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Starlink internet satellites keep emergency workers online amid wildfires

222 points by btilly 6y ago

sprash 6y ago
Since Starlink offers only very limited bandwidth per square meter it will never be the "new Internet for the masses". I can think of only two major use cases: - American military now can deploy drones around the world without the need for costly relay stations - Rich people can savely trade their stocks in remote areas while densely populated areas get bombed to shit Everything else is pure marketing. Like this article.
- kerng 6y ago
  You forgot the prime use case: People in rural areas around the world.
  - simion314 6y ago
    I would edit your statement to maybe very remote areas around the world, usually you can just drag a cable or place a cell tower and you get much cheaper internet and telecommunication.
    - MPSimmons 6y ago
      I mean, technically you need to drag a cable AND place a tower, unless you want really awful service. I have heard Kuiper is going to focus on basically eliminating the cable, though, and do space-to-tower, and let the tower be the last mile. I don't have any hard information to back that, though.
      - simion314 6y ago
        What I am thinking if you need to give internet to one rich guy in a remote area you use satellite, if you want to give internet to the entire village you use cell towers or cables. If a large number of people in a village can afford satellite then I assume there will be a few companies (in a functional market) that will show up and drag a cable and offer you cheap TV,internet and mobile phone. Cable will offer better speeds and include TV not like wireless so I am thinking wireless is a maybe initial workaround until the ISO will reach your location with their cables.
    - gpm 6y ago
      This has not been my experience trying to get internet at a not-at-all-remote cottage.
      - simion314 6y ago
        I was thinking at small villages that already are connected to the electric grid, for those you pull a cable on the existing electric polls, is not like if you live in a village you have no internet, in fact in Easter Europe you can get cheap and good internet in villages better then some cities and there is also competition. What I am thinking if you need to give internet to one rich guy in a remote area you use satellite, if you want to give internet to the entire village you use cell towers or cables.
  - jmisavage 6y ago
    Do they have enough cash to pay for this service and to keep this a viable business proposition? I'm still hoping this will be a great alternative to locations that are more densely packed, but only have 1 option for broadband. Need to keep the Comcasts and Verizons of the world in check.
    - walrus01 6y ago
      Many do, yes. In the north american market there's the "consumer grade" VSAT category for stuff like viasat/hughesnet/wildblue/xplornet highly oversubscribed small ku/ka-band VSAT terminals, with monthly costs under $200/mo. In the developing nation market, go to a remote part of some place in Nepal that has no fiber or terrestrial microwave links back to the big cities. Find an "internet cafe", what you're likely to see on the roof is something like this, a cheap 1.2 meter VSAT on the roof with a 4W BUC: https://www.satsig.net/vsat-equipment/andrew-123-antenna-mount.jpg https://www.satsig.net/vsat-equipment/andrew-123-antenna-mou... In a highly contended, highly oversubscribed TDMA network in some ISP's small piece of one transponder, linked back to an earth station elsewhere. For 200, 300, 400 bucks a month. What's going to change is the quality of service and speeds that somebody in $small_nepalese_city is going to get for their 250 dollars a month.
    - kube-system 6y ago
      I am sure there are a ton of people on this forum that work remotely, and would love to live in a rural area, but don’t make the move because of the lack of reliable connectivity.
      - walrus01 6y ago
        You'd be surprised where in the USA has at least one viable last mile terrestrial WISP. I can think of a few parts of Idaho where you would think nothing exists, but you can get 25 Mbps x 10 Mbps service from a competently run small ISP, by point to multipoint 5150-5850 MHz band equipment. But there are also vast areas of Idaho too sparsely populated to support any WISP at all, where you'll see cheap consumer grade VSAT stuck to the sides of peoples' houses. https://www.google.com/search?q=wildblue+dish&client=ubuntu&hs=TmL&channel=fs&sxsrf=ALeKk00FMjb3249lKs6R-6SeG1Y3n48zZA:1601475618428&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiH6ujKiZHsAhXYup4KHWwvCSwQ_AUoAnoECHUQBA&biw=1565&bih=956 https://www.google.com/search?q=wildblue+dish&client=ubuntu&...
  - quickthrowman 6y ago
    My rural lake home has fiber internet while my home in the city is stuck on Comcast (Minnesota for both lake home and home). Fiber is really cheap to run if you can hang it on poles in rural areas. I think the satellite internet market will shrink as more local ISPs start stringing fiber up on existing utility poles in lower population density areas. Satellite internet will have a place for areas like the western US where the population density is very low.
- walrus01 6y ago
  You clearly aren't aware of the existence of traditional geostationary-based VSAT terminals/modems/equipment, all of which already fit those grossly misunderstood and uninformed use cases. Trust me, if there's one thing the DoD is really good at, it's spending money on launching its own satellites and buying commercial C/Ku/Ka band transponder capacity from third parties. Really rich people don't need starlink. Traditional earth station equipment for dedicated 1:1 capacity, two way satellite already exists. Also o3b already exists. By the scale of money of the sort of person who buys a large private island with a staff, the hardware cost of an o3b terminal is a tiny rounding error.
- seattledev 6y ago
