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are the physics of cables cheaper and easier? Took me, what, over a decade to get fiber internet in the middle of Silicon Valley.
by rconti 6y ago
are the physics of cables cheaper and easier? Took me, what, over a decade to get fiber internet in the middle of Silicon Valley.
- bargl 6y agoYes. All this beaming technology is available on earth (4g/5g) but we don't use it for our home internet... Why is that? Cost of bandwith per person to infrastructure. If you're in Silicon Valley then you probably get GREAT cell service, why not use a hotspot as your internet. That signal to your phone is orders of magnitude cheaper than space based signal.
- jedberg 6y ago> If you're in Silicon Valley then you probably get GREAT cell service You'd think so, but we have the same problems as everyone else. In fact, I get much better reception in Sacramento and Las Vegas than in the Bay Area.
- bargl 6y agoNo, you don't have the same problems as everywhere else. You said it took 10 years to get fiber, there are rural places where that's not an option. There are places where there is no sewer and houses must have septic. There are places where there is no water and houses must have wells / rain capture. Those are the target audience for this technology. Not people who are waiting to go from 60 -> 100 -> 1000 Mbps. This won't compete there, not based on the specs of these satellites and their 10 year plan.
- jedberg 6y agoI was specifically addressing your claim that one could just use an LTE hotspot. I'm aware that there are rural communities that have worse infrastructure than the bay area.
- bargl 6y agoYou have better access to hotspot data than someone who is further from the nearest cell tower. I'm using a more physical infrastructure discussion to draw an analogy to what you might experience. It might make sense for someone in a city to build a well or water capture system, but in general it's not the same calculation as in more rural areas, where 1 mile of cable may reach 0.5 people vs 20. What you have could easily be too many people per cell tower in your area, which would be the exact same problem that these satellites will encounter. The physics of adding a cell tower is much cheaper than adding more satellites.
- rconti 6y agoYou seem to be confusing posters and issues. I'M the one who said it took 10 years to get fiber. I'm not convinced wired infrastructure is cheaper/easier to deploy, when it means digging up millions (billions?) of miles of trenches across the country. Nobody claimed "having fiber in silicon valley today" is not better than "having crap internet in rural america" I have good LTE at my house. That doesn't mean I can get terabytes/month of transfer for a reasonable cost. And by the way, my ENTIRE POINT was that "the physics of wires" is NOT "cheaper and easier". Reply to my parent if you're looking for an argument as to why wired is better than wireless.
- shaklee3 6y agoThe problem is that the target audience you refer to doesn't have the amount of money it takes to sustain a system like this. Otherwise any of the existing satellite providers could continue to launch more and more satellites and serve very expensive internet to them. Starlink will be just as much, or more expensive.
- nradov 6y agoIf you go just a few miles into the hills south and west of Silicon Valley there are huge dead zones.
- rconti 6y agoI was arguing against the parent post that was claiming wires are cheaper and easier. Not terrestrial wireless vs satellite.
- hpkuarg 6y ago> over a decade to get fiber internet in the middle of Silicon Valley This is not a physics problem. This is a local government problem.
- rconti 6y agoThe comment was "physics being cheaper/easier" I'm just not convinced the "physics of trenching and stringing cables from poles" (whatever we're taking this to mean) is cheaper and easier than wireless points popped up, either terrestrially or in space.
- bargl 6y agoLet me be super clear about what I meant in my first comment. Satellites are VERY susceptible to overcrowding, this is what I mean by physics. Co-Channel interference and Adjacent Satellite Inteference play a big role. The more signal you use the more of a problem it becomes. Think about it like this. Your car radio, has how many available stations? Have you ever gotten multiple signals at the same time? This is all a really big problem for space based communication you just can't solve with more signal. Don't get me wrong we can do a lot with our spectrum, but there is a limited amount and if we both want to communicate with a satellite and we live 100 feet apart, our signals will interfere much more than if we live 1000 feet apart. I'm not saying stringing cables is cheaper, I'm saying laying fiber from hub to hub and then connecting to those hubs is cheaper if you're within 50 mile radius. Maybe cellular is cheaper, maybe a wire to your house is cheaper. It depends on how many people you have close to you. There just isn't enough spectrum for everyone.