11 ms·

SpaceX based 4G/5G coverage coming to New Zealand

92 points by Titan2189 4y ago

phillipseamore 4y ago
"We will provide 2-4mbps download or uplink per beam. [...] Each beam will cover a 50km diameter on the ground."
- cbo100 4y ago
  2-4mbps is better than 0 even if it is divided by all users in that area. Especially considering that in a lot of areas this will open up coverage to, you could be the only user relying on it anyway.
- zamadatix 4y ago
  I think pricing will determine how useful it is. If you take the 2% of the population in the 50% of the country that doesn't have terrestrial coverage then the bandwidth isn't really that bad - it's the same or better than other options in a comparable footprint or reasonable cost with the bonus it'd be on the same device you normally carry with you which auto switches back to high speed when you're in town.
- Robotbeat 4y ago
  So 150-200 times 2-4 Mbps is 300-800Mbps for the whole country. There are about 5 million people in New Zealand. About 13 percent are rural. Let's say 30% of those are in areas where this would be useful, or about 4%. 200,000 people, and about half are the age and temperament to have a cellphone. Let's say they're using this data 1% of the time. That's 1000 people at a time, on average. So the useful data rate per active person is about 800kbps. That's not great, but still usable even for 240-360p video streaming, music streaming, navigation, normal web stuff. About 2.5 Gigabytes per month per 100,000 subscribers (although due to time of day, etc, that's probably more like a usable 1-1.5GB per month). For casual users with wifi at home, that's not that bad. I think my wife uses about that much or less.
  - teruakohatu 4y ago
    Interesting point about total bandwidth accross NZ, but I think your calculations are a little optimistic. Rural NZ is not distributed evenly. The only calculation that matters if how many people per beam/cell, and how good the performance is on any given cellular device. The device may limit the performance regardless of other users. If there are 10 people (0.5 people per sq km) in a given 50km2 beam, then they could at best get 200-400kbs. Even a high country shepard is likely to be in a 50km2 block with many other people working at the same station. Anyone on a popular walking track in the middle of nowhere is also likely to be around other people. I am sure 2-4mb is a starting point and doubling that would be possible.
sourcecodeplz 4y ago
Better than nothing?
- ianburrell 4y ago
  It should provide messaging and voice calls. Basically, 1G phone.
  - syedkarim 4y ago
    I don't think there was any SMS on 1G cellular, which was purely analog.
    - parker_mountain 4y ago
      Some early mobile networks, especially those that had out of band signalling like some of the early euro specific ones, supported short messaging as a first class feature. However, aside from attaching a modem to your cell phone, it was not widely adopted until GSM and digital based protocols took over (2G)
  - xeromal 4y ago
    More like 2G
  - gruez 4y ago
    Voice is only coming in 2025.
Humphrey 4y ago
> One New Zealand wants to ensure everyone is safe during an emergency regardless of the provider they are with, so anyone with an appropriate phone will be able to call 111 in an emergency (when voice satellite calling is available). This will a game changer! Even if their service is super expensive, anybody will be able to make emergency calls ANYWHERE! This will make PLB (personal location beacons) redundant! I hope something similar comes to Australia soon
- kimburgess 4y ago
  Assuming that you’re still capable of verbal comms. The good thing about a PLB is that it’s generally a fairly definitive signal that something is wrong at a specific location. It also requires less dexterity to trigger and potentially has a bit higher signal to noise than accidental emergency calls. Source: Australian with a PLB that I take offshore sailing and bushwalking. Also have a 2yo who is impressively adept at getting a locked phone to enter emergency call mode.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
    What's your take on having a PLB at sea? Are there scenarios where an EPIRB is required?
    - kimburgess 4y ago
      EPIRBs are required by law in Australia. They are attached to the vessel though, the PLB is attached to you. That's an important detail when those two things become suddenly separated.
- ChancyChance 4y ago
  How will anybody be able to make emergency calls from anywhere if it is super expensive?
  - bhhaskin 4y ago
    My guess is that it will be paid for by the government. Likely it won't be use super often as most people will have 4g/5g coverage already. This will just cover the instance where that isn't the case.
anarchogeek 4y ago
The rural mobile coverage in Aotearoa New Zealand is terrible. I'm excited about this. This probably will get me to switch from Spark because at the moment they have the best rural coverage.
