3 ms·

Can you site that number? It really doesn't pass the sniff test for me, unless the word "most" is doing some pretty heavy lifting. A quick search suggests that

Can you site that number? It really doesn't pass the sniff test for me, unless the word "most" is doing some pretty heavy lifting. A quick search suggests that the range of a 5G tower, operating only at low/mid-band spectrum (so in other words, below peak speed - but at higher range) can only operate in the 1 to 3 mile range. [1] We'll say 2. That's an area of pi*2^2 = ~12.5 square miles, we'll say 13. The area of the US is 3.8 million square miles. So your number would provide coverage for (10,000 * 13) / 3.8 million = 3.4% of the US. That maybe enough to cover the most exceptionally dense urban locations, but you're missing a lot of people there. And, again, this is just for the low/mid-band stuff. And then you need to regularly maintain those towers. While you could get global coverage with relatively few satellites that can just be trivially remotely launched/decommissioned. A quick search there [2] turns up a current practical (not peak/theoretic) bandwidth for Starlink in the 100+ Mbps range + ~50ms latency. I have difficulty seeing a logical argument for ground based telecom, beside as a hedge against WW3 when probably the first thing that will happen is a huge chunk of all satellites going poof. [1] - https://dgtlinfra.com/cell-tower-range-how-far-reach/ https://dgtlinfra.com/cell-tower-range-how-far-reach/ [2] - https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-speed-tests-2023-vs-2022 https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-speed-tests-2023-vs-2022

Retric 2y ago
Your first link says “On average, the maximum usable range of a cell tower is 25 miles.” Which is relevant because we aren’t trying to provide service just for high density areas. Before you ask if 10,000 * 2,000 = 20 million square miles is high, handoffs require you to be in range of multiple towers so there’s a lot of overlap and hills, ocean, etc that reduce useful range. Ultimately there’s 142,100 cell towers in the US, but that’s including density from urban areas and redundancy from multiple cell networks. Anyway, the point I was making was that Starlink is targeting low density areas by necessity they simply can’t target NYC density for any reasonable constellation size. However, if you’re a cellphone company and you’re already covering anywhere in the US with 50+people per square mile extending that to anywhere with 5+ or even 0.5+ people per square mile and killing Starlink just doesn’t take that may towers. https://www.benton.org/headlines/us-cell-towers-and-small-cells-numbers#:~:text=The%20Wireless%20Infrastructure%20Association%20(WIA,at%20the%20end%20of%202022.\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ https://www.benton.org/headlines/us-cell-towers-and-small-ce...*
- somenameforme 2y ago
  "Usable" is going to mean at the max possible wavelength. The problem with telecoms is that there's a physics imposed inverse relationship between frequency (speed) and wavelength (penetration/distance). So it's not like computing where we basically have gotten a free lunch with stuff that goes faster, runs cooler, and takes up less space. Each upgrade with telecoms entails a sacrifice. You can have really fast signals that can't go far and have difficulty penetrating obstacles like walls/buildings/hills/etc, or you can have really far reaching and high penetrating signals that can't go fast. So for instance Verizon's max speed towers can only reach 1500 feet [1], so I think my estimate of ~2 miles was a pretty reasonable meet in the middle. All that said I agree with you in principle. Obviously space based telecoms are much better for less populated areas than heavily populated, but I'd argue that that space based can scale much more easily. The ground based telecoms aren't just those 140k towers, but also the other 450k nodes on top. And that's to cover a pretty small geographic area. And each of those nodes not only needs land and construction permits, but they also need to be be regularly maintained, and so on. It's a pretty big deal. For space based coverage, you can just launch your satellites from Texas and have them providing coverage on the other side of the world in a matter of minutes. Put another way - imagine we were creating a civilization from scratch and these technologies were all 'unlocked.' I don't think we'd be using ground based stuff much at all. In the present when the infrastructure already exists, there's no reason not to take advantage of it, but in general it just doesn't scale so well. [1] - https://www.verizon.com/about/news/how-far-does-5g-reach https://www.verizon.com/about/news/how-far-does-5g-reach
  - MeImCounting 2y ago
    This is what I was trying to say above but much more detailed an eloquent. Theres a lot dislikes in this thread but not many folks addressing the points. The thing about high density places with a ton of infrastructure is that wired will always be the best because you have close access to infrastructure and its likely to already be built in. For rural areas or even suburban areas the equation starts to tip to orbital wireless for the reasons you state above and also geographic realities make ground based wireless unreliable in places where there are mountains valleys canyons etc.
simiones 2y ago
I have a lot of difficulty in understanding why you think it's "trivial" to launch a satellite, but not trivial to build a cellphone tower.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Building things deployed to land in real life, basically sucks. Building out a tower requires buying the land (or even possibly getting involved in extremely dirty eminent domain lawsuits), getting countless building permits/inspectors, architecting your building in accordance with local regulations and any sort of geographic peculiarities, organizing a construction team, [finally] building it, and then maintaining the building itself as well as the various regulatory regulatory, tax, and other requirements that come with such. And that's for exactly 1 tower! And you really cannot overstate how big of an ordeal this is. If you think NIMBYism is bad for housing, think about how people feel about building phallicy energy generating towers reaching hundreds of feet in the air around them. By contrast SpaceX: build satellites, launch satellites, done. They can launch tens (and soon hundreds if not thousands) from their base in Texas with a single launch. There's still some bureaucrazy they have to deal with, but this is overall just a many orders of magnitude greater difference in terms of scalability and overall ease. And when satellites start hitting end-of-life - no problem, just deorbit them and continue expanding the swarm.

