7 ms·

The maritime coverage map shows coastal coverage around countries with inland coverage right now, i.e. they are bouncing the connection via one of their satelli

The maritime coverage map shows coastal coverage around countries with inland coverage right now, i.e. they are bouncing the connection via one of their satellites to a nearby groundstation. Starting in Q4/2022 they want to cover mid-latitudes around the globe. That might mean that they plan to enable inter-satellite links then? (This is a bit surprising - on one hand, this step extends coverage towards higher and lower latitudes but on the other hand not as much as they already have inland-coverage (cf. Brazil). It also extends longitudinally around all of the globe?). Coverage above mid-latitudes requires satellites in polar orbits to join the network. (Their non-polar orbits have an inclination of 53° which means that satellites go no further north or south than that (plus a bit whatever their range is)). https://api.starlink.com/public-files/maritime-coverage-map.pdf https://api.starlink.com/public-files/maritime-coverage-map....

BurningFrog 4y ago
> That might mean that they plan to enable inter-satellite links then? Or maybe they'll have stationary ships with "ground"-stations until the inter-satellite thing is working.
- dreamcompiler 4y ago
  That wouldn't solve the problem. Those ships would still need a backhaul.
  - sathackr 4y ago
    If they stationed them near the edge of current coverage, the ship could be the inter-satellite link until the actual inter-satellite links are working.
    - dreamcompiler 4y ago
      That would only buy you one increment of offshore range gain; it wouldn't cover the whole ocean unless you had a huge network of ships and used multiple up/down hops. And at that point the overall latency would suck so bad your customers might be better off with GEO.
      - paranoidrobot 4y ago
        It would depend on how fast the internal relay latency is on the ground terminals. Geostationary satellites are up at around 35,000 km. Starlink is about 500-600km - you can get a whole lot of hops between Starlink satellites and terminals before you're looking at the same distance. There's talk that they might be able to use either existing terminals, or a special set of terminals to do this, without the need to deploy them in fixed locations. They're already in talks (trials, too I think) with Airlines to equip their aircraft with terminals. I'm sure commercial shipping companies would be interested too. There's enough of those around to provide a massive network of potential relays. But they are deploying inter-satellite laser links on newer launches, so those will come on and provide more coverage too.
        dylan604 4y ago
        >They're already in talks (trials, too I think) with Airlines to equip their aircraft with terminals. I'm sure commercial shipping companies would be interested too. Would an airplane using Starlink be more easily tracked in an emergency to avoid MH370 type of mystery?
        paranoidrobot 4y ago
        No idea. They may not track/keep that information, but there's no reason they couldn't.
        cjrp 4y ago
        Inmarsat (satelite phone provider) actually helped reduce the search radius based on their contact with MH370.
        mschuster91 4y ago
        > Would an airplane using Starlink be more easily tracked in an emergency to avoid MH370 type of mystery? The thing that makes Starlink so appealing to airliners is that they can now do real-time telemetry of virtually every sensor on the plane without going bankrupt from the satellite data cost - not just for disaster recovery, but also for regular maintenance. Think of some random but unimportant component failing and the airline can dispatch a spare part and a repair crew to wait for the plane and do the maintenance right when it lands.
  - thepasswordis 4y ago
    The idea is that the ships go up to another starlink and then down to a base station.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      You could have all the maritime subscribers participate in a sort of mesh network, pingponging packets toward the nearest on-shore hub.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- walrus01 4y ago
  highly unlikely, the per day cost of operating a medium sized ship in an offshore environment with actual human staffing, fuel, maintenance, purchase or lease cost of the ship itself is extreme. the one thing any satellite operator absolutely does not want is absurd ongoing monthly recurring costs to run their earth stations.
  - sneak 4y ago
    They are charging $5k USD per month per customer for this per TFA. Depending on demand (and 350Mbps downlink can generate a lot of demand) that may still be feasible.
    - cycomanic 4y ago
      Cargoships have operation costs in the 10s to 100s of thousands per h. Sure you could bring that down for what's required here, but you'd still sink a lot of money into these ships. How many maritime subscribers would there be?
      - walrus01 4y ago
        $5k USD a month is significantly less than the monthly cost for any usable bandwidth allocation to a current tech ku band geostationary maritime vsat terminal, such as for the smallest "expedition" cruise ships, nevermind a big one.
- dghughes 4y ago
  Starlink should rent space on oil rigs at least those areas could have a "ground station" in a way. Oil rigs don't have physical undersea comm lines to land. But it can be a repeater since more power available on a rig.
