5 ms·

The real value is not super low latency communication, but rather airplanes and ships out of reach of normal base stations. I have seen no evidence that trader

by nickik 6y ago

The real value is not super low latency communication, but rather airplanes and ships out of reach of normal base stations. I have seen no evidence that traders will be the primary users. Do you have any evidence or cases where they are doing or planning this. Are you just guessing?

temp667 6y ago
In my space especially with video conferencing people are willing to spend a premium for lower latency for audio / video conferencing links. So there may be a market there (if you can backhaul phone, video, audio conference traffic) where even 10 - 20 ms in savings may be noticable. Another may be gaming. Another is as you say planes and ships out of reach of ground stations (very sparse situation however).
ncmncm 6y ago
Every single high-speed trader's ears perked up instantly when news of this came out. They already spend huge amounts on microwave links overland between e.g. Chicago and New York, for just a few milliseconds advantage over fiber. Starlink gives them the same opportunity across Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. You can bet that there will be orbits that exactly link London and New York, New York and Tokyo, New York and Singapore, London and Singapore, etc. Traffic not sent under extra-high tariffs will be artificially delayed enough milliseconds to match fiber. It would not be surprising if these low-latency contracts, for traffic amounting to well under 0.1% of total capacity, provide 10% of revenue. It would also not be surprising if future satellites have tens of TB of storage onboard to proxy streaming for the highest-demand shows of the moment, and broadcast capability to multiple ground stations simultaneously for live streams, particularly soccer matches. Most likely, aside from financial transaction data, routing will always offload packets to ground terminals as early as possible. I strongly doubt zigzag routing will happen at all.

by nickik 6y ago

temp667 6y ago

In my space especially with video conferencing people are willing to spend a premium for lower latency for audio / video conferencing links. So there may be a market there (if you can backhaul phone, video, audio conference traffic) where even 10 - 20 ms in savings may be noticable. Another may be gaming. Another is as you say planes and ships out of reach of ground stations (very sparse situation however).

ncmncm 6y ago

Every single high-speed trader's ears perked up instantly when news of this came out. They already spend huge amounts on microwave links overland between e.g. Chicago and New York, for just a few milliseconds advantage over fiber. Starlink gives them the same opportunity across Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. You can bet that there will be orbits that exactly link London and New York, New York and Tokyo, New York and Singapore, London and Singapore, etc. Traffic not sent under extra-high tariffs will be artificially delayed enough milliseconds to match fiber. It would not be surprising if these low-latency contracts, for traffic amounting to well under 0.1% of total capacity, provide 10% of revenue. It would also not be surprising if future satellites have tens of TB of storage onboard to proxy streaming for the highest-demand shows of the moment, and broadcast capability to multiple ground stations simultaneously for live streams, particularly soccer matches. Most likely, aside from financial transaction data, routing will always offload packets to ground terminals as early as possible. I strongly doubt zigzag routing will happen at all.