Retric 2y ago

Your first link says “On average, the maximum usable range of a cell tower is 25 miles.” Which is relevant because we aren’t trying to provide service just for high density areas. Before you ask if 10,000 * 2,000 = 20 million square miles is high, handoffs require you to be in range of multiple towers so there’s a lot of overlap and hills, ocean, etc that reduce useful range. Ultimately there’s 142,100 cell towers in the US, but that’s including density from urban areas and redundancy from multiple cell networks. Anyway, the point I was making was that Starlink is targeting low density areas by necessity they simply can’t target NYC density for any reasonable constellation size. However, if you’re a cellphone company and you’re already covering anywhere in the US with 50+people per square mile extending that to anywhere with 5+ or even 0.5+ people per square mile and killing Starlink just doesn’t take that may towers. https://www.benton.org/headlines/us-cell-towers-and-small-cells-numbers#:~:text=The%20Wireless%20Infrastructure%20Association%20(WIA,at%20the%20end%20of%202022.\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ https://www.benton.org/headlines/us-cell-towers-and-small-ce...*

somenameforme 2y ago
"Usable" is going to mean at the max possible wavelength. The problem with telecoms is that there's a physics imposed inverse relationship between frequency (speed) and wavelength (penetration/distance). So it's not like computing where we basically have gotten a free lunch with stuff that goes faster, runs cooler, and takes up less space. Each upgrade with telecoms entails a sacrifice. You can have really fast signals that can't go far and have difficulty penetrating obstacles like walls/buildings/hills/etc, or you can have really far reaching and high penetrating signals that can't go fast. So for instance Verizon's max speed towers can only reach 1500 feet [1], so I think my estimate of ~2 miles was a pretty reasonable meet in the middle. All that said I agree with you in principle. Obviously space based telecoms are much better for less populated areas than heavily populated, but I'd argue that that space based can scale much more easily. The ground based telecoms aren't just those 140k towers, but also the other 450k nodes on top. And that's to cover a pretty small geographic area. And each of those nodes not only needs land and construction permits, but they also need to be be regularly maintained, and so on. It's a pretty big deal. For space based coverage, you can just launch your satellites from Texas and have them providing coverage on the other side of the world in a matter of minutes. Put another way - imagine we were creating a civilization from scratch and these technologies were all 'unlocked.' I don't think we'd be using ground based stuff much at all. In the present when the infrastructure already exists, there's no reason not to take advantage of it, but in general it just doesn't scale so well. [1] - https://www.verizon.com/about/news/how-far-does-5g-reach https://www.verizon.com/about/news/how-far-does-5g-reach
- MeImCounting 2y ago
  This is what I was trying to say above but much more detailed an eloquent. Theres a lot dislikes in this thread but not many folks addressing the points. The thing about high density places with a ton of infrastructure is that wired will always be the best because you have close access to infrastructure and its likely to already be built in. For rural areas or even suburban areas the equation starts to tip to orbital wireless for the reasons you state above and also geographic realities make ground based wireless unreliable in places where there are mountains valleys canyons etc.

simiones 2y ago

I have a lot of difficulty in understanding why you think it's "trivial" to launch a satellite, but not trivial to build a cellphone tower.

somenameforme 2y ago
Building things deployed to land in real life, basically sucks. Building out a tower requires buying the land (or even possibly getting involved in extremely dirty eminent domain lawsuits), getting countless building permits/inspectors, architecting your building in accordance with local regulations and any sort of geographic peculiarities, organizing a construction team, [finally] building it, and then maintaining the building itself as well as the various regulatory regulatory, tax, and other requirements that come with such. And that's for exactly 1 tower! And you really cannot overstate how big of an ordeal this is. If you think NIMBYism is bad for housing, think about how people feel about building phallicy energy generating towers reaching hundreds of feet in the air around them. By contrast SpaceX: build satellites, launch satellites, done. They can launch tens (and soon hundreds if not thousands) from their base in Texas with a single launch. There's still some bureaucrazy they have to deal with, but this is overall just a many orders of magnitude greater difference in terms of scalability and overall ease. And when satellites start hitting end-of-life - no problem, just deorbit them and continue expanding the swarm.