  So I guess we're just going to lay back and accept that Comcast and other awful ISPs are going to rule over our access forever? Just completely shit on anything that attempts to improve the situation? Additionally, there's nothing stopping several people from connecting to the same satellite dish that connects to Starlink. Yes there are bandwidth limitations, but for grandmas checking Facebook and emails you could have hundreds of people on a single satellite dish. This is still a huge improvement for millions of people.
  - serf 6y ago
    Comcast and 'other awful ISPs' are regional issues. Starlink is obscuring astronomy for the entire world. Yes, the benefits to rural citizens are fantastic -- but Comcast never did anything to turn the lights out for the night-sky for the entire world. Should I be okay with trading the stars from Earth for seamless connectivity for the people on the planet? Maybe. But am I ? No one asked.
    - nawgz 6y ago
      > should I be ok with trading the stars from earth This level of hysteria doesn’t strengthen your argument. Are these satellites even visible to the human eye? Why are the thousands of satellites in orbit today not an issue for you but more are?
      - atharris 6y ago
        To be clear, there are about ~15,000 objects (active + debris) in orbit ranging from small debris chunks to active spacecraft. Starlink alone is expected to add ~30,000 active satellites with relatively large solar panels/bodies, which by virtue of their area alone can be expected to be more visible from the Earth than most of the small objects that are currently tracked.
        nawgz 6y ago
        Ok, sure, so here's a valid argument from you - roughly, "why is Starlink allowed to double the number of objects in earth orbit?" But, you follow it up with an unjustified comment - "with relatively large solar panels/bodies". Can you expand on this? Are these things an order of magnitude larger than the median tracked object? A factor of two? Finally, you make a comment that doesn't follow for me: > which by virtue of their area alone can be expected to be more visible Is it not true that angling solar panels away from the earth to minimize the "area" relative to a ground observer is trivially accomplished? And, also, already not really knowing the size of objects in space, I find it hard to accept that they are such significantly larger objects that they take up more of the sky. Please expand on why they are so much larger or perhaps fly so much closer to earth or perhaps have such limited maneuverability that I should be concerned.
- woofcat 6y ago
  I think you're underestimating how many people live in a world of either very expensive cellular connections, or 56k modems.
  - syedkarim 6y ago
    Even the most expensive cellular data subscription will cost much less than the cheapest satellite internet connection, assuming you are comparing apples-to-apples (bitrate and total data transfer).
  - kube-system 6y ago
    There are more than 3 million people in the US that live in a world of 56k modems and HughesNet, who would be thrilled to even have LTE.
- deelowe 6y ago
  Pretty much everyone on this site would likely switch to starlink given the chance despite the limitations you listed. I doubt very many of them are "rich." - ltehacks.com
  - tenuousemphasis 6y ago
    I assume most people on this site live in densely populated areas, something Starlink is not designed for as there can only be so many connections per square mile per satellite.
    - walrus01 6y ago
      I think the poster is referring to the 'ltehacks' forum/website, which is a group of people using things like 700/800/850/1800/1900 band LTE last mile, via things like cradlepoints and hotspot devices, where no WISP exists. Because they can achieve much better latency and GB/month through that than by buying a wildblue type terrible consumer grade VSAT. Starlink will be revolutionary for those people who live in a place where no viable fixed-wireless WISP exists.
      - deelowe 6y ago
        Correct.
- nickik 6y ago
  Its always astonishing to me how people who don't have a clue about what they are commenting on, deliver their nonsense with such confidence and pretense of knowledge. And its the same 4-5 argument in every single thread about Starlink that then get shot down as nonsense. Its really unbelievable how that works.
walrus01 6y ago
The photo of the Starlink CPE in Malden, WA is not what it appears at first glance. Somebody from the WA EMD put it on top of the generator at the Ziply (local ILEC) CO, which was not burned, and remained online with a fiber link to the rest of Whitman county. Ziply is the entity known as Northwest Fiber which recently acquired all of the WA, OR, ID ILEC assets of Frontier. The territory which are formerly GTE. https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1310975147533271049 https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/13109751475332710... Quite honestly it looks to me like a PR stunt. Ziply was already offering a free hotspot of wifi services from the location before somebody showed up and took a photo of the starlink CPE.
- seattledev 6y ago
  So because someone else was also offering a solution, Starlink is the stunt? Is literally everything in life a stunt if someone has done it before you?
  - walrus01 6y ago
    They literally set it up at the one place in town that already had working Internet access and power. On top of the generator of the entity already providing such. Yes, that's a stunt.
    - MPSimmons 6y ago
      Do you think there was only one? They definitely made it sound as though they had more than one in this CNBC article - 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...
      - walrus01 6y ago
