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To ask a tech question: how much capacity does Starlink have? If every single person in US rural areas switches to Starlink, can the system handle it? What's th

To ask a tech question: how much capacity does Starlink have? If every single person in US rural areas switches to Starlink, can the system handle it? What's the bandwidth/customers/capacity limit for the service? (I'm obviously not talking about emergencies, where degraded bandwidth is acceptable.)

jagtstronaut 2y ago
At least last time I looked into starlink it most definitely cannot. Definitely more ideal for very rural or very poor areas where you are gonna be one of a few dishes. That may have changed now though.
colechristensen 2y ago
I don't know if that kind of information is public. Starlink is continually adding new satellites, and each one adds bandwidth capability. Likewise with end user ground station hardware updates and spectrum purchases (at least the former is happening on a regular basis), capacity likewise goes up. I don't believe there is a theoretical or practical upper limit which would exclude very wide adoption of Starlink and similar competitors. Put in another way, I think it is possible that in a decade or two the only cell phone/data service that doesn't come from orbit will be a few terrestrial towers in dense downtown urban areas and around things like sports venues.
- CorrectHorseBat 2y ago
  5G is going exactly the opposite way to provide higher bandwidth, more cells with each less users. With satellite internet you're sharing the medium with everyone, and that doesn't scale well. Beamforming probably helps a lot, but I don't how accurate it can be on that distance.
  - Retric 2y ago
    You can have essentially unlimited satellites the issue is the percentage of time each one spends over high density areas. Design for NYC density and 99% of satellites would be redundant at any given moment. The solution for increasing density is dropping costs so it’s viable for satellites to be idle 95% of the time. At least as a first approximation, there’s some tricks with how you setup orbits after the basic network is done.
    - CorrectHorseBat 2y ago
      You're still sharing the medium (the sky), so at some point interference is going to be an issue. A quick search tells me the beams a satellite uses is measured in km, so you can only have one satellite serving several square km (you could have more channels of course).
      - Retric 2y ago
        Let’s be pessimistic and say it’s ~25km^2 with current designs. Surface area of the earth is 510,064,472 km² so you estimate limits things to ~20 million satellites X however they can slice up the available spectrum. IE essentially unlimited satellites. As of September 2024 they have 6,371 operational satellites and ~ 4 million customers globally.
        CorrectHorseBat 2y ago
        How is that relevant? Adding satellites over the Pacific doesn't improve New York's service. The question is how dense of a population they can serve, not how many satellites Starlink could theoretically have.
        Retric 2y ago
        The only way to add one satellite over NYC on average is to also add several satellites over the ocean and other low density parts of the earth. If you want low latency individual satellites must be in LEO which means they spend most of their time over water and low density bits of land. Which gets back to my original point where increasing the maximum density inherently reduces the average utilization of each satellite. There simply aren’t enough people living in Iowa etc to balance the east coast.
        CorrectHorseBat 2y ago
        Sure, but my point was that there's a maximum density you can get which won't be enough for NYC or even a much less dense city.
Andys 2y ago
I don't know the specs, but since they control both ends of the link, (ie. the client-side router) they've done a remarkable job of smoothing out load imbalances to make it highly usable even under problematic conditions.
AlotOfReading 2y ago
The bandwidth is limited on a per-cell basis, somewhere around 700Gbps max per cell. Actual capacity at any time is somewhat less. If everyone is actively using theirs, you might get single digit Mbps or less at cell capacity limits, even if there aren't bottlenecks elsewhere. It's fine, but it's highly dependent on having extremely low customer density. The system doesn't work well if everyone is using it all the time.
- throwaway984393 2y ago
  Yep, in a few years these dishes will be $600 paperweights. We need real rural broadband.
  - Alupis 2y ago
    You can have real rural broadband today. You just need to be willing to pay for installation out of pocket. When an ISP runs fiber to a new building (be it in a business park or rural farm), the math is almost entirely based on recuperating their installation costs - which they often pay for entirely out of their pocket. Your entire first contract term is usually just paying back the installation costs alone... For some perspective, at a previous building we tried to bring fiber across the street into our office. The installation costs were too expensive to make the math work - so the ISP offered to split the installation costs 50/50 instead. Our half was over $94,000. This involved directional boring and the works, to go ~200ft to the right-of-way vault and into our MPOE. One can only imagine the expense of running fiber (or any type of cable) out to the boonies. It's totally feasible - but the costs make it not palatable in reality.
    - rdsnsca 2y ago
      They are actually running fiber almost everywhere in Nova Scotia, Canada. Source : https://internet.buildns.ca https://internet.buildns.ca
    - ta1243 2y ago
      One wonders how we ran electricity out everywhere. Running a fibre is about the same cost as running a power cable.
rtkwe 2y ago
No they're already added a one time "congestion charge" of $100 dollars to some (unspecified afaik) areas to try to lower the demand. Or cynically maybe it's a profit taking maneuver get more money out of areas where it's most popular. I tend towards the former personally.
AdamJacobMuller 2y ago
It depends how you define rural of course. Starlink could pretty easily serve everyone whose only current option is 4G/5G/DSL/Satellite. Basically everywhere where there is no Fiber or Cable. That's still a decent chunk of the population.