ehPReth 4y ago
Is it just me or is this map super heard to read? Three shades of similar blue? Is it saying that in Q1/2023 the top of the earth (rest of Canada, etc) should be covered?
- _Microft 4y ago
  > Is it saying that in Q1/2023 the top of the earth (rest of Canada, etc) should be covered? That's how I read it.
jwagenet 4y ago
Call me confused, but if these satellites are not geostationary, why are the both the inland coverage and coastal coverage mostly limited to political boundaries? Shouldn't coverage be available anywhere there are satellites overhead?
- tvszzzz 4y ago
  Just because something is technically possible doesn't make it legally possible, yet. They still need regulatory approvals where they operate because EM spectrum is a public resource.
- jcims 4y ago
  It’s purely a regulatory issue.
- coffeeblack 4y ago
  Technically: yes. Legally: no.
- cptaj 4y ago
  Like other mention, its regulatory. But its also related to groundstations, the satellites bounce the signal down to land. They're transitioning to satellites with the capability to network between themselves which will reduce the need for groundstations. I don't know how much they really limit coverage due to borders. Like if you get one in colombia and just move it to venezuela, does it still work? They dont have permission in venezuela but they might just not region lock it until venezuela actually complains or something. I know for a fact that other sat internet providers do work cross border in this exact situation.
  - firekvz 4y ago
    My family is using a directv antena bought in colombia and paying service in colombia, in Venezuela, so I'm pretty sure the market will try to do that as soon as they lunch in colombia
    - paranoidrobot 4y ago
coffeeblack 4y ago
They need to have a minimum number of satellites before they can enable inter-satellite communication. Apparently its getting there.
- virtuallynathan 4y ago
  Have a look at starlink.sx, it’s possible a few planes have enough sats to establish laser links.
roflyear 4y ago
Yeah I don't see this getting pushed back at all lol
sroussey 4y ago
Not all the satellites are the same, some are enabled for inter-sat communications
wumpus 4y ago
There's a polar shell and there's a 70 degree shell, both with lasers, in addition to the 2 ~53 degree shells.
xvilka 4y ago
Will constellation completion and intersatellite links expand the reach to polar areas as well? It would be a game changer for Arctic and Antarctic.
- wumpus 4y ago
  OneWeb already offers service above 50 degrees north, so it's not really a game-changer. It's the other game-changer. My South Pole colleagues would love to have a better network.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  Looking at the orbits for Starlink, they are currently not flying over the north / south pole directly. I don't know if there's plans to do so later, probably if the investments start to pay off and they can afford more launches and sattelites. But for now it's a big money sink and I'm sure the service isn't yet paying for itself - if it ever will.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > But for now it's a big money sink and I'm sure the service isn't yet paying for itself - if it ever will. Given that the estimated cost of building and launching the satellites is estimated at only 600 million dollars [1], it is estimated to take something around two or three years until it's been paid off, followed by two years of generating profit and the next five-year cycle starts (assuming that their estimate of five years life time per satellite holds [2]). Personally, I think Starlink was the best bet SpaceX ever made. That thing will be a permanent cash cow. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2022/02/14/starlink-hits-250000-customers-elon-musk-hints-spacex-booking-over-300-millionyear/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2022/02/14/starlin... [2] https://subspace.com/resources/spacex-is-giving-the-internet-lift-with-starlink https://subspace.com/resources/spacex-is-giving-the-internet...
- madaxe_again 4y ago
  If only - it doesn’t appear so. Connectivity in the Antarctic is laughable - McMurdo has 17Mbps iirc, and it flakes out not infrequently, Amundsen-Scott is “when a satellite is visible”, and being on a ship in the polar regions is typically even worse, as more often than not you’re dealing with crappy weather and a rolling vessel, and a poor and intermittent iridium signal. It also all costs an absolute fortune - iridium is about $1000/mo for 100Mb, and $10 for each additional Mb - and there are surcharges for use in polar regions. Musk could probably bankroll all of starlink just by serving the scientific communities in Antarctica.
londons_explore 4y ago
If you zoom in on the coverage map, you notice that it's splines manually drawn by whoever made the map. This isn't the output of some fancy RF model figuring out exactly where you'll get coverage. Nor is it circles of a specific diameter around ground stations. Or even hexagonal cells where coverage will be allowed/denied in their backend config. In places it seems to follow countries territorial waters (which would be expected due to regulatory issues), but in others it spills out into international waters. Overall, the map has sufficient 'oddities' that I think there is a good chance it's a rough hand made 'guestimate' coverage map, and won't perfectly reflect where coverage will really be delivered.