        I don't doubt they're using it, just that one particular photo was possibly the worst possible choice for PR. Take a photo of one out in a field being powered from portable equipment with a Honda 2000 inverter-generator or something. The location of Malden works for them because with the current bent pipe satellite architecture, and starlink earth stations in Redmond, North Bend and Brewster, the beta-test CPEs are simultaneously in view of satellites that can also see the earth stations. Activating a temporary CPE in Malden is no different than the same equipment that's been in field beta test with spacex's redmond based employees around WA state for several months now. And it's at a sufficiently high latitude that the partially-complete satellite network density, at any given point in time, is denser above Malden than above a place several degrees latitude further south.
nickik 6y ago
Its amazing to me that seemingly any project Elon Musk is associated with has at least 2-3 Top level comments shitting all over it from who are either incredibly nip-picky or inertly uniformed. But are utterly convinced their options are amazing. > “I have never set up any tactical satellite equipment that has been as quick to set up, and anywhere near as reliable” as Starlink, Richard Hall, the emergency telecommunications leader of the Washington State Military Department’s IT division, told CNBC in an interview Monday. > The company has confirmed that it’s been conducting a private beta test of Starlink with employees, but Hall said Washington’s emergency division use case “grew organically out of previously unrelated talks.” When Washington’s wildfires became increasingly severe in August, with catastrophic damage, Hall saw Starlink as a new solution for areas where the damage meant “there is no other available data connection.” > “I even did setup to allow kids to do some of their initial schooling too, because they were pressing forward with some limited presence slowly. We covered a whole lot of bases,” Hall said. “Starlink changes the game as far as what’s available.” Clearly all a PR stunt by Evil genius Elon Musk who never does anything other then spend his time planning the next big PR move to confuse the masses. Edit: I wrote a response but Hacker News does not allow it, basic point is, provide evidence that it is a PR stunt if that is your claim. The person interviewed seem to have credibility. Seems like interpretation in bad faith to me. Not question your technical knowledge.
- walrus01 6y ago
  If you're referring to my comments, I'm probably the only person in this thread who works professionally in two-way satellite. My day to day work encompasses the venn diagram overlap between terrestrial ISP backbone network engineering, point-to-point high capacity microwave and millimeter wave band transport links, and various two-way satellite access technologies when a link via geostationary is the only viable option. And I don't dislike Starlink. I actually think it's amazing tech. I'm criticizing the specific PR stunt of putting a starlink CPE at an exising ILEC CO, not what Starlink is. Starlink, when ready for ordinary end user production use, will be an amazing improvement over cheap ($110-200/mo) consumer grade VSAT terminals. The physics and economics of launching 4000-6200 kg geostationary telecom satellites and their extremely limited aggregate capacity means that a consumer grade VSAT must be oversubscribed at a 32:1 ratio or worse. Resulting in terrible things like 60GB/month data quotas for end users. It's overall a miserable experience. Starlink has the potential to entirely disrupt and kill what I call the 'shitty VSAT' market. Above the 'shitty VSAT' market there's a whole category of serious two way satellite technology that the ordinary consumer will never see. And things like o3b and starlink also have the potential to improve that. You would visibly cringe if you saw the monthly $ per MHz transponder costs for Ku spot beam capacity over eastern Africa. The dollars per Mbps ratio is ridiculously bad. In order to achieve any reasonable bps/Hz modulation density you can easily spend $100k to erect a pair of 4.5m size earth stations for a dedicated 1:1, SCPC link. And that's before you're looking at anywhere from $5000 to $30,000/month paid for transponder capacity, depending on how much data you're trying to move, and how asymmetric it is. There's a reason why every telecom/ISP in every developing nation is trying their hardest to connect to the nearest submarine cable landing station and not remain reliant upon monthly C or Ku band transponder leases.
foota 6y ago
Will the receiver be something you can plug in as a USB device for a laptop and carry with you? Or is it bulkier than that? Edit: sounds like it's half a meter, so no :-) "If you're accepted for the beta, you can expect to get a user terminal with a flat disc antenna, which measures 0.48 meters in diameter. Musk describes these as looking like a "little UFO on a stick." Your terminal's antennas will self-direct itself for the best satellite signals." [https://www.zdnet.com/article/spacex-starlink-internet-prepares-for-beta-users/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/spacex-starlink-internet-prepa...]
- the8472 6y ago
  > sounds like it's half a meter, so no :-) Sounds like it would be man-portable. So yes, if it's important enough to your mission. Push a stick into the ground, mount the disk on top and connect to your rugged hardware.
  - walrus01 6y ago
    such things already exist for satellite news gathering and military/tactical purposes, with geostationary satellite capacity. But they're both very costly to purchase and very costly to operate, due to the rudimentary modulations necessary for any useful Mbps on such a small terminal. The idea of a portable starlink terminal that might cost under $5000 is revolutionary. much smaller foldable things already exist that can talk to the Inmarsat I-4/I-5 networks, but again, very costly in dolllars per megabyte of data transferred. https://www.tampamicrowave.com/satellite-terminals/ https://www.tampamicrowave.com/satellite-terminals/ https://www.tampamicrowave.com/satellite-terminals/ https://www.tampamicrowave.com/satellite-terminals/
    - iso1210 6y ago
