3 ms·

I disagree with that. I think there's a latency line that if you exceed that, certain functions are no longer possible. Real-timing gaming is one of those, and

I disagree with that. I think there's a latency line that if you exceed that, certain functions are no longer possible. Real-timing gaming is one of those, and VoIP as well with a slightly higher latency. You are at a complete disadvantage playing real-time games if your ping is 150ms compared to someone else at 30ms, to the point where you may as well not play those types of games. I'm not sure what the justification is to assume that Starlink will not be horribly oversubscribed, either. Last I checked it was supposed to be about 32Tbps with all satellites operational. A substantial amount of that is completely wasted over water, so the effective capacity for customer that actually have the money for SpaceX to generate revenue is very small. The types of services people need in remote areas, whether it be a plane or in a village that has never had internet are not those that require low latency. They are either streaming media (plane), or web browsing. In that sense, I don't see how Starlink has and advantage there. I would be shocked if they could deliver something better than cable on DOCSIS 3 to even 10% of cable customers with comparable service. My guess is it will be tailored more to high-paying customers that happen to not be able to get decent cable.

Tuna-Fish 8y ago
> Last I checked it was supposed to be about 32Tbps with all satellites operational. It will be ~80Tbps after the first three phases (the LEO constellation), ~240Tbps after VLEO. I agree with you that they probably cannot offer enough bandwidth to compete with residential internet in densely habited areas.(1) The system is really interesting in less densely inhabited places, and for backhaul. The complete system has more transcontinental bandwith between almost any two (distant enough) places than all submarine cables between them put together. This alone will likely pay for the whole system, with plenty to spare. (1) With a few exceptions. After the full constellation is up, New Zealand will have ~30 times more downlink capacity than the entire bandwidth use of the country as of right now, and will also have tens of times more connecting capacity with North America and Australia than it currently has. But that requires a country of only 6 million in the starlink sweet spot that gets all of the bandwidth of all visible satellites to the east of it.
- shaklee3 8y ago
  I agree. I think the capacity on paper is very impressive, and the trans-continental capacity will be useful. I'm just more skeptical that they'll find a market willing to pay the price it will cost easily in the residential market. Satellite internet is more expensive than cable, and I don't see any way that will change considering their hardware will be more expensive than the current satellite internet hardware (just based on phased array). 1Gbps cable isn't unheard of these days, but the question is whether there's really a market for it. At some point you are past a speed where it has any material effect on what you're doing, and SX needs a small amount of customers paying a large amount of money due to the equipment costs. What they can't have is lots of customers with 50Mbps plans that have identical equipment to someone paying 10x more for 1Gbps.
walrus01 8y ago
Probably will be radically oversubscribed in order for the economics to work, and will be a shittier service than a properly implemented vdsl2, g.fast or docsis3/3.1 last mile (nevermind gigabit class gpon or active Ethernet ftth), but significantly better than small geostationary service vsat. And will be higher latency and with worse GB/mo bandwidth quotas compared to a modern technology WISP for last mile. A lot of the technology press has misunderstood the most desirable applications and locations for it. People think that it's going to compete for a residential internet service in a suburb of a city like Portland, or Sacramento, or Denver. If you can get 300 megabit per second DOCSIS3 service in one of those locations, that would be drastically better. where it is going to be a game-changer is all of the locations that are right now dependent on highly oversubscribed geostationary small vsat services, and extremely rural areas where there isn't even a single last-mile terrestrial Wireless ISP. and for ships in the middle of the ocean, if the gigabyte per dollar cost is significantly less than inmarsat or other options.
- shaklee3 8y ago
  I think I understand what you are saying, but I'm confused at this comment compared to your others. If you believe, as I do, that the user terminal is going to be extremely expensive, how will that compete with the current small vsat terminals? I agree that the service could be better in theory, but at the same time, existing satellite internet service also could be better by taking on fewer customers and not being as congested. But that's a cost trade-off. And in this case, I believe SpaceX has a higher cost per customer to recoup, so it seems in their best interest to also be congested to increase revenue.
  - walrus01 8y ago
    I think that there is a good chance the terminal will be expensive, but the cost hidden or eaten by spacex to gain market share. Building a phased array thing with sufficient gain that can track two LEO satellites can't be cheap. But maybe their terminal hardware engineers have come up with something truly revolutionary, and we will all be surprised. I am hoping but skeptical that it could have similar hardware costs to a viasat small ka-band vsat terminal, in the range of $800-900 for rooftop equipment + modem.

