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The advantage of the ground station being closely located to users is very very small (assuming options are in view and not at the extreme limits). There's not
by jcrawfordor 6y ago
The advantage of the ground station being closely located to users is very very small (assuming options are in view and not at the extreme limits). There's not really any latency to avoid, the traffic is going up and down and through a ground station either which way. The current ground stations probably have better (as in lower latency) connectivity than a telco's local exchange anyway.
Considering the high complexity of field-deploying a ground station during an emergency when several nearby ground stations are available, it's difficult to imagine why they would ever do this. Licensing for ground stations is more complex which generally prevents installing one on short notice, and because the "teleport" link requires higher total bandwidth than the consumer links it typically uses larger antennas, higher power levels, and often even a completely different band and encoding both for higher throughput and to simplify managing interference with the consumer-facing antennas.
That said, my assumption would be that Starlink offered to provide redundancy for the WiFi at this site, so while the Starlink service in the photo is not necessarily in use it does serve a function by providing some reassurance in case the telco experiences infrastructure problems subsequent to the fire (not unlikely because fire recovery involves heavy equipment, tends to destabilize hillsides, etc).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gpm 6y agoThe advantage isn't latency but connectivity. Connectivity requires both user and base station to connect to the same satellite, and that happens more often the closer they are to each other. This becomes less of a problem as you gain more satellites, but right now with the limited rollout I'm pretty sure it is significant. Base stations that have identical radios to user antennas (which have a general fcc license) probably don't require further licensing. They would be limited bandwidth but that's a lot better than nothing, especially during a disaster.
- jcrawfordor 6y agoDocuments from Starlink suggest the usable footprint of the satellites is a bit over 500km wide, so roughly the size of Washington. Further, Starlink only reported positive results from inter-satellite relay testing very recently ("first successful test" about four weeks ago). Combining these, and considering that they are operating multiple ground stations within Washington, I don't think inter-satellite relay is a factor at all right now.
- gpm 6y agoThat's... an assumption that went into the logic in the comment replying to and the logic in it's grandparent. I think you meant to contradict me, so I think my comment is being misunderstood, which might explain the downvotes too... I just can't figure out how your are misreading it.