      A 600kbit BGAN is a little larger than a laptop, and is self contained (including a battery), with built in wifi and/or an ethernet cable. Set up in a minute or two if you know where to point it (the program on the laptop will help with that, then the beeps) But yes, you're talking $3 a megabyte on that. Starlink's actual usuable bandwidth and cost is still a question, but if it does turn out to be an order of magnitude cheaper and faster than a bgan it will be revolutionary. I'm glad I don't own shares in companies like Inmarsat. (And that's without the massive improvement in latency - a bgan in background mode is typically a 1000-1200ms RTT. In the per-minute guarenteed mode it's 600ms)
falcolas 6y ago
So, easy to set up and a measured latency of down to 30ms - both great things. The throughput is pretty respectable as well, at least in comparison to urban cable internet (which is, admittedly, a low bar). 5-10 minute connection times, that's a bit concerning. Due to a lack of coverage, or signal to noise issues? It would still be nice to see some readings over time; how stable are these numbers?
- barryp 6y ago
  "... between five and 10 minutes to set up and connect ..." I took that to mean unboxing, hooking up cables, etc - not just link establishment
- baq 6y ago
  that's 5-10 minutes to set up the connection. a different article on the subject cites the same source saying that the usual time to setup is multiple hours. the times you quote are actually best in class by an order of magnitude: By comparison, Hall emphasized that it took him between five and 10 minutes to set up and connect a Starlink terminal. And a single person can set up one of the devices: “It doesn’t require a truck and a trailer and a whole lot of other additional equipment,” Hall said. “I have spent the better part of four or five hours with some satellite equipment trying to get a good [connection]. So, to me, it’s amazing,” Hall added. 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...
dejavuagain 6y ago
Starlink should be a public good. It's like we learned nothing from the wholesale give away of our airways to corporate interests. We've given away space. Compare this opportunity to the magnitude of life changing innovations the GPS public good brought us.
- gpm 6y ago
  Starlink is a continuation of giving away radio frequency bands, which doesn't thrill me, but it's not the worst offender. The space it consumes in space isn't really concerning though. It's a tiny fraction of the potential total satellites. It's in low enough orbit that the satellites deorbit instead of consuming space in space forever. It's a huge economic driver for further access to space for everyone since it finances launch systems. No one else wants that space right now, so why not let spacex borrow it.
  - rm_-rf_slash 6y ago
    >No one else wants that space right now I know radio astronomers who might have a few choice words about that statement
    - gpm 6y ago
      Na, they also want the em spectrum not the physical space. The problem for them isn't that the satellites take up too much space (they don't - physically they obscure basically nothing even for astronomers) but that they're too "bright".
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- skybrian 6y ago
  There is limited bandwidth so they will have to charge for it or it will be overloaded. This would be true whether it's public or private. It's not like GPS, which is broadcast only and any number of devices can use it.
anderspitman 6y ago
I've often thought it would be fun to spec out a low-power mesh network protocol for backcountry communication[0] (safety, sharing GPS coordinates, texting). Basically anyone could place waterproof radios with solar panels wherever. You can share the coordinates like a geocache, and if someone gets close enough they can connect with bluetooth to join the network. If a node goes down anyone could repair it. Obviously the network would be very susceptible to abuse/jamming/vandalism, but maybe like wikipedia there would be more people motivated to keep it working than destroy it. Anyway, maybe Starlink will leapfrog this dream. [0]: Kind of like https://gotenna.com/ https://gotenna.com/ but with an open protocol and static nodes.
- TheWoolRug 6y ago
  See Meshtastic: https://meshtastic.discourse.group/ https://meshtastic.discourse.group/
- Ruthalas 6y ago
  disaster.radio seems like a good step in this direction: https://github.com/sudomesh/disaster-radio https://github.com/sudomesh/disaster-radio
blhack 6y ago
If anybody on hacker news is in any way connected to this project or can get Elon Musk or somebody else at starlink's ear: PLEASE please see if there is any way that they can get some starlink equipment out to the thousands of kids who are currently living on tribal land without internet. These kids are very literally being left behind due to the covid lockdowns. They can't do online school because they can't get internet access. It's unbelievably tragic and heartbreaking.
- 47rurudhdruhfhf 6y ago
  Disagree, their parents wanted that land for 'culture'. It's a good lesson for the kids to see how valuable that culture is.
  - shaabanban 6y ago
    What a disgusting and patently racist thing to say.
    - 47rurudhdruhfhf 6y ago
      Apparently it's racist to expect people to live with their decisions now. If their parents want to be their own separate thing they should have to live with the consequences of that decision and they should be the ones who have to explain why it was a good idea to their children.
  - samcheng 6y ago
    Wow, that's pretty racist! IMO internet connectivity for education of underserved rural children is a great use case for Starlink. This population (particularly in the Four Corners region of the US) is VERY remote and expensive for existing internet service. I hope it gets there sometime soon.
    - 47rurudhdruhfhf 6y ago
      It's only racist if you think it's unfair to make people live with the consequences of their choices. Let them explain to their kids why their forefathers thought the situation was a good idea instead of integration. You don't get to say you can make it on your own and then demand help.
oxplot 6y ago
I'm sure Teslas with built-in starlink connection are in the works.

