13 ms·
I work in the space industry and follow SATCOM closely. This is a very competitive space. Companies like Viasat, Iridium and Inmarsat already work in this verti
by aml183 4y ago
I work in the space industry and follow SATCOM closely. This is a very competitive space. Companies like Viasat, Iridium and Inmarsat already work in this vertical.
SpaceX beats all these companies from a marketing perspective, but the big question is will a LEO operator provide better coverage than a GEO operator?
- dr_dshiv 4y agoInverse square law issues? Naively, cost+speed+coverage=value?
- roflyear 4y agoMostly it's "Elon likes to promise things that he may not be able to do" issue
- Mo3 4y agoDepending on how this is priced this is still an extremely viable option for a good chunk of the maritime industry, even if coverage is limited to ports and national waters.
- wumpus 4y agoThe best part about the "Elon is a liar" meme is that you can use it on successful, on-time products, too. Very powerful: "Tesla production up 87% year-on-year!" "But what about Cybertruck, Roadster, and Semi? Fail."
- wpietri 4y ago
- bobsmooth 4y agoThere's a difference between someone that promises the world and never delivers and someone that promises the world and occasionally delivers.
- HWR_14 4y agoWhy? In both cases, what they say is meaningless.
- bobsmooth 4y agoIn the latter case, there is precedent. Elon promised to revolutionize space travel, he's done so. He promised to revolutionize electric cars, he's done so. He promised to revolutionize intercity traffic, that didn't pan out. Clearly you can see the difference between him and someone that's never delivered on what they promised.
- wumpus 4y agoI figure that any investor who complains about 87% annual growth gets what they deserve.
- wpietri 4y agoI don't think I said there wasn't a difference. There are always differences. But I do stand by my point that you can't put much stock in Musk's claims. Which, now that people are becoming more aware of it, makes him less and less likely to deliver anything major again. As an example, take a look at his failed purchase of Twitter. He wasted a ton of his time and caused a lot of damage to Twitter, its employees, and his own reputation. You can bet that any future business partners, even the ones willing to ignore his behavior on Twitter, are going to take it as a cautionary tale.
- wumpus 4y ago> Your theory is that we can only call somebody a liar if 100% of their statements turn out to be false? No, but thanks for twisting my words.
- cft 4y agoAt least, It should give much lower latency, which is super important for all remote tech, system administration and anything near-real time.
- walrus01 4y agoI would ask two things: a) if you've ever personally lived for months or years at a time 100% dependent upon geostationary based services costing anywhere from $165/mo to $15,000 a month or more, for internet access and links to the outside world b) if you've personally used a starlink terminal the actual coverage isn't there yet for things like mid ocean, because starlink satellites in the present architecture need to be simultaneously in view of a CPE and a starlink run earth station. what they've got right now is a viable competitor for the smaller geostationary based ku and ka band maritime vsat packages sold for coastal region use, which are limited to specific ku and ka band spot beams anyways. such as you might see used in the caribbean and Mediterranean oceans. when they have more polar orbit satellites and the satellite-to-satellite laser links are working they will have full mid ocean coverage, and I have no doubt it will beat the pants off a $200,000+, 2.4 meter C-band stabilized-in-radome maritime VSAT system with a monthly service cost of $8,500+. anyone that's ever done the link budget calculations and seen the RF channel sizes and very simple modulations (very poor bps/Hz ratio) needed to make IP data over 2.4m size c-band terminals will know what I'm talking about. this is directly proportional to dollars in the monthly recurring costs for ongoing transponder space use. the performance and dollar per MB cost right now for coastal region use will absolutely beat anything inmarsat or iridium based by a ridiculous margin. I fundamentally disagree with you that it's a very competitive market, it's a market that's highly dependent upon the business model of launching 3500-6000 kg things into geostationary orbit at immense cost and trying to recoup the construction+launch cost of them before they die in 13 to 16 years. And military/government contracts. Traditional two way geostationary based satellite comms stuff is a very conservative and moribund segment of the telecom industry. you've got other things out there that are sort of viable like o3b (now owned/controlled by SES), but anyone that's ever priced an o3b terminal and ongoing service on something like a 36 month term will know that it's not a significant improvement in cost.
