivers of certain Commission rules.
- joering2 9y agoOut of curiosity, dont they have to ask other bodies like European Union or other countries for permission as well? Those satellites wont fly over usa only, which is fcc oversight. Also reversing my question - if they would get denied, could they form company in EU and still shoot satellites from there based on EU permission? Just curiosity of a hacker in me pushes out these questions ;)
- walrus01 9y agoIt is not entirely impossible to have satellites where the legal owner is incorporated somewhere for regulatory purposes. There are a few geostationary, traditional style C/Ku-band transponder capacity satellites which are owned by companies in the Isle of Man. Huge numbers of satellites are owned by a Luxembourg based company (SES), one of the top-4 largest satellite operators worldwide, not because they particularly love Luxembourg so much, but because it has regulatory and tax advantages. The majority of SES' earth stations and facilities are not located in Luxembourg.
- aphextron 9y agoI’m curious to what layer SpaceX will allow application developers access to. If there is to be any hope of having cryptographically secure communications using this network, it will be essential that the whole stack is open source. Putting blind faith in SpaceX seems foolish.
- walrus01 9y agosatellite (earth station) systems engineer here: I highly doubt that there will be access at anything other than layer 3. The CPE will have a 1000BaseT port on it, when you connect to it, it'll hand out a DHCP v4 and v6 IP address on it. Maybe if you pay an extra $15 per month you can get a single static v4 address. I am very doubtful that it will be possible for an individual end user with a rooftop terminal to get access to "the network" at what would correspond to layer 2 in the OSI model. It is possible that a more expensive service tier offering might provide L2 ethernet fabric virtual wire adjacency. Similar to the general idea of an VPLS / EoMPLS virtual wire tunnel, where whatever you plug into one end will see the single MAC address (or set of MAC addresses) of your other equipment on the other end. But this will be a managed service and not something that you can build arbitrarily.
- fwgwgwgch 9y agoThank you. You're the only "hacker" here among evangelicals and dreamers. Thanks for your informative comments on "hacker" news.
- walrus01 9y agoWithout evangelicals and dreamers major new ISP infrastructure wouldn't get built. But it has to run into practical realities of what a network will look at all the way down the OSI model stack. People want gigabit FTTH to every home in the USA but the construction costs could be $5,000 per house on average.
- cossray 9y agoI followed this closely and thank you for pointing out the cost implications per house connection. While that's a significant amount in the USA,it's far monstrous in the developing countries/rural areas;which from this forum are touted as the major targets of the SpaceX system. Do you see a way of reducing this cost that can practically serve a rural town in, for example, Africa? (I'm from East Africa and trying to make sense of what this new development means for local ISPs)
- hyperpallium 9y agoWill break first world broadband monopolies, force prices down, and perhaps destroy the terrestrial industry - from a profit POV. Balloon net in conjunction, to act as towers?
- sschueller 9y agoBy creating a new super monopoly called Tesla? One entity in control of the entire internet?
- raganesh 9y agoSatellite internet service should provide major operational cash flow for SpaceX. That too on recurring basis. Rocket launches generate revenue once per launch and for the foreseeable future, there will only a limited number launches per year. Very good move by SpaceX.
- lev99 9y agoCan you please explain why recurring revenue is significantly better for a rocket company? My understanding is Falcon 9 launches are limited by manufacturing and launch pad limitations and not market demand. Launching satellites take away from both of those, so he clearly thinks the direct to consumer business is worth it.
- raganesh 9y agoRecurring revenue - launch the satellite constellation once and generate monthly subscription revenue potentially running into billions of dollars a month. Manufacturing limitations & launch pad availability, once they are resolved (along with launcher reuse) will lead to a point where there is not enough demand to fill the launch roster. This internal demand will help them fill it up.
- lev99 9y agoI always hoped ISS resupply and mars transport would work as reoccurring revenue. This is probably a great use if he has extra rockets and launch pad time, but it seems a bit of a side project compared to manned space travel.
- drawkbox 9y agoThis venture goes hand in hand with the goal of manned space travel and going to the Moon/Mars, explorers are going to need an internet uplink on either and this allows it to be separate from just large spacecraft providing that.
- slr555 9y agoI wonder how the total bandwidth of the system will compare to BGAN which is pretty darn costly compared to LTE. Terminals would also have to be more reasonable to expand past the media/energy customers that BGAN tilts towards.
- stephen_g 9y agoBGAN is very limited - you only get a few hundred kbps... This will likely be more like O3B, which can do gigabit (if you pay for it, and of course the total bandwidth is limited and shared so speeds would drop significantly if they had high take-up). So this will definitely be far higher than BGAN, but from what I'm reading here people have far too high expectations if they're in a populated area... Definitely this could be an absolute game-changer for rural areas, but for densely populated cities you're going to have a better time with fixed line.