BurningFrog 4y ago

> That might mean that they plan to enable inter-satellite links then? Or maybe they'll have stationary ships with "ground"-stations until the inter-satellite thing is working.

dreamcompiler 4y ago
That wouldn't solve the problem. Those ships would still need a backhaul.
- sathackr 4y ago
  If they stationed them near the edge of current coverage, the ship could be the inter-satellite link until the actual inter-satellite links are working.
  - dreamcompiler 4y ago
    That would only buy you one increment of offshore range gain; it wouldn't cover the whole ocean unless you had a huge network of ships and used multiple up/down hops. And at that point the overall latency would suck so bad your customers might be better off with GEO.
    - paranoidrobot 4y ago
      It would depend on how fast the internal relay latency is on the ground terminals. Geostationary satellites are up at around 35,000 km. Starlink is about 500-600km - you can get a whole lot of hops between Starlink satellites and terminals before you're looking at the same distance. There's talk that they might be able to use either existing terminals, or a special set of terminals to do this, without the need to deploy them in fixed locations. They're already in talks (trials, too I think) with Airlines to equip their aircraft with terminals. I'm sure commercial shipping companies would be interested too. There's enough of those around to provide a massive network of potential relays. But they are deploying inter-satellite laser links on newer launches, so those will come on and provide more coverage too.
      - dylan604 4y ago
        >They're already in talks (trials, too I think) with Airlines to equip their aircraft with terminals. I'm sure commercial shipping companies would be interested too. Would an airplane using Starlink be more easily tracked in an emergency to avoid MH370 type of mystery?
        paranoidrobot 4y ago
        No idea. They may not track/keep that information, but there's no reason they couldn't.
        cjrp 4y ago
        Inmarsat (satelite phone provider) actually helped reduce the search radius based on their contact with MH370.
        mschuster91 4y ago
        > Would an airplane using Starlink be more easily tracked in an emergency to avoid MH370 type of mystery? The thing that makes Starlink so appealing to airliners is that they can now do real-time telemetry of virtually every sensor on the plane without going bankrupt from the satellite data cost - not just for disaster recovery, but also for regular maintenance. Think of some random but unimportant component failing and the airline can dispatch a spare part and a repair crew to wait for the plane and do the maintenance right when it lands.
- thepasswordis 4y ago
  The idea is that the ships go up to another starlink and then down to a base station.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    You could have all the maritime subscribers participate in a sort of mesh network, pingponging packets toward the nearest on-shore hub.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
walrus01 4y ago
highly unlikely, the per day cost of operating a medium sized ship in an offshore environment with actual human staffing, fuel, maintenance, purchase or lease cost of the ship itself is extreme. the one thing any satellite operator absolutely does not want is absurd ongoing monthly recurring costs to run their earth stations.
- sneak 4y ago
  They are charging $5k USD per month per customer for this per TFA. Depending on demand (and 350Mbps downlink can generate a lot of demand) that may still be feasible.
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    Cargoships have operation costs in the 10s to 100s of thousands per h. Sure you could bring that down for what's required here, but you'd still sink a lot of money into these ships. How many maritime subscribers would there be?
    - walrus01 4y ago
      $5k USD a month is significantly less than the monthly cost for any usable bandwidth allocation to a current tech ku band geostationary maritime vsat terminal, such as for the smallest "expedition" cruise ships, nevermind a big one.
dghughes 4y ago
Starlink should rent space on oil rigs at least those areas could have a "ground station" in a way. Oil rigs don't have physical undersea comm lines to land. But it can be a repeater since more power available on a rig.

ehPReth 4y ago

Is it just me or is this map super heard to read? Three shades of similar blue? Is it saying that in Q1/2023 the top of the earth (rest of Canada, etc) should be covered?