222 points by btilly 6y ago

Since Starlink offers only very limited bandwidth per square meter it will never be the "new Internet for the masses". I can think of only two major use cases: - American military now can deploy drones around the world without the need for costly relay stations - Rich people can savely trade their stocks in remote areas while densely populated areas get bombed to shit Everything else is pure marketing. Like this article.

kerng 6y ago
You forgot the prime use case: People in rural areas around the world.
- simion314 6y ago
  I would edit your statement to maybe very remote areas around the world, usually you can just drag a cable or place a cell tower and you get much cheaper internet and telecommunication.
  - MPSimmons 6y ago
    I mean, technically you need to drag a cable AND place a tower, unless you want really awful service. I have heard Kuiper is going to focus on basically eliminating the cable, though, and do space-to-tower, and let the tower be the last mile. I don't have any hard information to back that, though.
    - simion314 6y ago
      What I am thinking if you need to give internet to one rich guy in a remote area you use satellite, if you want to give internet to the entire village you use cell towers or cables. If a large number of people in a village can afford satellite then I assume there will be a few companies (in a functional market) that will show up and drag a cable and offer you cheap TV,internet and mobile phone. Cable will offer better speeds and include TV not like wireless so I am thinking wireless is a maybe initial workaround until the ISO will reach your location with their cables.
  - gpm 6y ago
    This has not been my experience trying to get internet at a not-at-all-remote cottage.
    - simion314 6y ago
      I was thinking at small villages that already are connected to the electric grid, for those you pull a cable on the existing electric polls, is not like if you live in a village you have no internet, in fact in Easter Europe you can get cheap and good internet in villages better then some cities and there is also competition. What I am thinking if you need to give internet to one rich guy in a remote area you use satellite, if you want to give internet to the entire village you use cell towers or cables.
- jmisavage 6y ago
  Do they have enough cash to pay for this service and to keep this a viable business proposition? I'm still hoping this will be a great alternative to locations that are more densely packed, but only have 1 option for broadband. Need to keep the Comcasts and Verizons of the world in check.
  - walrus01 6y ago
    Many do, yes. In the north american market there's the "consumer grade" VSAT category for stuff like viasat/hughesnet/wildblue/xplornet highly oversubscribed small ku/ka-band VSAT terminals, with monthly costs under $200/mo. In the developing nation market, go to a remote part of some place in Nepal that has no fiber or terrestrial microwave links back to the big cities. Find an "internet cafe", what you're likely to see on the roof is something like this, a cheap 1.2 meter VSAT on the roof with a 4W BUC: https://www.satsig.net/vsat-equipment/andrew-123-antenna-mount.jpg https://www.satsig.net/vsat-equipment/andrew-123-antenna-mou... In a highly contended, highly oversubscribed TDMA network in some ISP's small piece of one transponder, linked back to an earth station elsewhere. For 200, 300, 400 bucks a month. What's going to change is the quality of service and speeds that somebody in $small_nepalese_city is going to get for their 250 dollars a month.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    I am sure there are a ton of people on this forum that work remotely, and would love to live in a rural area, but don’t make the move because of the lack of reliable connectivity.
    - walrus01 6y ago
      You'd be surprised where in the USA has at least one viable last mile terrestrial WISP. I can think of a few parts of Idaho where you would think nothing exists, but you can get 25 Mbps x 10 Mbps service from a competently run small ISP, by point to multipoint 5150-5850 MHz band equipment. But there are also vast areas of Idaho too sparsely populated to support any WISP at all, where you'll see cheap consumer grade VSAT stuck to the sides of peoples' houses. https://www.google.com/search?q=wildblue+dish&client=ubuntu&hs=TmL&channel=fs&sxsrf=ALeKk00FMjb3249lKs6R-6SeG1Y3n48zZA:1601475618428&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiH6ujKiZHsAhXYup4KHWwvCSwQ_AUoAnoECHUQBA&biw=1565&bih=956 https://www.google.com/search?q=wildblue+dish&client=ubuntu&...
- quickthrowman 6y ago
  My rural lake home has fiber internet while my home in the city is stuck on Comcast (Minnesota for both lake home and home). Fiber is really cheap to run if you can hang it on poles in rural areas. I think the satellite internet market will shrink as more local ISPs start stringing fiber up on existing utility poles in lower population density areas. Satellite internet will have a place for areas like the western US where the population density is very low.
walrus01 6y ago
You clearly aren't aware of the existence of traditional geostationary-based VSAT terminals/modems/equipment, all of which already fit those grossly misunderstood and uninformed use cases. Trust me, if there's one thing the DoD is really good at, it's spending money on launching its own satellites and buying commercial C/Ku/Ka band transponder capacity from third parties. Really rich people don't need starlink. Traditional earth station equipment for dedicated 1:1 capacity, two way satellite already exists. Also o3b already exists. By the scale of money of the sort of person who buys a large private island with a staff, the hardware cost of an o3b terminal is a tiny rounding error.
seattledev 6y ago
So I guess we're just going to lay back and accept that Comcast and other awful ISPs are going to rule over our access forever? Just completely shit on anything that attempts to improve the situation? Additionally, there's nothing stopping several people from connecting to the same satellite dish that connects to Starlink. Yes there are bandwidth limitations, but for grandmas checking Facebook and emails you could have hundreds of people on a single satellite dish. This is still a huge improvement for millions of people.
- serf 6y ago
  Comcast and 'other awful ISPs' are regional issues. Starlink is obscuring astronomy for the entire world. Yes, the benefits to rural citizens are fantastic -- but Comcast never did anything to turn the lights out for the night-sky for the entire world. Should I be okay with trading the stars from Earth for seamless connectivity for the people on the planet? Maybe. But am I ? No one asked.
  - nawgz 6y ago
    > should I be ok with trading the stars from earth This level of hysteria doesn’t strengthen your argument. Are these satellites even visible to the human eye? Why are the thousands of satellites in orbit today not an issue for you but more are?
    - atharris 6y ago
      To be clear, there are about ~15,000 objects (active + debris) in orbit ranging from small debris chunks to active spacecraft. Starlink alone is expected to add ~30,000 active satellites with relatively large solar panels/bodies, which by virtue of their area alone can be expected to be more visible from the Earth than most of the small objects that are currently tracked.
      - nawgz 6y ago
        Ok, sure, so here's a valid argument from you - roughly, "why is Starlink allowed to double the number of objects in earth orbit?" But, you follow it up with an unjustified comment - "with relatively large solar panels/bodies". Can you expand on this? Are these things an order of magnitude larger than the median tracked object? A factor of two? Finally, you make a comment that doesn't follow for me: > which by virtue of their area alone can be expected to be more visible Is it not true that angling solar panels away from the earth to minimize the "area" relative to a ground observer is trivially accomplished? And, also, already not really knowing the size of objects in space, I find it hard to accept that they are such significantly larger objects that they take up more of the sky. Please expand on why they are so much larger or perhaps fly so much closer to earth or perhaps have such limited maneuverability that I should be concerned.
woofcat 6y ago
I think you're underestimating how many people live in a world of either very expensive cellular connections, or 56k modems.
- syedkarim 6y ago
  Even the most expensive cellular data subscription will cost much less than the cheapest satellite internet connection, assuming you are comparing apples-to-apples (bitrate and total data transfer).
- kube-system 6y ago
  There are more than 3 million people in the US that live in a world of 56k modems and HughesNet, who would be thrilled to even have LTE.
deelowe 6y ago
Pretty much everyone on this site would likely switch to starlink given the chance despite the limitations you listed. I doubt very many of them are "rich." - ltehacks.com
- tenuousemphasis 6y ago
  I assume most people on this site live in densely populated areas, something Starlink is not designed for as there can only be so many connections per square mile per satellite.
  - walrus01 6y ago
    I think the poster is referring to the 'ltehacks' forum/website, which is a group of people using things like 700/800/850/1800/1900 band LTE last mile, via things like cradlepoints and hotspot devices, where no WISP exists. Because they can achieve much better latency and GB/month through that than by buying a wildblue type terrible consumer grade VSAT. Starlink will be revolutionary for those people who live in a place where no viable fixed-wireless WISP exists.
    - deelowe 6y ago
      Correct.
nickik 6y ago
Its always astonishing to me how people who don't have a clue about what they are commenting on, deliver their nonsense with such confidence and pretense of knowledge. And its the same 4-5 argument in every single thread about Starlink that then get shot down as nonsense. Its really unbelievable how that works.