- tbabb 9y agoHere's one way I could see this killing Comcast, even in major cities: As a homeowner, you by a small box which lives under the eave of your roof. The box has high-bandwidth, low-latency satellite uplink to SpaceX which gives you your internet. The same box also has a terrestrial wireless repeater which serves the local neighborhood. Internet is available through your "tower" to neighbors and passers-by. You and SpaceX split the revenue from the traffic. Basically, it's like a solar roof, but for internet. Photons/bits rain down from space onto your roof, and you sell the energy/bandwidth back to the local area for a price that amortizes your investment. In areas very poorly served by internet, or with very poor broadband choices, there could be an especially strong financial incentive to be the guy on your block with a SpaceX repeater. It would certainly scale a lot better than every house having an uplink-- customer connections are instead concentrated into micro-regional nodes. If there's a node in your area, you buy internet from them. If there's no node around, you invest in becoming one. This could drastically decentralize and cheapen internet across the globe, if done right. It could be extremely disruptive to telecoms, and profitable for SpaceX.
- walrus01 9y agothis model already exists (google "WISP micro pop"). One of the primary problems with doing this at a large scale is that the bandwidth via satellite will not be that great, compared to what's possible with current terrestrial technology. the second is that the micro POP needs some kind of serious battery backup and a way to meet five nines or better reliability. you can't start hanging downstream customers off of the rooftop radio system on some random person's house unless you can be absolutely certain that the main uplink won't be unplugged by somebody's kid messing around with a power-over-ethernet injector underneath a desk. one of the challenges with a wisp micro POP approach for current last mile FCC part 15 unlicensed band operators is that you need to (a) keep the equipment powered independently of whatever the POP-host customer might be messing around with inside of their house, and (b) provide a good sized UPS for it, and (c) ensure that the POP stays in place and contractually "survives" the original resident moving out, either new tenants or new homeowner. The (c) part requires a fairly long and ironclad commercial lease agreement that becomes attached to the property title, which is not something either ISPs or homeowners take lightly.
- cornholio 9y agoWe have ourselves an international trade war concerning satelite spectrum. FCC rejects the idea of "first-come-first-served" and supports mechanism that allow equal spectrum sharing among applicants in the same licensing round. But it can only do so overhead USA. SpaceX competitors, like OneWeb, contend that SpaceX should be forced to subject to ITU Coordination, that currently assigns use of the spectrum based on ITU filling date priority. This argument will certainly be applied in other countries with less concerned regulators, so we will have a complex patchwork of rules from one country to the next and the satellites will have to switch bands repeatedly in a single orbit. The ability to block a competitor from operating in certain territories has massive commercial and geopolitical implications: ========= ITU Coordination. In its Petition to Deny, Telesat observes that international coordination will be required between the SpaceX system and its own NGSO FSS system. Telesat argues that, at minimum, any grant to SpaceX should be conditioned upon compliance with this international obligation. In response, SpaceX argues in support of the Commission’s avoidance of in-line interference regime, which, it asserts, yields more efficient spectrum sharing results than a regime based solely upon ITU priority. We recently declined to adopt Telesat’s proposal to tie coordination obligations and licensing conditions directly to ITU filing dates by awarding priority according to those dates, and accordingly deny Telesat’s petition in so far as it reiterates Telesat’s ITU filing date priority proposal. We include a condition requiring SpaceX, like all other NGSO FSS operators, to comply with the spectrum sharing requirements specified in section 25.261 of the Commission’s rules with respect to any other NGSO system licensed or granted U.S. market access pursuant to the processing rounds in which SpaceX participated. We recently adopted changes to section 25.261 that replaced the avoidance of in-line interference methodology for triggering spectrum division (absent coordination) with a default spectrum splitting sharing mechanism that is triggered when the change in system noise temperature caused by interference, or ΔT/T, exceeds a threshold of 6 percent. However, we note that outside the United States (i.e., when communications to or from the U.S. territory are not involved) the coexistence between SpaceX’s operations and operations of a system that received a grant for access to the U.S. market are governed only by the ITU Radio Regulations as well as the regulations of the country where the earth station is located and are not subject to section 25.261.
- karlkloss 9y agoI'm sure that radio astronomers will be thrilled. 4425 additional jamming transmitters.
- Jabbles 9y agoCould a SpaceX constellation provide lower latency than undersea fiber? If the satellites can communicate to each other would the speed of signalling through a vacuum/air (~30% greater than fiber) outweigh any other steps? If so, maybe SpaceX should get into HFT/arbitrage between global markets?
- karmicthreat 9y agoThis is going to be great for industrial M2M service. A whole lot of industrial plants (food or other) are out in the middle of nowhere even in the US. Places were you just can't get cell service.
- kgc 9y agoCancelling Comcast now...
- ryanmarsh 9y agoDid anyone else find Jessica Rosenworcel's statement at the end of the memorandum to be unprofessional? I don't often read FCC rulings but her language seems breathless, unfactual, and unprofessional. coming together to pioneer a wide range of cool satellite services Cool? No one imagined commercial tourism taking hold, no one believed crowd-funded satellites were possible, and no one could have conceived of the sheer popularity of space entrepreneurship No one? Lastly, her statement is rambling. Especially the last two paragraphs.
- pascalxus 9y agoThis sounds like a HUGE win! Anybody know what time frame we can expect for being able to sign up for such a service and what they will be offering? I hate At&T and comcast with a passion.
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