jagtstronaut 2y ago

At least last time I looked into starlink it most definitely cannot. Definitely more ideal for very rural or very poor areas where you are gonna be one of a few dishes. That may have changed now though.

colechristensen 2y ago

I don't know if that kind of information is public. Starlink is continually adding new satellites, and each one adds bandwidth capability. Likewise with end user ground station hardware updates and spectrum purchases (at least the former is happening on a regular basis), capacity likewise goes up. I don't believe there is a theoretical or practical upper limit which would exclude very wide adoption of Starlink and similar competitors. Put in another way, I think it is possible that in a decade or two the only cell phone/data service that doesn't come from orbit will be a few terrestrial towers in dense downtown urban areas and around things like sports venues.

CorrectHorseBat 2y ago
5G is going exactly the opposite way to provide higher bandwidth, more cells with each less users. With satellite internet you're sharing the medium with everyone, and that doesn't scale well. Beamforming probably helps a lot, but I don't how accurate it can be on that distance.
- Retric 2y ago
  You can have essentially unlimited satellites the issue is the percentage of time each one spends over high density areas. Design for NYC density and 99% of satellites would be redundant at any given moment. The solution for increasing density is dropping costs so it’s viable for satellites to be idle 95% of the time. At least as a first approximation, there’s some tricks with how you setup orbits after the basic network is done.
  - CorrectHorseBat 2y ago
    You're still sharing the medium (the sky), so at some point interference is going to be an issue. A quick search tells me the beams a satellite uses is measured in km, so you can only have one satellite serving several square km (you could have more channels of course).
    - Retric 2y ago
      Let’s be pessimistic and say it’s ~25km^2 with current designs. Surface area of the earth is 510,064,472 km² so you estimate limits things to ~20 million satellites X however they can slice up the available spectrum. IE essentially unlimited satellites. As of September 2024 they have 6,371 operational satellites and ~ 4 million customers globally.
      - CorrectHorseBat 2y ago
        How is that relevant? Adding satellites over the Pacific doesn't improve New York's service. The question is how dense of a population they can serve, not how many satellites Starlink could theoretically have.
        Retric 2y ago
        The only way to add one satellite over NYC on average is to also add several satellites over the ocean and other low density parts of the earth. If you want low latency individual satellites must be in LEO which means they spend most of their time over water and low density bits of land. Which gets back to my original point where increasing the maximum density inherently reduces the average utilization of each satellite. There simply aren’t enough people living in Iowa etc to balance the east coast.
        CorrectHorseBat 2y ago
        Sure, but my point was that there's a maximum density you can get which won't be enough for NYC or even a much less dense city.

Andys 2y ago

I don't know the specs, but since they control both ends of the link, (ie. the client-side router) they've done a remarkable job of smoothing out load imbalances to make it highly usable even under problematic conditions.

AlotOfReading 2y ago

The bandwidth is limited on a per-cell basis, somewhere around 700Gbps max per cell. Actual capacity at any time is somewhat less. If everyone is actively using theirs, you might get single digit Mbps or less at cell capacity limits, even if there aren't bottlenecks elsewhere. It's fine, but it's highly dependent on having extremely low customer density. The system doesn't work well if everyone is using it all the time.

throwaway984393 2y ago
Yep, in a few years these dishes will be $600 paperweights. We need real rural broadband.
- Alupis 2y ago
  You can have real rural broadband today. You just need to be willing to pay for installation out of pocket. When an ISP runs fiber to a new building (be it in a business park or rural farm), the math is almost entirely based on recuperating their installation costs - which they often pay for entirely out of their pocket. Your entire first contract term is usually just paying back the installation costs alone... For some perspective, at a previous building we tried to bring fiber across the street into our office. The installation costs were too expensive to make the math work - so the ISP offered to split the installation costs 50/50 instead. Our half was over $94,000. This involved directional boring and the works, to go ~200ft to the right-of-way vault and into our MPOE. One can only imagine the expense of running fiber (or any type of cable) out to the boonies. It's totally feasible - but the costs make it not palatable in reality.
  - rdsnsca 2y ago
    They are actually running fiber almost everywhere in Nova Scotia, Canada. Source : https://internet.buildns.ca https://internet.buildns.ca
  - ta1243 2y ago
    One wonders how we ran electricity out everywhere. Running a fibre is about the same cost as running a power cable.

rtkwe 2y ago

No they're already added a one time "congestion charge" of $100 dollars to some (unspecified afaik) areas to try to lower the demand. Or cynically maybe it's a profit taking maneuver get more money out of areas where it's most popular. I tend towards the former personally.

AdamJacobMuller 2y ago

It depends how you define rural of course. Starlink could pretty easily serve everyone whose only current option is 4G/5G/DSL/Satellite. Basically everywhere where there is no Fiber or Cable. That's still a decent chunk of the population.