walrus01 6y ago

The photo of the Starlink CPE in Malden, WA is not what it appears at first glance. Somebody from the WA EMD put it on top of the generator at the Ziply (local ILEC) CO, which was not burned, and remained online with a fiber link to the rest of Whitman county. Ziply is the entity known as Northwest Fiber which recently acquired all of the WA, OR, ID ILEC assets of Frontier. The territory which are formerly GTE. https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1310975147533271049 https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/13109751475332710... Quite honestly it looks to me like a PR stunt. Ziply was already offering a free hotspot of wifi services from the location before somebody showed up and took a photo of the starlink CPE.

seattledev 6y ago
So because someone else was also offering a solution, Starlink is the stunt? Is literally everything in life a stunt if someone has done it before you?
- walrus01 6y ago
  They literally set it up at the one place in town that already had working Internet access and power. On top of the generator of the entity already providing such. Yes, that's a stunt.
  - MPSimmons 6y ago
    Do you think there was only one? They definitely made it sound as though they had more than one in this CNBC article - 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...
    - walrus01 6y ago
      I don't doubt they're using it, just that one particular photo was possibly the worst possible choice for PR. Take a photo of one out in a field being powered from portable equipment with a Honda 2000 inverter-generator or something. The location of Malden works for them because with the current bent pipe satellite architecture, and starlink earth stations in Redmond, North Bend and Brewster, the beta-test CPEs are simultaneously in view of satellites that can also see the earth stations. Activating a temporary CPE in Malden is no different than the same equipment that's been in field beta test with spacex's redmond based employees around WA state for several months now. And it's at a sufficiently high latitude that the partially-complete satellite network density, at any given point in time, is denser above Malden than above a place several degrees latitude further south.

