3 ms·

Starlink blows competitor offerings out of the water. Starlink has higher speeds, lower latency, and no data cap.

by initplus 5y ago

shaklee3 5y ago
because they have no users yet. once the satellites are filled you're back to the status quo.
- adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
  That's not true. The biggest problem with other satellite internet is ping, which has nothing to do with # of users (it's just that geostationary is really far away). Starlink satellites are 100x closer (so 10000x stronger signal), and there are well over 100x as many starlink satellites, so Starlink has roughly 1 million times the capacity as the other satellite internet providers.
  - shaklee3 5y ago
    no, it's not. streaming media is the vast majority of internet traffic, and it doesn't care at all about your latency. your capacity math is so far off it's just crazy. if they had a million times the capacity of current satellites they would have around 250 petabits per second.
  - adhesive_wombat 5y ago
    Signal strength and channel bandwidth are only partially related. You could blast out a 100Hz-BW CW signal at 1MW, but you will not be able to send much on it, even if you can receive it from the Moon. There are other limits too, like channel concurrency, which you can see in action in places like busy stations or stadia where your phone can't connect and your Bluetooth headphones become unreliable. I don't know how many simultaneous connections a single Starlink transceiver can handle, though.
    - adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
      it looks like their previous satellites (v1.0) were 18Gbps. I haven't found anything for v1.5 which is currently deployed, or v2.0 which theoretically are starting to launch this year.
      - adhesive_wombat 5y ago
        Yes, but that is presumably not a maximum of 18 billion users at 1 bps, nor a maximum of 1 user at 18Gbps.
        adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
        based on the plans they are selling, it almost certainly can do both 40 users at 500mbps and 200 users at 100mbps. This is a total guess, but I'd imagine it can probably do 2000 users at 10mpbs, since 10:1 over-subscription is pretty common for ISPs.

Starlink blows competitor offerings out of the water. Starlink has higher speeds, lower latency, and no data cap.

shaklee3 5y ago

because they have no users yet. once the satellites are filled you're back to the status quo.

adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
That's not true. The biggest problem with other satellite internet is ping, which has nothing to do with # of users (it's just that geostationary is really far away). Starlink satellites are 100x closer (so 10000x stronger signal), and there are well over 100x as many starlink satellites, so Starlink has roughly 1 million times the capacity as the other satellite internet providers.
- shaklee3 5y ago
  no, it's not. streaming media is the vast majority of internet traffic, and it doesn't care at all about your latency. your capacity math is so far off it's just crazy. if they had a million times the capacity of current satellites they would have around 250 petabits per second.
- adhesive_wombat 5y ago
  Signal strength and channel bandwidth are only partially related. You could blast out a 100Hz-BW CW signal at 1MW, but you will not be able to send much on it, even if you can receive it from the Moon. There are other limits too, like channel concurrency, which you can see in action in places like busy stations or stadia where your phone can't connect and your Bluetooth headphones become unreliable. I don't know how many simultaneous connections a single Starlink transceiver can handle, though.
  - adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
    it looks like their previous satellites (v1.0) were 18Gbps. I haven't found anything for v1.5 which is currently deployed, or v2.0 which theoretically are starting to launch this year.
    - adhesive_wombat 5y ago
      Yes, but that is presumably not a maximum of 18 billion users at 1 bps, nor a maximum of 1 user at 18Gbps.
      - adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
        based on the plans they are selling, it almost certainly can do both 40 users at 500mbps and 200 users at 100mbps. This is a total guess, but I'd imagine it can probably do 2000 users at 10mpbs, since 10:1 over-subscription is pretty common for ISPs.