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That's not the market they're going for though. They're more of a competitor to Starlink There's also obvious applications to places where weather is more pred

by culi 2y ago

That's not the market they're going for though. They're more of a competitor to Starlink There's also obvious applications to places where weather is more predictable. There's plenty of areas and small towns in the Great Basin region that have basically no internet. This would be a quick and easy way to set those places up with internet with more reliability than something like starlink

fsh 2y ago
The problem with selling inferior technologies is that sooner or later people are going to stop using them (even in the Grad Basin region). Not exactly a recipe for success.
- culi 2y ago
  What are you labelling inferior here? Both Taara and Starlink? Yes, both of those are inferior to wired infrastructure but they clearly have their usecases. If you were to start a mining project that lasts a few months or even a few years but is expected to eventually be finished and packed up, Taara seems like exactly what you need. It can also outcompete Starlink because it won't require us to constantly replace decaying satellites. Also means less space debris pollution which is increasingly becoming a huge concern
pdabbadabba 2y ago
But why would these not be places already served by terrestrial wireless internet service providers? It seems like it would be much easier and generally more attractive to serve locations like this using, for example, 5 GHz. Normally, the lack of (near) line-of-sight is one of the biggest limiting to those sorts of deployments, but that would also have to be solved for any place being served with FSO.
walrus01 2y ago
a point to point terrestrial bridge large piece of equipment that costs $5,000+, needs a professional to install it, and works on either free space optics or V-band or E-band radio is not in any way a competitor to starlink. It's more a place to take a 1 to 10 Gbps ethernet connection as a link between two towers or roofs that can 'see' each other as an alternative to where laying fiber may be cost prohibitive or would take too long to build (or both). Assuming this thing doesn't utterly fail in rain at a moderate distance, this would be something you use to feed a POP which then redistributes service to end users by some totally other technology (5/6 GHz band PTMP radio system, GPON, XGSPON, G.fast on copper, docsis3/docsis3.1, etc)

by culi 2y ago

fsh 2y ago

The problem with selling inferior technologies is that sooner or later people are going to stop using them (even in the Grad Basin region). Not exactly a recipe for success.

culi 2y ago
What are you labelling inferior here? Both Taara and Starlink? Yes, both of those are inferior to wired infrastructure but they clearly have their usecases. If you were to start a mining project that lasts a few months or even a few years but is expected to eventually be finished and packed up, Taara seems like exactly what you need. It can also outcompete Starlink because it won't require us to constantly replace decaying satellites. Also means less space debris pollution which is increasingly becoming a huge concern

pdabbadabba 2y ago

But why would these not be places already served by terrestrial wireless internet service providers? It seems like it would be much easier and generally more attractive to serve locations like this using, for example, 5 GHz. Normally, the lack of (near) line-of-sight is one of the biggest limiting to those sorts of deployments, but that would also have to be solved for any place being served with FSO.

walrus01 2y ago

a point to point terrestrial bridge large piece of equipment that costs $5,000+, needs a professional to install it, and works on either free space optics or V-band or E-band radio is not in any way a competitor to starlink. It's more a place to take a 1 to 10 Gbps ethernet connection as a link between two towers or roofs that can 'see' each other as an alternative to where laying fiber may be cost prohibitive or would take too long to build (or both). Assuming this thing doesn't utterly fail in rain at a moderate distance, this would be something you use to feed a POP which then redistributes service to end users by some totally other technology (5/6 GHz band PTMP radio system, GPON, XGSPON, G.fast on copper, docsis3/docsis3.1, etc)