- adventured 4y ago
  What kind of speeds do you see with Spark (and at what price)?
  - anarchogeek 4y ago
    It's slow and expensive. In comparison, I moved from Uruguay where you could get 5G almost everywhere, and in VERY rural areas it drops to 4G. Per GB of pre-paid data, NZ is 20,000% more expensive than Uruguay, in a straight-up apples to apples comparison. Most of rural NZ has zero coverage. And i'm not talking very rural, you can still be IN WELLINGTON CITY and still have no coverage. I lose coverage sometimes biking along the waterfront. If you go 30 minutes outside of the city centre, there's basically no coverage. Along major highways, like driving from Wellington to Auckland, MOST of the route has zero coverage.
    - WheatMillington 4y ago
      This is a comical exaggeration of the coverage in NZ. Almost the entire drive from Welly to Auckland is covered, with a large proportion in 4g. Anyone can trivially look up a coverage map to confirm this, and I'm telling you as a Kiwi that the above comment is almost entirely fictional. I don't know of anywhere in Wellington city without coverage, maybe some random blackspot between buildings?
      - antod 4y ago
        Yeah, I'm never without coverage in Wellington on Spark. Even our rural property in a valley gets 50-70Mbs on 4G.
    - garbagewoman 4y ago
teruakohatu 4y ago
One New Zealand's largest competitor Spark operates a country wide LoraWAN network, can SpaceX theoretically offer LoraWAN connectivity or would the TX power requirements be far more than a typical Lora device could sustain on battery/solar?
- parker_mountain 4y ago
  There already is a lora based satcomm company (Swarm) - their pricing is very competitive.
  - rlt 4y ago
    ...owned by SpaceX. https://spacenews.com/spacex-to-acquire-swarm-technologies/ https://spacenews.com/spacex-to-acquire-swarm-technologies/
smfjaw 4y ago
This'll be a game changer. Kiwi's are pretty outdoor people and this'll help emergency services a lot. It'll be fantastic being able to use maps etc while in places that they aren't traditionally usable, I look forward to it!
derekp7 4y ago
I wonder what the feasibility is of deploying solar powered cell towers that use Starlink as an uplink. If a cell signal can go 25 miles then you should be able to locate the cells 50 miles apart. That would give you about 400 cell sites that that cover 1000 square miles. What is the cost / feasibility of doing something like this?
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  It wouldn't surprise me if that more or less is the plan. It's probably not particularly cheap but it probably beats having to install many thousands of kilometers of cables all over rural New Zealand. But let's do the back of the envelope math. A typical 5G base station would use a couple of KW of power. My guess is they'd use ones with more range, which probably means more power. Let's call it 5kw. I'm not an expert but that seems a reasonable number. Maybe it's a bit high. Maybe it's a bit low. I don't know, I'm probably biasing to too high. So, if you'd need to power that 24x7 using solar you obviously need some battery and enough solar panels to top those up even on the most cloudy days. If you have a 50kw solar setup, you'd be generating 10x more power than you need on a sunny day for about one third of that day. So you end up with roughly 3x more power than you need at best and probably some reasonable portion of that on average. On a bad day that might drop by a factor 20. So, you need probably at least a week or two of battery to play it safe. If you assume a complete absence of light, you'd need about 120 kwh per day. Of course that's not realistic. So it could be a bit less than that as you always get at least some power. A tesla powerwall would be not enough, a tesla megapack (~2.7M $) would probably be overkill. Probably about a quarter to a fifth of that would be plenty. Probably less. Not particularly cheap but doable probably. Add a windmill to the mix and you can probably get away with a lot less solar and battery. Probably a few hundred thousand would go a long way and a few tens of thousands would be on the low end of the spectrum. Let's call it 100K per site plus or minus 25% or so. Doing ten of these cost a million. Doing 1000 of these 100 million. Doing 10000 of these a billion. New Zealand is a 100000 square miles (to stick with your numbers and miles). So, you'd need about 40000 of these things. So a few billion. I bet there are probably multiple creative ways to get that number down a bit. So, not cheap but doable. At worst billions in cost.
  - 4y ago
908087 4y ago
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aaron695 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago
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92 points by Titan2189 4y ago

phillipseamore 4y ago

"We will provide 2-4mbps download or uplink per beam. [...] Each beam will cover a 50km diameter on the ground."

