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Starlink will never replace 4G/5G in relatively-populated areas, because any RF wizardry they can do from orbit will work even better for talking to a tower at

by p1mrx 5y ago

Starlink will never replace 4G/5G in relatively-populated areas, because any RF wizardry they can do from orbit will work even better for talking to a tower at short range.

p1mrx 5y ago
Though I have to admit, 4G/5G is never going to draw lines in the sky.
tinus_hn 5y ago
But it does not have the costs associated with building a tower in that area.
- p1mrx 5y ago
  If you're in an area where it's not worth building cell towers, then Starlink will have plenty of bandwidth... but that's not where most people live. When you look at a city from orbit, you see millions of radios all stacked on top of each other, screaming. That can never scale as well as a distributed array of towers.
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    Maybe. Or maybe in these areas it’s even more expensive to waste space on towers.
    - p1mrx 5y ago
      Land use by towers is ~0%, and the ones we need have mostly been built already. Next should we eliminate WiFi because it's wasting expensive real estate?