nickik 6y ago

Its amazing to me that seemingly any project Elon Musk is associated with has at least 2-3 Top level comments shitting all over it from who are either incredibly nip-picky or inertly uniformed. But are utterly convinced their options are amazing. > “I have never set up any tactical satellite equipment that has been as quick to set up, and anywhere near as reliable” as Starlink, Richard Hall, the emergency telecommunications leader of the Washington State Military Department’s IT division, told CNBC in an interview Monday. > The company has confirmed that it’s been conducting a private beta test of Starlink with employees, but Hall said Washington’s emergency division use case “grew organically out of previously unrelated talks.” When Washington’s wildfires became increasingly severe in August, with catastrophic damage, Hall saw Starlink as a new solution for areas where the damage meant “there is no other available data connection.” > “I even did setup to allow kids to do some of their initial schooling too, because they were pressing forward with some limited presence slowly. We covered a whole lot of bases,” Hall said. “Starlink changes the game as far as what’s available.” Clearly all a PR stunt by Evil genius Elon Musk who never does anything other then spend his time planning the next big PR move to confuse the masses. Edit: I wrote a response but Hacker News does not allow it, basic point is, provide evidence that it is a PR stunt if that is your claim. The person interviewed seem to have credibility. Seems like interpretation in bad faith to me. Not question your technical knowledge.

walrus01 6y ago
If you're referring to my comments, I'm probably the only person in this thread who works professionally in two-way satellite. My day to day work encompasses the venn diagram overlap between terrestrial ISP backbone network engineering, point-to-point high capacity microwave and millimeter wave band transport links, and various two-way satellite access technologies when a link via geostationary is the only viable option. And I don't dislike Starlink. I actually think it's amazing tech. I'm criticizing the specific PR stunt of putting a starlink CPE at an exising ILEC CO, not what Starlink is. Starlink, when ready for ordinary end user production use, will be an amazing improvement over cheap ($110-200/mo) consumer grade VSAT terminals. The physics and economics of launching 4000-6200 kg geostationary telecom satellites and their extremely limited aggregate capacity means that a consumer grade VSAT must be oversubscribed at a 32:1 ratio or worse. Resulting in terrible things like 60GB/month data quotas for end users. It's overall a miserable experience. Starlink has the potential to entirely disrupt and kill what I call the 'shitty VSAT' market. Above the 'shitty VSAT' market there's a whole category of serious two way satellite technology that the ordinary consumer will never see. And things like o3b and starlink also have the potential to improve that. You would visibly cringe if you saw the monthly $ per MHz transponder costs for Ku spot beam capacity over eastern Africa. The dollars per Mbps ratio is ridiculously bad. In order to achieve any reasonable bps/Hz modulation density you can easily spend $100k to erect a pair of 4.5m size earth stations for a dedicated 1:1, SCPC link. And that's before you're looking at anywhere from $5000 to $30,000/month paid for transponder capacity, depending on how much data you're trying to move, and how asymmetric it is. There's a reason why every telecom/ISP in every developing nation is trying their hardest to connect to the nearest submarine cable landing station and not remain reliant upon monthly C or Ku band transponder leases.

foota 6y ago

Will the receiver be something you can plug in as a USB device for a laptop and carry with you? Or is it bulkier than that? Edit: sounds like it's half a meter, so no :-) "If you're accepted for the beta, you can expect to get a user terminal with a flat disc antenna, which measures 0.48 meters in diameter. Musk describes these as looking like a "little UFO on a stick." Your terminal's antennas will self-direct itself for the best satellite signals." [https://www.zdnet.com/article/spacex-starlink-internet-prepares-for-beta-users/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/spacex-starlink-internet-prepa...]

the8472 6y ago
> sounds like it's half a meter, so no :-) Sounds like it would be man-portable. So yes, if it's important enough to your mission. Push a stick into the ground, mount the disk on top and connect to your rugged hardware.
- walrus01 6y ago
  such things already exist for satellite news gathering and military/tactical purposes, with geostationary satellite capacity. But they're both very costly to purchase and very costly to operate, due to the rudimentary modulations necessary for any useful Mbps on such a small terminal. The idea of a portable starlink terminal that might cost under $5000 is revolutionary. much smaller foldable things already exist that can talk to the Inmarsat I-4/I-5 networks, but again, very costly in dolllars per megabyte of data transferred. https://www.tampamicrowave.com/satellite-terminals/ https://www.tampamicrowave.com/satellite-terminals/ https://www.tampamicrowave.com/satellite-terminals/ https://www.tampamicrowave.com/satellite-terminals/
  - iso1210 6y ago
    A 600kbit BGAN is a little larger than a laptop, and is self contained (including a battery), with built in wifi and/or an ethernet cable. Set up in a minute or two if you know where to point it (the program on the laptop will help with that, then the beeps) But yes, you're talking $3 a megabyte on that. Starlink's actual usuable bandwidth and cost is still a question, but if it does turn out to be an order of magnitude cheaper and faster than a bgan it will be revolutionary. I'm glad I don't own shares in companies like Inmarsat. (And that's without the massive improvement in latency - a bgan in background mode is typically a 1000-1200ms RTT. In the per-minute guarenteed mode it's 600ms)

