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SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

arstechnica.com

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Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#101

Post by legolas2412 »

elihu wrote: post #66
whiddershins wrote: post #2

I don't understand the math. 800 satellites at 23 gbps seems to be able to provide 1 gbps to 18,400 connections at any given time. This seems to be many magnitudes off from what would be needed to have any impact. What am I missing?

Lots of people have mentioned over-subscription, but another consideration is that while 1gbps connection speeds may be offered, they're likely to have other speeds as well at different costs. For a lot of people, even 100kbps would be an improvement over what they have (which might be dial-up, might be satellite with 2-second ping times, or might be nothing). I myself probably wouldn't notice much difference between…

It might be good for people living in remote places in USA.

But the world's poor have internet connectivity, 3G/LTE is cheap and widely available. Don't go by US prices for data. Cellular plans here in India are cheap.

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#102

Post by Nokinside »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #82
Nokinside wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be expensive bandwidth no matter what. The way they can make this work is if they 1) are targeting traditional satellite internet customers (ships on the sea, commercial aviation, etc) and 2) integration with 5th generation mobile networks trough wireless network virtualization. Mobile network provider can sell a service where traveling customer pays extra for connection that works in the middle of nowhere. W…

The frequencies they intend to use limit them to antennas roughly the size of a pizza box, which is a little bit too unwieldy for a backpack...

There are already satellite antennas larger than pizza box that fit into a backback.

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#103

Post by legolas2412 »

ctchocula wrote: post #83
quonn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He knows everyone hates existing telecoms. Not true everywhere. I'm paying < $40/month for a 100 MBit connection and I don't hate my telecom.

Competition makes a big difference. Just over a year ago with Google Fiber rearing up, my ISP offered 150Mbps for $35. This year with Google Fiber downsizing, the big American ISPs are back to their duopoly: 25Mbps for $40 or 10Mbps for $30. Hopefully SpaceX is able to force them to lower rates for everyone.

It's not going to replace internet for cities/towns. Think of the latency!

It is directed towards middle of nowhere areas where nobody provides fiber.

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#104

Post by cracell »

btym wrote: post #98
legolas2412 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't it still cheaper to lay fiber cables? For example, 23*4400 = 101Tbps, but I guess many of the satellites will end up above water, so maybe around 60Tbps. One cable by google did that for 300mil$ [1] Maybe it is good for last mile connectivity, which is probably a good target, but only for less populated areas where LTE isn't available. [1] https://www.extremetech.com/internet/231074-googles-faster-u...

Laying fiber isn't going to get your Tesla connected.

Interesting idea but wouldn't a satellite to car connection be pretty unreliable?

Since the line of sight would often have things in the way. I'm assuming trees, bridges, and being in a garage would interfere with it.

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#108

Post by elihu »

paulsutter wrote: post #92

How much will the base stations weigh? Light enough to be carried on a drone? High speed / low latency internet will be important in self-driven cars. Especially with phased array ground stations which can respond faster than the motion of a car. So now a crossover between SpaceX and Tesla? How much cellular cost the Tesla fleet, especially as the model 3 come out?

That's an interesting point. There are many companies excited to use low-bandwith 5G connection to link up all their IoT devices. A satellite network provides a means to route around the cell phone network, which could be valuable to Tesla if they think it's cheaper than buying data plans for their cars. It could also be an effective backup system in case cell networks are out of range or unavailable.

I suppose the interesting questions are: how many individual ground stations will a single satellite be able to support simultaneously? And what are the physical characteristics of the ground station? (Iirc, in the early 2000's, Teledesic was going to use multiple motorized parabolic antennas enclosed in beach-ball sized plastic bubbles to track satellites as they went over. We can do that now without moving parts with beam steering, but the antennas might still be kind of bulky/awkward.)

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#110

Post by dfischer »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #105

[deleted]

In the article it says that it's because of the current deployment of satellites being at 22k miles high. Tesla plans to launch the satellites at a range of 715-823 miles which will reduce the latency to 25-35ms.
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