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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

#121
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if they can launch multiple at once. I assume they can, and on top of that, once they can reuse rockets My guess is the cost might be as little as a million ( or less ) for a satellite in orbit. That would be, what, $9 billion? That sounds like a lot, until you realize they can spread that cost over 2-3 years and have millions (if not billions) of people paying for internet. This would replace cellphone p…

This is wild, wild overexageration. >millions (if not billions) of people paying for internet You're vastly underestimating the challenge in attracting millions (let alone "billions", that's so ridiculous it's not even worth commenting on) of costumers. >This would replace cellphone plans too remember... You can't just hope to replace 4bil+ users in a snap of the fingers... Even if you had a hypothetical magical prod…

You think $300 for internet at gigabyte speeds ANYWHERE is a lot? Are you serious?

Right now people are paying Comcast $100/month for 25mbps, and Verizon $100/month for 5mbps at a cap of 10Gb...

I grant you you wouldn't hit a billion users at those prices, but you wouldn't need to at those prices. I guarantee internet like this will start at a premium, maybe $500/month. Then as more people adtop it'll quickly drop to something more inline with $50/month (or less).

You say I'm exaggerating getting millions of users. However, Id like to remind you Tesla preordered how many cars? Google Fiber had how many customers switch over? This is a game changer, and one that makes financial sense on both sides. Honestly, this is going to be like the Model T or iPhone, they'll easily have a million users their first year, ten million the next, and so on until they reach market saturation.

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

#123
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, there's going to be 800 of the suckers. There are only about 33 GPS satellites. Although 700 miles is lowish orbit, it's still above the horizon over 2000 miles away.

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

#124
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I used to have a sat phone (Thuraya) and it was pretty reliable if you were outside. They don't work well inside buildings.

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

#125

Such a genius move, surprising nobody saw it coming. Just think: he will already have access to a large base of customer's roofs (which SolarCity effectively owns) --- 1 million by 2018. Then, it's just a hop, skip, and a jump to an on-demand, fully-cached, mesh network. They're probably not far from being able to provide internet service to all SolarCity customers, just a bit of a modification to the contract.

Since Tesla will be making solar panels that look like tiles, they could also make mesh networking antennas that look like chimneys...

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

#126

[deleted]

Specs for minimum ping of some internet technologies: 2G (100–400 Kbit/s) 300–1000 ms 3G (0.5–5 Mbit/s) 100–500 ms 4G (1–50 Mbit/s) ADSL+PPP (0.1-200 Mbit/s) 40 ms Cable (2 Mbit/s - 1 Gbit/s) 80 ms Fibre (1 Gbit/s - 100 Gbit/s) 5 ms Note that this latency is just the transmission delay, it does not send your data more than a few hundred meters (technically up to 200km for fibre, but usually the actual distance sent i…

Where are those numbers from? I get a consistent 12ms ping with my cable internet (200Mbps) to local cloud servers, and have seen as low as 1-4ms on fiber.

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

#127

[deleted]

There is a lot less distance between Low Earth Orbit and New York City than there is between New York City and Los Angeles.

Some of us are in the arse end of the UK, so our packets are going across the atlantic and back again.

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

#128
post #7

Free, global internet access is the next step toward a smarter, more progressive planet. I don't even care about the speed - if the only thing users could access was wikipedia, I'd still personally donate to the project. I cannot emphasize how important democratizing knowledge is to me (and many others).

Spreading true (well, at least less wrong) information is a noble goal.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure we're not seeing such information availability providing avenues towards a smarter, more progressive planet.

Instead, the internet seems to be helping people create cocoons of ignorance and "evidence" to support even the most specious claims - such as the world being flat.

Knowledge does not seem to be enough. Wisdom and the ability to sift through knowledge with some degree of appropriate skepticism need to spread at least as fast as the knowledge if we are to get a smarter planet.

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

#129
post #96
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still. What's the cost of deploying 800 sattelites vs cost of fiber infrastructure for 6 million people?

Depends where those 6 million people live. I've heard internet in Kilimanjaro is not that great...

So they'll be able to get awesome bandwidth (by today's standards, anyway), but the monthly plan is might be a little pricey.

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

#130

And hella pingtimes ;)

> SpaceX expects its own latencies to be between 25 and 35ms Unless you're doubting their math, that's not a high ping at all. In fact, that's a pretty amazing improvement given that existing satellite internet is >500ms. I didn't realize the difference between LEO and geostationary was that high.

Geo is really really freaking far out compared to LEO. There are to-scale images floating around that really put it in to perspective.
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