falcolas 6y ago

So, easy to set up and a measured latency of down to 30ms - both great things. The throughput is pretty respectable as well, at least in comparison to urban cable internet (which is, admittedly, a low bar). 5-10 minute connection times, that's a bit concerning. Due to a lack of coverage, or signal to noise issues? It would still be nice to see some readings over time; how stable are these numbers?

barryp 6y ago
"... between five and 10 minutes to set up and connect ..." I took that to mean unboxing, hooking up cables, etc - not just link establishment
baq 6y ago
that's 5-10 minutes to set up the connection. a different article on the subject cites the same source saying that the usual time to setup is multiple hours. the times you quote are actually best in class by an order of magnitude: By comparison, Hall emphasized that it took him between five and 10 minutes to set up and connect a Starlink terminal. And a single person can set up one of the devices: “It doesn’t require a truck and a trailer and a whole lot of other additional equipment,” Hall said. “I have spent the better part of four or five hours with some satellite equipment trying to get a good [connection]. So, to me, it’s amazing,” Hall added. 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...

dejavuagain 6y ago

Starlink should be a public good. It's like we learned nothing from the wholesale give away of our airways to corporate interests. We've given away space. Compare this opportunity to the magnitude of life changing innovations the GPS public good brought us.

gpm 6y ago
Starlink is a continuation of giving away radio frequency bands, which doesn't thrill me, but it's not the worst offender. The space it consumes in space isn't really concerning though. It's a tiny fraction of the potential total satellites. It's in low enough orbit that the satellites deorbit instead of consuming space in space forever. It's a huge economic driver for further access to space for everyone since it finances launch systems. No one else wants that space right now, so why not let spacex borrow it.
- rm_-rf_slash 6y ago
  >No one else wants that space right now I know radio astronomers who might have a few choice words about that statement
  - gpm 6y ago
    Na, they also want the em spectrum not the physical space. The problem for them isn't that the satellites take up too much space (they don't - physically they obscure basically nothing even for astronomers) but that they're too "bright".
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
skybrian 6y ago
There is limited bandwidth so they will have to charge for it or it will be overloaded. This would be true whether it's public or private. It's not like GPS, which is broadcast only and any number of devices can use it.

anderspitman 6y ago

I've often thought it would be fun to spec out a low-power mesh network protocol for backcountry communication[0] (safety, sharing GPS coordinates, texting). Basically anyone could place waterproof radios with solar panels wherever. You can share the coordinates like a geocache, and if someone gets close enough they can connect with bluetooth to join the network. If a node goes down anyone could repair it. Obviously the network would be very susceptible to abuse/jamming/vandalism, but maybe like wikipedia there would be more people motivated to keep it working than destroy it. Anyway, maybe Starlink will leapfrog this dream. [0]: Kind of like https://gotenna.com/ https://gotenna.com/ but with an open protocol and static nodes.

TheWoolRug 6y ago
See Meshtastic: https://meshtastic.discourse.group/ https://meshtastic.discourse.group/
Ruthalas 6y ago
disaster.radio seems like a good step in this direction: https://github.com/sudomesh/disaster-radio https://github.com/sudomesh/disaster-radio

blhack 6y ago

If anybody on hacker news is in any way connected to this project or can get Elon Musk or somebody else at starlink's ear: PLEASE please see if there is any way that they can get some starlink equipment out to the thousands of kids who are currently living on tribal land without internet. These kids are very literally being left behind due to the covid lockdowns. They can't do online school because they can't get internet access. It's unbelievably tragic and heartbreaking.

47rurudhdruhfhf 6y ago
Disagree, their parents wanted that land for 'culture'. It's a good lesson for the kids to see how valuable that culture is.
- shaabanban 6y ago
  What a disgusting and patently racist thing to say.
  - 47rurudhdruhfhf 6y ago
    Apparently it's racist to expect people to live with their decisions now. If their parents want to be their own separate thing they should have to live with the consequences of that decision and they should be the ones who have to explain why it was a good idea to their children.
- samcheng 6y ago
  Wow, that's pretty racist! IMO internet connectivity for education of underserved rural children is a great use case for Starlink. This population (particularly in the Four Corners region of the US) is VERY remote and expensive for existing internet service. I hope it gets there sometime soon.
  - 47rurudhdruhfhf 6y ago
    It's only racist if you think it's unfair to make people live with the consequences of their choices. Let them explain to their kids why their forefathers thought the situation was a good idea instead of integration. You don't get to say you can make it on your own and then demand help.

oxplot 6y ago

I'm sure Teslas with built-in starlink connection are in the works.