4 ms·

It depends on the population density of the area. This will be very good for rural and semi-rural areas, but in Australia at least for any metropolitan/suburban

It depends on the population density of the area. This will be very good for rural and semi-rural areas, but in Australia at least for any metropolitan/suburban area our current LTE is probably almost already higher capacity than a connection using this satellite constellation will be. People are a little over-excited about the possibilities of this network - even with the huge number of satellites they have, if you’re in a densely populated area you could still be sharing a spot beam with 100k to many hundreds of thousands of people. Now, even if they had a ridiculously good 1Tbps per spot beam (currently there are satellites that can do that much throughout for the whole thing but in reality you’d probably be both power- and RF spextrum-constrained). So at 100k subscribers you’re down to about 15Mbps per subscriber (being really generous), so you’re talking about on average, best case in suburban areas having a 50-60Mbps service. In metro probably more like 10 theoretically (and potentially an order of magnitude less in reality with decent take up rate)... This kind of speed is already fairly common in Australia in metro/suburban areas (I have 100/40Mbps) and LTE is generally is even faster but the quotas really small (I have 12Gbps a month on LTE but 1Tb on my cable). The main problem for this kind of internet in Australia is that we have some of the highest urbanisation in the world (which actually makes it easy to run fixed line services like FTTH to 80% or so of our population - our problems have been almost entirely a failed Government privatisation of our monopoly telco (which turned them into a single, huge, anticompetitive private monopoly) and then a change of Government watering down a Government-run last mile network that was in early construction that private retailers would sell services over on an open-access basis (changing to obsolete technology like FTTN from FTTH on ideological grounds to cripple it)). So we don’t have as much as the market in the semi-rural kind of density which is where Spacex’s idea would really shine.

ethagknight 9y ago
From what it sounds like, majority of people don’t have have access to affordable, half decent internet coverage. People are appropriately excited about the prospects for these new satellite nets. It offers a real alternative to status quo, and enough pressure to obligate the incumbent monopolies to try harder. There is a lot of money sitting on the table waiting for someone to come scoop it up. Incumbent Carriers wont be able to flood a market to strangle Spacex like they do with small start up ISPs and Wisps. Also, I presume Spacex and others will be significantly over subscribing their ‘pipes’. They can take huge advantage of selling the same pipe to business and home users, with different time-of-day use profiles. So you can double or triple or even 10x the number of customers (or available link speed!) in your assumption, all paying $50-$150/mo, since most connections are dormant most of the time. I’m sure we will see simple mechanisms to push the heaviest users back to landline connections, like data caps. I have toyed with the idea of launching a WISP in Memphis TN area. The city has good cell tower build out, a surprisingly robust dark fiber network, and a few tall and evenly distributed high rises that could to provide great coverage. I was scared away due to the ability of incumbents to our-market me 100-1, and (illegally) dump their services on the market. However, the nail in the coffin for me was the announcement and progression of SpaceX’s internet plans. Sat based internet service is a beautiful business plan if you can control your launch costs and get latency down. Spacex has a high probability of getting it done.

ethagknight 9y ago

From what it sounds like, majority of people don’t have have access to affordable, half decent internet coverage. People are appropriately excited about the prospects for these new satellite nets. It offers a real alternative to status quo, and enough pressure to obligate the incumbent monopolies to try harder. There is a lot of money sitting on the table waiting for someone to come scoop it up. Incumbent Carriers wont be able to flood a market to strangle Spacex like they do with small start up ISPs and Wisps. Also, I presume Spacex and others will be significantly over subscribing their ‘pipes’. They can take huge advantage of selling the same pipe to business and home users, with different time-of-day use profiles. So you can double or triple or even 10x the number of customers (or available link speed!) in your assumption, all paying $50-$150/mo, since most connections are dormant most of the time. I’m sure we will see simple mechanisms to push the heaviest users back to landline connections, like data caps. I have toyed with the idea of launching a WISP in Memphis TN area. The city has good cell tower build out, a surprisingly robust dark fiber network, and a few tall and evenly distributed high rises that could to provide great coverage. I was scared away due to the ability of incumbents to our-market me 100-1, and (illegally) dump their services on the market. However, the nail in the coffin for me was the announcement and progression of SpaceX’s internet plans. Sat based internet service is a beautiful business plan if you can control your launch costs and get latency down. Spacex has a high probability of getting it done.