3 ms·

Not trying to prove you wrong, just asking. Can a service like starlink not deal, in some hypothetical configuration, replace cabled internet?

• henrikeh 5y ago
  Can it exist and provide a usable service to some? Yes, probably. Can it replace cabled internet, period? Can it replace terrestrial cellular? Unlikely: Mobile internet is constrained by the capacity and coverage of the cell. "Capacity" being the practical sort of what the maximum achievable information rate is, given the available receivers and transmitters. Satellite links are a bit complicated, but essentially the Shannon-Hartley theorem holds and you either have to increase bandwidth or increase signal-to-noise ratio to provide better data rates within a cell. Bigger cell, more users, less capacity per user, worse data rate per user. I don't know what the cell sizes Starlink will use are, but I've read numbers around 200 km^2. My hometown of 10000 homes is 21 km^2. If they were to provide 100 Mb/s just to my hometown, they would need a 1 Tb/s capacity in a much smaller cell. Of course, not everybody will use 100 Mb/s all the time, but it illustrates the problem. This is why SpaceX is mainly focusing on low-density areas in places where the infrastructure is less-developed/monopolized. The capacity / coverage problems works much better to their advantage.