cbo100 4y ago
2-4mbps is better than 0 even if it is divided by all users in that area. Especially considering that in a lot of areas this will open up coverage to, you could be the only user relying on it anyway.
zamadatix 4y ago
I think pricing will determine how useful it is. If you take the 2% of the population in the 50% of the country that doesn't have terrestrial coverage then the bandwidth isn't really that bad - it's the same or better than other options in a comparable footprint or reasonable cost with the bonus it'd be on the same device you normally carry with you which auto switches back to high speed when you're in town.
Robotbeat 4y ago
So 150-200 times 2-4 Mbps is 300-800Mbps for the whole country. There are about 5 million people in New Zealand. About 13 percent are rural. Let's say 30% of those are in areas where this would be useful, or about 4%. 200,000 people, and about half are the age and temperament to have a cellphone. Let's say they're using this data 1% of the time. That's 1000 people at a time, on average. So the useful data rate per active person is about 800kbps. That's not great, but still usable even for 240-360p video streaming, music streaming, navigation, normal web stuff. About 2.5 Gigabytes per month per 100,000 subscribers (although due to time of day, etc, that's probably more like a usable 1-1.5GB per month). For casual users with wifi at home, that's not that bad. I think my wife uses about that much or less.
- teruakohatu 4y ago
  Interesting point about total bandwidth accross NZ, but I think your calculations are a little optimistic. Rural NZ is not distributed evenly. The only calculation that matters if how many people per beam/cell, and how good the performance is on any given cellular device. The device may limit the performance regardless of other users. If there are 10 people (0.5 people per sq km) in a given 50km2 beam, then they could at best get 200-400kbs. Even a high country shepard is likely to be in a 50km2 block with many other people working at the same station. Anyone on a popular walking track in the middle of nowhere is also likely to be around other people. I am sure 2-4mb is a starting point and doubling that would be possible.

sourcecodeplz 4y ago

Better than nothing?

ianburrell 4y ago
It should provide messaging and voice calls. Basically, 1G phone.
- syedkarim 4y ago
  I don't think there was any SMS on 1G cellular, which was purely analog.
  - parker_mountain 4y ago
    Some early mobile networks, especially those that had out of band signalling like some of the early euro specific ones, supported short messaging as a first class feature. However, aside from attaching a modem to your cell phone, it was not widely adopted until GSM and digital based protocols took over (2G)
- xeromal 4y ago
  More like 2G
- gruez 4y ago
  Voice is only coming in 2025.

Humphrey 4y ago

> One New Zealand wants to ensure everyone is safe during an emergency regardless of the provider they are with, so anyone with an appropriate phone will be able to call 111 in an emergency (when voice satellite calling is available). This will a game changer! Even if their service is super expensive, anybody will be able to make emergency calls ANYWHERE! This will make PLB (personal location beacons) redundant! I hope something similar comes to Australia soon

kimburgess 4y ago
Assuming that you’re still capable of verbal comms. The good thing about a PLB is that it’s generally a fairly definitive signal that something is wrong at a specific location. It also requires less dexterity to trigger and potentially has a bit higher signal to noise than accidental emergency calls. Source: Australian with a PLB that I take offshore sailing and bushwalking. Also have a 2yo who is impressively adept at getting a locked phone to enter emergency call mode.
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
  What's your take on having a PLB at sea? Are there scenarios where an EPIRB is required?
  - kimburgess 4y ago
    EPIRBs are required by law in Australia. They are attached to the vessel though, the PLB is attached to you. That's an important detail when those two things become suddenly separated.
ChancyChance 4y ago
How will anybody be able to make emergency calls from anywhere if it is super expensive?
- bhhaskin 4y ago
  My guess is that it will be paid for by the government. Likely it won't be use super often as most people will have 4g/5g coverage already. This will just cover the instance where that isn't the case.

anarchogeek 4y ago

The rural mobile coverage in Aotearoa New Zealand is terrible. I'm excited about this. This probably will get me to switch from Spark because at the moment they have the best rural coverage.

