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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

#161

Post by profalseidol »

katzgrau wrote: 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).

I agree with democratizing knowledge very important. The means to access it is also important to democratize. If you live in my country, you'd care about speed: https://www.reddit.com/r/Philippines/comments/2aurzq/how_pld...

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

#162

Post by bigiain »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #55
bigiain wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"commercial aircraft carriers" That made me stop and think for a bit...

You mean like the Raft? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash

Exactly where my head started going... Then "No hang on. The rest of this comment isn't making sense now, back up bak up backup. Oh... _that's_ less interesting." :-)

(Gah - and don't you hate it when people stealth-edit their comments and make you look insane? For the record, the parent originally said "commercial aircraft carriers" instead of "commercial aviation". I may be insane, but there's a completely plausible explanation for this comment thread and it can't be used as evidence of my lack of sanity, ok?)

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

#163

Post by profalseidol »

manachar wrote: post #128
katzgrau wrote: 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 a…

Do you think that having workers/employees overwork, sometimes mindlessly; worrying about their jobs or otherwise go hungry - is a factor in the problem you described?

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

#164

Post by geuis »

manachar wrote: post #128
katzgrau wrote: 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 a…

I suspect this is just a phase. I don't have any hard stats at the moment to back it up, so it's just a feeling.

Internet culture is still very young. At least in the US based on the election last week, the majority of people 18-25 voted progressive in most states. These are people who have never known the world without internet access.

I guess that the people who voted the other way are folks who have transitioned into internet-required lifestyles later in life and had their young adult lifestyles set in the 80's and early 90s and earlier. This makes them less digital natives and more like immigrants (ironically).

Again, none of these are universally true of course and this is all just personal opinion.

I believe that in general, younger people have become better at filtering out bullshit because they've had access to much more information than older folks did growing up.

I was born in 1980 and while I'm technically outside the millennial cutoff, I still identify with that group more than any other. While we didn't have a computer in the house until the early 90's, I was always exposed to computers and the internet from a super early age. Most of my viewing habits are gaming and making on YouTube, some streaming, etc. Still haven't really gotten the value from Snapchat personally, but I think that's more of a function of not having much need to use it.

Overall I am hopeful things are getting better as boomers age out and die off and the younger folks are coming into their own.

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

#165

Post by coldtea »

Tloewald wrote: post #129
coldtea wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pretty much yes. It's not about giving $30/month broadband to remote parts of the globe...

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

#166

Post by ygaels_armpit »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #139
deegles wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That is simply brilliant. Faux bricks which connect together to create a phased array antenna that create a mesh network between connected homes. Now if it was low enough power to run on the heat differential between the flue gases and the ambient air I would know I was in the future.

What harnesses that?

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

#167

Post by andkenneth »

icehawk219 wrote: post #152

Something I find interesting about this: what does it mean for countries who monitor and filter/block content (think China)? Presumably since this isn't using their national infrastructure they would lose all control of it, no? I wonder how those countries would respond to SpaceX wanting to let their citizens use the service. Unless I'm missing something it seems to me like they wouldn't really be able to stop it.

I would imagine that they wouldn't be able to sell the hardware in china without a contract to redirect traffic through a terrestrial station that's inside the great wall. I doubt that's feasible.

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

#168

Post by talamown »

icehawk219 wrote: post #152

Something I find interesting about this: what does it mean for countries who monitor and filter/block content (think China)? Presumably since this isn't using their national infrastructure they would lose all control of it, no? I wonder how those countries would respond to SpaceX wanting to let their citizens use the service. Unless I'm missing something it seems to me like they wouldn't really be able to stop it.

A government still can get control practically. They cannot stop the service itself but can regulate payments from their citizens to the service. It is like online casino.

Of course, there may be some loopholes for payment and some citizens who access the service as well as online casino.

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

#169

Post by planteen »

sly010 wrote: post #67
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?

Satellite communication at the moment is very expensive (like dollars per kilobyte expensive) not because of the limitations of long distance wireless communication in general, but because most of our satellite equipment up there is old and outdated. At some point as we developed world wide communications, laying down long distance fiber became cheaper than deploying communication satellites, and the existing satelli…

It's nowhere near that expensive (dollars per kilobyte). I used the GlobalStar network on a project. The bigger cost for overage is 0.35 cents per second on data. The effective rate for a scp transfer (e.g., after all overheads) is about 750 bytes/ second. So you are looking at less than half a cent per KiB.

http://www.globalstar.com/en/index.php?cid=1470

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

#170

Post by BobCat »

manachar wrote: post #128
katzgrau wrote: 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 a…

> such as the world being flat.

This doesn't harm anyone. People follow and believe in all kinds of unreal things - The Pope tweets, Dalai Lama has a website... at least there's not going to be Flat Earth terrorism.

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