3 ms·

Starlink puts towns devastated by wildfires online for disaster relief workers

21 points by fotta 6y ago

PaulHoule 6y ago
In business school on Mars they'll be thanking the terrestrial telecom industry for giving Elon Musk the break he really needed. After 20 years of "talking to the hand" to telecoms about improving service, Elon Musk is going to look like a hero to governments of all sizes all over Earth who can take credit for Starlink, even if all they did was get out of the way. What SpaceX will get out of this in terms of profits, as well as political capital will be immense.
- lowdose 6y ago
  Governments are actually profiting the most from current situation by auctioning frequencies to Telco's. Finland is the only country that uses the proceeds from these auctions to build one network from which all providers lease. The rest of the countries milk the auctions as a cash-cow. The cool thing for countries is that they do not have to call this officially a tax on peoples income. https://www.gsma.com/spectrum/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Impact-of-spectrum-prices-on-consumers.pdf https://www.gsma.com/spectrum/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Imp...
  - PaulHoule 6y ago
    That's if you assume the "telecom = wireless" belief that wireless companies push. It's fairly recent (last few years) for communities to realize that cell phone coverage is just as bad as it really is. Until then communities were asking for better landline service, where "talk to the hand" was and still is the mantra. In the case of cell phone service people didn't bother asking because they figured "cell phone companies say they serve 300M POPs" and that if their cell phone didn't work in some places they'd assume that it was something about them personally or their specific phone. Once they tried giving grants to improve service in places that didn't have it, then they found they couldn't find coverage holes on the carrier maps, but could find them reliably on the ground -- so the scandal that "cell phone carrier maps are completely wrong" is just starting to develop.
op00to 6y ago
Amateur Radio operators have been bringing communications to disaster relief workers for almost the entire time they've existed. For free, too.
- PradeetPatel 6y ago
  However, the amateur radio scene does not possess the same level of PR resources as Starlink. The more I work in with open source projects, the more I realised the neccesity of public engagement in order to shape the correct narrative.
  - nickik 6y ago
    Yeah I'm sure the massive PR campaign at SpaceX is responsible for these reports. And yes, amateurs have done great things, but to compare it to a global high speed internet system with small rapidly deployable terminals is not really the same thing.
  - kawfey 6y ago
    This is a massive problem in ham radio. Their main "selling point" is to provide a radio service for emergencies and disasters, but here we've got some of the greatest disasters we've ever seen, and the ham radio scene is crickets. Either there's an ongoing ham response that we're not aware of, or Firstnet and/or standard Two-way radio is really fitting the bill in CA, leaving no need for ham radio. The only related news is a ham radio connected IP camera detected the start of a fire in Washington [0]. The Calfire-Ham Radio drama [1] is still in recent memory too. [0] [http://www.arrl.org/news/ham-radio-wireless-network-camera-detects-washington-wildfire http://www.arrl.org/news/ham-radio-wireless-network-camera-d...] [1] https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/cal-fire-severing-ties-with-ham-radio-operators-jeopardizing-millions-of-californians-during-an-emergency/ https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/cal-fire-severing-ties...
modeless 6y ago
Quotes from another story about this [1]: "I have never set up any tactical satellite equipment that has been as quick to set up, and anywhere near as reliable" "there’s really no comparison" "Starlink easily doubles the bandwidth" "I’ve seen lower than 30 millisecond latency consistently" "Starlink changes the game as far as what’s available" "great quality" "slightly obscured but it still worked like a charm, with great speeds" "these, at least as far as we’re concerned, are here to stay for us. We want to get as many spun out to as many places as we can" "SpaceX is being very cautious right now in what they promise us, but it’s been nothing but good things" [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/washington-emergency-responders-use-spacex-starlink-satellite-internet.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/washington-emergency-respond...

21 points by fotta 6y ago

In business school on Mars they'll be thanking the terrestrial telecom industry for giving Elon Musk the break he really needed. After 20 years of "talking to the hand" to telecoms about improving service, Elon Musk is going to look like a hero to governments of all sizes all over Earth who can take credit for Starlink, even if all they did was get out of the way. What SpaceX will get out of this in terms of profits, as well as political capital will be immense.

lowdose 6y ago
Governments are actually profiting the most from current situation by auctioning frequencies to Telco's. Finland is the only country that uses the proceeds from these auctions to build one network from which all providers lease. The rest of the countries milk the auctions as a cash-cow. The cool thing for countries is that they do not have to call this officially a tax on peoples income. https://www.gsma.com/spectrum/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Impact-of-spectrum-prices-on-consumers.pdf https://www.gsma.com/spectrum/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Imp...
- PaulHoule 6y ago
  That's if you assume the "telecom = wireless" belief that wireless companies push. It's fairly recent (last few years) for communities to realize that cell phone coverage is just as bad as it really is. Until then communities were asking for better landline service, where "talk to the hand" was and still is the mantra. In the case of cell phone service people didn't bother asking because they figured "cell phone companies say they serve 300M POPs" and that if their cell phone didn't work in some places they'd assume that it was something about them personally or their specific phone. Once they tried giving grants to improve service in places that didn't have it, then they found they couldn't find coverage holes on the carrier maps, but could find them reliably on the ground -- so the scandal that "cell phone carrier maps are completely wrong" is just starting to develop.

op00to 6y ago

Amateur Radio operators have been bringing communications to disaster relief workers for almost the entire time they've existed. For free, too.

PradeetPatel 6y ago
However, the amateur radio scene does not possess the same level of PR resources as Starlink. The more I work in with open source projects, the more I realised the neccesity of public engagement in order to shape the correct narrative.
- nickik 6y ago
  Yeah I'm sure the massive PR campaign at SpaceX is responsible for these reports. And yes, amateurs have done great things, but to compare it to a global high speed internet system with small rapidly deployable terminals is not really the same thing.
- kawfey 6y ago
  This is a massive problem in ham radio. Their main "selling point" is to provide a radio service for emergencies and disasters, but here we've got some of the greatest disasters we've ever seen, and the ham radio scene is crickets. Either there's an ongoing ham response that we're not aware of, or Firstnet and/or standard Two-way radio is really fitting the bill in CA, leaving no need for ham radio. The only related news is a ham radio connected IP camera detected the start of a fire in Washington [0]. The Calfire-Ham Radio drama [1] is still in recent memory too. [0] [http://www.arrl.org/news/ham-radio-wireless-network-camera-detects-washington-wildfire http://www.arrl.org/news/ham-radio-wireless-network-camera-d...] [1] https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/cal-fire-severing-ties-with-ham-radio-operators-jeopardizing-millions-of-californians-during-an-emergency/ https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/cal-fire-severing-ties...

modeless 6y ago

Quotes from another story about this [1]: "I have never set up any tactical satellite equipment that has been as quick to set up, and anywhere near as reliable" "there’s really no comparison" "Starlink easily doubles the bandwidth" "I’ve seen lower than 30 millisecond latency consistently" "Starlink changes the game as far as what’s available" "great quality" "slightly obscured but it still worked like a charm, with great speeds" "these, at least as far as we’re concerned, are here to stay for us. We want to get as many spun out to as many places as we can" "SpaceX is being very cautious right now in what they promise us, but it’s been nothing but good things" [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/washington-emergency-responders-use-spacex-starlink-satellite-internet.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/washington-emergency-respond...