_Microft 4y ago
> Is it saying that in Q1/2023 the top of the earth (rest of Canada, etc) should be covered? That's how I read it.

jwagenet 4y ago

Call me confused, but if these satellites are not geostationary, why are the both the inland coverage and coastal coverage mostly limited to political boundaries? Shouldn't coverage be available anywhere there are satellites overhead?

tvszzzz 4y ago
Just because something is technically possible doesn't make it legally possible, yet. They still need regulatory approvals where they operate because EM spectrum is a public resource.
jcims 4y ago
It’s purely a regulatory issue.
coffeeblack 4y ago
Technically: yes. Legally: no.
cptaj 4y ago
Like other mention, its regulatory. But its also related to groundstations, the satellites bounce the signal down to land. They're transitioning to satellites with the capability to network between themselves which will reduce the need for groundstations. I don't know how much they really limit coverage due to borders. Like if you get one in colombia and just move it to venezuela, does it still work? They dont have permission in venezuela but they might just not region lock it until venezuela actually complains or something. I know for a fact that other sat internet providers do work cross border in this exact situation.
- firekvz 4y ago
  My family is using a directv antena bought in colombia and paying service in colombia, in Venezuela, so I'm pretty sure the market will try to do that as soon as they lunch in colombia
  - paranoidrobot 4y ago

coffeeblack 4y ago

They need to have a minimum number of satellites before they can enable inter-satellite communication. Apparently its getting there.

virtuallynathan 4y ago
Have a look at starlink.sx, it’s possible a few planes have enough sats to establish laser links.

roflyear 4y ago

Yeah I don't see this getting pushed back at all lol

sroussey 4y ago

Not all the satellites are the same, some are enabled for inter-sat communications

wumpus 4y ago

There's a polar shell and there's a 70 degree shell, both with lasers, in addition to the 2 ~53 degree shells.

xvilka 4y ago

Will constellation completion and intersatellite links expand the reach to polar areas as well? It would be a game changer for Arctic and Antarctic.

wumpus 4y ago
OneWeb already offers service above 50 degrees north, so it's not really a game-changer. It's the other game-changer. My South Pole colleagues would love to have a better network.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
Looking at the orbits for Starlink, they are currently not flying over the north / south pole directly. I don't know if there's plans to do so later, probably if the investments start to pay off and they can afford more launches and sattelites. But for now it's a big money sink and I'm sure the service isn't yet paying for itself - if it ever will.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > But for now it's a big money sink and I'm sure the service isn't yet paying for itself - if it ever will. Given that the estimated cost of building and launching the satellites is estimated at only 600 million dollars [1], it is estimated to take something around two or three years until it's been paid off, followed by two years of generating profit and the next five-year cycle starts (assuming that their estimate of five years life time per satellite holds [2]). Personally, I think Starlink was the best bet SpaceX ever made. That thing will be a permanent cash cow. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2022/02/14/starlink-hits-250000-customers-elon-musk-hints-spacex-booking-over-300-millionyear/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2022/02/14/starlin... [2] https://subspace.com/resources/spacex-is-giving-the-internet-lift-with-starlink https://subspace.com/resources/spacex-is-giving-the-internet...
madaxe_again 4y ago
If only - it doesn’t appear so. Connectivity in the Antarctic is laughable - McMurdo has 17Mbps iirc, and it flakes out not infrequently, Amundsen-Scott is “when a satellite is visible”, and being on a ship in the polar regions is typically even worse, as more often than not you’re dealing with crappy weather and a rolling vessel, and a poor and intermittent iridium signal. It also all costs an absolute fortune - iridium is about $1000/mo for 100Mb, and $10 for each additional Mb - and there are surcharges for use in polar regions. Musk could probably bankroll all of starlink just by serving the scientific communities in Antarctica.

londons_explore 4y ago

If you zoom in on the coverage map, you notice that it's splines manually drawn by whoever made the map. This isn't the output of some fancy RF model figuring out exactly where you'll get coverage. Nor is it circles of a specific diameter around ground stations. Or even hexagonal cells where coverage will be allowed/denied in their backend config. In places it seems to follow countries territorial waters (which would be expected due to regulatory issues), but in others it spills out into international waters. Overall, the map has sufficient 'oddities' that I think there is a good chance it's a rough hand made 'guestimate' coverage map, and won't perfectly reflect where coverage will really be delivered.