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The problem is actually that most of those systems are on considerably less advanced tech than Starlink and as a result only have a fraction of the capacity. T
by jpgvm 4y ago
The problem is actually that most of those systems are on considerably less advanced tech than Starlink and as a result only have a fraction of the capacity.
Thus each piece of capacity costs more.. thus the very high costs of Iridium and Viasat.
Their profit margins aren't actually that good because their costs are so high compared to their capacity and the costs are so high that demand simply doesn't materialise - people just do without.
Starlink will change this game because of their drastically increased capacity (assuming they get sat-sat links working). Until another mega-constellation comes online I fully expect them to do to satellite Internet what they did to the launch market.
- lxgr 4y agoIridium was the first network to successfully operate inter-satellite links more than 20 years ago. I wouldn't call it "considerably less advanced". Iridium and Starlink operate in completely different bands (L vs Ka), with orders of magnitude more bandwidth available on Ka than on L. That (and the fleet size, which differs by 2-3 orders of magnitudes) is where the significantly lower bandwidth stems from.
- jpgvm 4y agoIridium was a marvel of engineering no-doubt but Starlink as a constellation is in a different league entirely. They also followed different engineering principles, Iridium was engineered to perfection while Starlink is hacked until it works and paper over the kinks with sheer scale and many iterations. Worth mentioning I have nothing but admiration for the original Iridium constellation, it was decades ahead of it's time, it's just so unfortunate they didn't see that broadband needs were going to dominate communications in time or maybe Motorola in it's original glory would still be around today.
- walrus01 4y agobig difference also is that iridium was designed from the outset to address handheld size customer terminals like an original iridum 9505 phone, starlink is something that needs a considerably larger fixed phased array. rf laws of physics being what they are I don't see a ku/ka-band starlink handheld phone or anything similar to the iridium L/S-band hockey puck sized antennas any time soon. the business model was clearly not the best, as witnessed by its spectacular bankruptcy, and the acquisition by the 2nd corporate incarnation of iridium.
- Robotbeat 4y agoStarlink has plenty of room for increasing their antenna size on the satellite size to something that a handheld could use. I was surprised how small the phased array on the sat side is. Increase that to make it similar to the size of the satellite (not counting solar array) and with the larger v2 satellites, and they'd have much more gain (allowing the handheld antenna to be smaller). They essentially already use 5G bandwidth. It'd only work well outside, though.
- lxgr 4y agoIsn‘t part of what allows much hire bandwidths for Starlink due to spatial frequency reuse, which requires mandatory beamforming on both sides of the connection? There are many satellites overhead at any given time (the current LEOs and MEOs usually have just one), so terminals need to be able to limit their gain to a small angle not only for gain reasons. Steering in handheld applications seems very difficult. Of course, they could dedicate parts of their spectrum to "one sided beamforming" and compete with Iridium that way (no idea if the L-band has any other advantages over Ka when used like that).
- Robotbeat 4y agoModern cellphones with 5G (and wifi, etc) do beamforming already.
- walrus01 4y agoNot in the same way that a flat panel phased array that maintains a fixed angle and aim at the sky can.
- Robotbeat 4y agoActually in exactly the same way. The nice thing about phased arrays is they steer electronically, so you can aim them extremely fast and compensate for any movement. That's how 5G works and that's also how Starlink on moving vehicles works.
- michaelt 4y agoIf it's 20 years older with orders of magnitude less bandwidth, I can see why someone might call it less advanced.
- shaklee3 4y agothis is completely incorrect. viasat's technology is far more advanced than starlink. just because it's not LEO doesn't mean it's simple. and starlink doesn't have dramatically increased capacity. they have a moderate increase over the busy areas geo incumbents have. most of their capacity is over water.
- walrus01 4y agoThe end results of the link budgets required for geostationary to low cost consumer grade terminals means that now matter how good viasat's tech is, the end result is going to be mediocre. Have you actually lived on the far end of a consumer grade highly contended oversubscribed ku/ka band vsat terminal? Viasat's modems and rf chain stuff are about as good as can be expected within the very constrained BOM budget, antenna gains and link budgets involved.
- shaklee3 4y agoI've had their service for 4 years straight in the past. it's not as good as cable, but it's nowhere near as bad as you say if you're not playing real time games. the constrained BOM is the very reason why the terminal cost is reasonable for this business. it's well known that SpaceX is selling the terminal at a huge loss to gather customers in the short term.
- walrus01 4y agoEven if viasat's consumer service was handing out high quality steel 1.8 meter elliptical offset ku band dishes with norsat PLL LNBs and 8W BUCs to consumers, the path loss and modulations required would mean that a given section of contended (let's say, 10MHz of a transponder) service to many terminals would still have significantly lower speeds and greater oversubscription to be economically viable compared to what end users see right now on starlink.
- shaklee3 4y agothat's simply not true. they have transponders that should deliver 10Gbps to a single user IF they were willing to pay for both the service and terminal. SpaceX is limited in the exact same way, and their terminals + satellite costs are much higher for the number of them.