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Starlink is very cool tech but it will always be a rather niche service given most people live in cities. Looking at https://satellitemap.space/ https://satelli

Starlink is very cool tech but it will always be a rather niche service given most people live in cities. Looking at https://satellitemap.space/ https://satellitemap.space/ they currently have about 8 of their 4700 satellites over California. Each is basically a cell tower in the sky. Napa, CA has a population of about 80K and has 135 antenna towers registered with the FCC. https://www.city-data.com/towers/cell-Napa-California.html https://www.city-data.com/towers/cell-Napa-California.html So even when they 10x the capacity it'll only be a small town's worth of cellular bandwidth across a state the size of California.

hansvm 3y ago
A single cell tower could easily (factor of 10-20x) handle the average bandwidth of all of Napa (residential computing too, not just cellular). Are the extra towers there for something other than geographic coverage?
- laurencerowe 3y ago
  The infrastructure has to be sized to handle the peak bandwidth rather than the average bandwidth though. From what I've read backhaul capacity tends to be the limiting factor now. 10GBPS backhaul only provides 5000 x 100 Mbps connections at 50:1 home internet contention ratios. There's a reason you see cell towers on the top of most of the taller buildings walking around an urban area. More towers mean that bandwidth is shared among fewer people. To get another read on the ratio there are "142,100 cell towers and 452,200 outdoor small cell nodes" in the US. That works out at one cell tower per 2300 people. https://www.lightreading.com/digital-infrastructure/us-cell-towers-and-small-cells-by-numbers/d/d-id/783929 https://www.lightreading.com/digital-infrastructure/us-cell-... The Starlink satellites reportedly have 20 Gbps of bandwidth, half of which will be backhaul. http://www.satmagazine.com/story.php?number=1026762698 http://www.satmagazine.com/story.php?number=1026762698

hansvm 3y ago

A single cell tower could easily (factor of 10-20x) handle the average bandwidth of all of Napa (residential computing too, not just cellular). Are the extra towers there for something other than geographic coverage?

laurencerowe 3y ago
The infrastructure has to be sized to handle the peak bandwidth rather than the average bandwidth though. From what I've read backhaul capacity tends to be the limiting factor now. 10GBPS backhaul only provides 5000 x 100 Mbps connections at 50:1 home internet contention ratios. There's a reason you see cell towers on the top of most of the taller buildings walking around an urban area. More towers mean that bandwidth is shared among fewer people. To get another read on the ratio there are "142,100 cell towers and 452,200 outdoor small cell nodes" in the US. That works out at one cell tower per 2300 people. https://www.lightreading.com/digital-infrastructure/us-cell-towers-and-small-cells-by-numbers/d/d-id/783929 https://www.lightreading.com/digital-infrastructure/us-cell-... The Starlink satellites reportedly have 20 Gbps of bandwidth, half of which will be backhaul. http://www.satmagazine.com/story.php?number=1026762698 http://www.satmagazine.com/story.php?number=1026762698