Tuna-Fish 8y ago

> Last I checked it was supposed to be about 32Tbps with all satellites operational. It will be ~80Tbps after the first three phases (the LEO constellation), ~240Tbps after VLEO. I agree with you that they probably cannot offer enough bandwidth to compete with residential internet in densely habited areas.(1) The system is really interesting in less densely inhabited places, and for backhaul. The complete system has more transcontinental bandwith between almost any two (distant enough) places than all submarine cables between them put together. This alone will likely pay for the whole system, with plenty to spare. (1) With a few exceptions. After the full constellation is up, New Zealand will have ~30 times more downlink capacity than the entire bandwidth use of the country as of right now, and will also have tens of times more connecting capacity with North America and Australia than it currently has. But that requires a country of only 6 million in the starlink sweet spot that gets all of the bandwidth of all visible satellites to the east of it.

shaklee3 8y ago
I agree. I think the capacity on paper is very impressive, and the trans-continental capacity will be useful. I'm just more skeptical that they'll find a market willing to pay the price it will cost easily in the residential market. Satellite internet is more expensive than cable, and I don't see any way that will change considering their hardware will be more expensive than the current satellite internet hardware (just based on phased array). 1Gbps cable isn't unheard of these days, but the question is whether there's really a market for it. At some point you are past a speed where it has any material effect on what you're doing, and SX needs a small amount of customers paying a large amount of money due to the equipment costs. What they can't have is lots of customers with 50Mbps plans that have identical equipment to someone paying 10x more for 1Gbps.

walrus01 8y ago

Probably will be radically oversubscribed in order for the economics to work, and will be a shittier service than a properly implemented vdsl2, g.fast or docsis3/3.1 last mile (nevermind gigabit class gpon or active Ethernet ftth), but significantly better than small geostationary service vsat. And will be higher latency and with worse GB/mo bandwidth quotas compared to a modern technology WISP for last mile. A lot of the technology press has misunderstood the most desirable applications and locations for it. People think that it's going to compete for a residential internet service in a suburb of a city like Portland, or Sacramento, or Denver. If you can get 300 megabit per second DOCSIS3 service in one of those locations, that would be drastically better. where it is going to be a game-changer is all of the locations that are right now dependent on highly oversubscribed geostationary small vsat services, and extremely rural areas where there isn't even a single last-mile terrestrial Wireless ISP. and for ships in the middle of the ocean, if the gigabyte per dollar cost is significantly less than inmarsat or other options.

shaklee3 8y ago
I think I understand what you are saying, but I'm confused at this comment compared to your others. If you believe, as I do, that the user terminal is going to be extremely expensive, how will that compete with the current small vsat terminals? I agree that the service could be better in theory, but at the same time, existing satellite internet service also could be better by taking on fewer customers and not being as congested. But that's a cost trade-off. And in this case, I believe SpaceX has a higher cost per customer to recoup, so it seems in their best interest to also be congested to increase revenue.
- walrus01 8y ago
  I think that there is a good chance the terminal will be expensive, but the cost hidden or eaten by spacex to gain market share. Building a phased array thing with sufficient gain that can track two LEO satellites can't be cheap. But maybe their terminal hardware engineers have come up with something truly revolutionary, and we will all be surprised. I am hoping but skeptical that it could have similar hardware costs to a viasat small ka-band vsat terminal, in the range of $800-900 for rooftop equipment + modem.