3 ms·

Reddit seems to think that Starlink is already serving users via sat-to-sat optical links https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/xsupcn/laser_links_are_acti

• raverbashing 3y ago
  Can't imagine how hard it is to align those in space (and keep them aligned) in a low altitude satellite, but it sounds pretty cool. I'm guessing the range is something like 1000km/2000km?
• lxgr 3y ago
  Sure, high-bandwidth inter-satellite links are essential for providing service to remote regions (or even just to make ground station placement more economical), but the question here is whether they could ever economically compete with fiberoptics outright. For extremely latency sensitive applications, I guess they will (e.g. for trading and real-time communications), but for everything else that can wait a few more milliseconds, I'd guess that the operational overhead and reduced reliability will never be worth it, especially if fiber already exists on the same path.