- Mo3 4y agoYou are absolutely spot on. The market isn’t competitive, it’s artificial highway robbery to even be in business. The entry requirements and expenses are insanely high, preventing a lot of competition to begin with, and the few players are free to drive up their prices to disgusting altitudes while providing services of disgusting quality. I wouldn’t even be surprised if they have agreements going on between themselves. SpaceX’s going to have a field day and brutally rip some inflated executives out of their cozy decade-old comfort zone.
- colordrops 4y agoAny reason to believe that SpaceX isn't capable of getting global coverage using intra-satellite links? Assuming this, and they've already proven they can do it, SpaceX will be strictly better than any other solution out there.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- coffeeblack 4y agoPing times of 20 ms against >1000 ms will be a pretty convincing argument.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y agoI’ve done work video calls using my friend’s starlink wifi on a remote mountain, and it’s unlimited bandwidth so this didn’t cost anything beyond the flat $110 monthly fee. Are geosynchronous services even capable of doing the bandwidth and latency needed for a two-way video call? And if so, how much would it cost?
- jonah 4y agoYes, they can do it - my parents have Hughes satellite internet. I've been able to do multi-person video calls from their house. It's pretty low bandwidth though 40Mbps or so claimed I think and something like 50Gb/Month data cap. It was faster and cheaper to tether to my cell phone while working from their house.
- lxgr 4y agoOut of curiosity – why don't your parents use fixed 4G or 5G internet in that case?
- jonah 4y agoGood question. They may not be aware of it. Though I did talk with one of their neighbors who mentioned they had it.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago4G and 5G modems can be a really solid solution if you point an antenna at the tower.
- kalleboo 4y agoMy parents are on Sky Muster in Australia and it works fine for them, we call them a couple times a month and the latency isn't amazing but I've had worse calls with people on DSL.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
- simonebrunozzi 4y agoOne word: ping.
- SteveGerencser 4y agoYou could be 2 cups and a long string and beat most of those providers. I've been trapped in their horrible world for over a decade and can't wait for "any" other option. I don't even care how much it costs anymore.
- ww520 4y agoFor latency and bandwidth, LEO beats GEO hands down.
- D_Guidi 4y agoI'm curious to understand if and when inter-satellite links can reduce the latency of a starlink connection
- NelsonMinar 4y agoThey're really completely different product categories and shouldn't even be compared.
- lxgr 4y agoHow so? Starlink seems extremely competitive in bandwidth and terminal size with Ka and Ku band GEOs, while blowing them out of the water when it comes to latency.
- kalleboo 4y agoIt seems like it's a lot more complicated than "LEO vs GEO" and they are very much worth comparing. You have LEO stuff like Iridium that is targeted at pocket-sized terminals at very low bandwidth You have GEO stuff like Sky Muster with large, fixed dishes, high latency and decent bandwidth Then you have Starlink with large, fixed dishes, low latency and high bandwidth
- shaklee3 4y agobandwidth per dollar is what matters, and Leo is not as good as geo in that regard. if you threw the same amount of money SpaceX is putting into starlink into a viasat-3 you'd have more bandwidth and better coverage.
- dotnet00 4y agoGiven how hard the 'old guard' have been fighting Starlink, I think it's relatively clear that it's going to shake things up significantly for traditional GEO operators. IIRC Viasat has been especially active in trying everything they can to throw up regulatory hurdles and slow down Starlink deployment.
- newsclues 4y agoIs there a data centre or cloud in space yet?
- bitcharmer 4y ago> SpaceX beats all these companies from a marketing perspective Depends on how you define marketing. I work for a very big and well known organization. We wanted to engage with them about an interesting initiative. I's almost impossible to reach out to anyone from SpaceX. Go and try to find an email address or a phone number. Then, even when you obtain their sales email you will not get any response whatsoever.
- panick21_ 4y agoIn my opinion, between SpaceX and Amazon, the majority of heavy lift launch is already booked for years to come. OneWeb has to bet on Relativity Space that has never even launched anything to launch their constellation. Companies like Viasat, Iridium and the others will have a very, very hard time ever competing in the LEO space.
- mytailorisrich 4y agoI suppose this is why they highlight "low latency" so much. This has to be a parameter GEO cannot compete on.
- D_Guidi 4y agoas you might know, it's also about bandwidth and latency. LEO satellites can be an enabler for a lot of remote operation, IF (and this is a big IF) latency remain small also with intersatellite links, and connection reliability is comparable to GEO