adventured 4y ago
What kind of speeds do you see with Spark (and at what price)?
- anarchogeek 4y ago
  It's slow and expensive. In comparison, I moved from Uruguay where you could get 5G almost everywhere, and in VERY rural areas it drops to 4G. Per GB of pre-paid data, NZ is 20,000% more expensive than Uruguay, in a straight-up apples to apples comparison. Most of rural NZ has zero coverage. And i'm not talking very rural, you can still be IN WELLINGTON CITY and still have no coverage. I lose coverage sometimes biking along the waterfront. If you go 30 minutes outside of the city centre, there's basically no coverage. Along major highways, like driving from Wellington to Auckland, MOST of the route has zero coverage.
  - WheatMillington 4y ago
    This is a comical exaggeration of the coverage in NZ. Almost the entire drive from Welly to Auckland is covered, with a large proportion in 4g. Anyone can trivially look up a coverage map to confirm this, and I'm telling you as a Kiwi that the above comment is almost entirely fictional. I don't know of anywhere in Wellington city without coverage, maybe some random blackspot between buildings?
    - antod 4y ago
      Yeah, I'm never without coverage in Wellington on Spark. Even our rural property in a valley gets 50-70Mbs on 4G.
  - garbagewoman 4y ago

teruakohatu 4y ago

One New Zealand's largest competitor Spark operates a country wide LoraWAN network, can SpaceX theoretically offer LoraWAN connectivity or would the TX power requirements be far more than a typical Lora device could sustain on battery/solar?

parker_mountain 4y ago
There already is a lora based satcomm company (Swarm) - their pricing is very competitive.
- rlt 4y ago
  ...owned by SpaceX. https://spacenews.com/spacex-to-acquire-swarm-technologies/ https://spacenews.com/spacex-to-acquire-swarm-technologies/

smfjaw 4y ago

This'll be a game changer. Kiwi's are pretty outdoor people and this'll help emergency services a lot. It'll be fantastic being able to use maps etc while in places that they aren't traditionally usable, I look forward to it!

derekp7 4y ago

I wonder what the feasibility is of deploying solar powered cell towers that use Starlink as an uplink. If a cell signal can go 25 miles then you should be able to locate the cells 50 miles apart. That would give you about 400 cell sites that that cover 1000 square miles. What is the cost / feasibility of doing something like this?

jillesvangurp 4y ago
It wouldn't surprise me if that more or less is the plan. It's probably not particularly cheap but it probably beats having to install many thousands of kilometers of cables all over rural New Zealand. But let's do the back of the envelope math. A typical 5G base station would use a couple of KW of power. My guess is they'd use ones with more range, which probably means more power. Let's call it 5kw. I'm not an expert but that seems a reasonable number. Maybe it's a bit high. Maybe it's a bit low. I don't know, I'm probably biasing to too high. So, if you'd need to power that 24x7 using solar you obviously need some battery and enough solar panels to top those up even on the most cloudy days. If you have a 50kw solar setup, you'd be generating 10x more power than you need on a sunny day for about one third of that day. So you end up with roughly 3x more power than you need at best and probably some reasonable portion of that on average. On a bad day that might drop by a factor 20. So, you need probably at least a week or two of battery to play it safe. If you assume a complete absence of light, you'd need about 120 kwh per day. Of course that's not realistic. So it could be a bit less than that as you always get at least some power. A tesla powerwall would be not enough, a tesla megapack (~2.7M $) would probably be overkill. Probably about a quarter to a fifth of that would be plenty. Probably less. Not particularly cheap but doable probably. Add a windmill to the mix and you can probably get away with a lot less solar and battery. Probably a few hundred thousand would go a long way and a few tens of thousands would be on the low end of the spectrum. Let's call it 100K per site plus or minus 25% or so. Doing ten of these cost a million. Doing 1000 of these 100 million. Doing 10000 of these a billion. New Zealand is a 100000 square miles (to stick with your numbers and miles). So, you'd need about 40000 of these things. So a few billion. I bet there are probably multiple creative ways to get that number down a bit. So, not cheap but doable. At worst billions in cost.
- 4y ago

908087 4y ago

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aaron695 4y ago

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deleted 4y ago

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