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Starlink Is a Big Deal

sneak.berlin

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Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#21

Post by grahamburger »

Barrin92 wrote: post #10

> "Hundreds of cities and dozens of countries, fine for living but previously entirely unsuitable for a place of business, will blink from red to green on the map once Starlink goes live." this reads like a marketing piece rather than actual analysis. Throughput of a single satellite is 20Gbps. The finished constellation if I recall correctly is supposed to be about 12k satellites. So about ~250.000Gbps. So assuming…

That's true for dedicated circuits but no residential or even small business Internet plans are dedicated. You can put at least 200 customers on a 1 gigabit connection and they'll still get 100 Mbps+ speedtests even during peak usage times of the day.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#22

Post by EpicEng »

Barrin92 wrote: post #10

> "Hundreds of cities and dozens of countries, fine for living but previously entirely unsuitable for a place of business, will blink from red to green on the map once Starlink goes live." this reads like a marketing piece rather than actual analysis. Throughput of a single satellite is 20Gbps. The finished constellation if I recall correctly is supposed to be about 12k satellites. So about ~250.000Gbps. So assuming…

>So assuming you offer everyone a 100MB/s connection...

It's ridiculous to assume that everyone will be using 100MB/s at all times.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#23

Post by sneak »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #3

Given the title, I assumed this was a link to this awesome article: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/starlink-is-a-...

I am OP and have never seen this. Thanks for the link! I too love the Mother Earth Motherboard essay.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#25

Post by mgiampapa »

pkolaczk wrote: post #13
durkie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it trickle down? I feel like all new technologies start out with rich people/early adopters subsidizing mass adoption costs (refrigerators, TVs, computers, cell phones, electric cars)

The problem is that rich people live in areas that have good mobile coverage, and Starlink won't be very attractive to them. LTE can offer transfers better than 600 Mbps with lower latency today , and covers 99% of population (in the developed countries). 5G will get over 1 Gbps per sector and it's coming soon.

Rich people have boats, by definition these are people with too much money to spend and is a huge market. Airplanes? This will revolutionize coverage on long haul non-polar flights.

Trains? Buses? These both have density issues with the existing cellular network. How many times have you come to a halt in a traffic jam only to have horrible cellular coverage due to the local cell site being overwhelmed?

5G doesn't solve any of these use-cases. There is plenty of room for adoption of starlink at premium prices.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#26

Post by Trombone12 »

pwinnski wrote: post #4

I am skeptical of anything like 600Mbps being offered to anyone at anything like an affordable price, but overall, sure, globally-available internet seems like a good thing. Too bad we have to give up the night sky for it, though.

> Too bad we have to give up the night sky for it, though.

Oh, I wasn't aware we were getting any choice in the matter? Isn't this SpaceX just putting whatever they want up there?

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#28

Post by h2odragon »

dkersten wrote: post #12
chasd00 wrote: post #6

hopefully it makes inet service on planes better

Companies like Viasat are already offering that. A couple of years ago, they were talking about how they wanted to offer free internet to all passangers (with enough bandwidth that everyone could stream HD movies, thanks to the new satellite they launched in 2017). I'm not sure how the rollout is going, though, or if the airlines want to do this. I guess the airlines can make a fortune overcharging passengers for int…

I'm a viasat customer. Most days, github.com doesn't exist for me. Anything using SSL is going to fail 30% of the time anyway, and 50%+ of the time after they restrict our bandwidth for the month. Even if they could provide better service, I wouldn't hold my breath in expectation of it.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#29

Post by genzoman »

pwinnski wrote: post #4

I am skeptical of anything like 600Mbps being offered to anyone at anything like an affordable price, but overall, sure, globally-available internet seems like a good thing. Too bad we have to give up the night sky for it, though.

Giving up some of the night sky for the billions of humans that live in rural areas, or live in countries where the physical internet is controlled by oppressive governments hellbent on withholding information from its citizens is worth it. The trillions of dollars it would take to build out infrastructure (and maintain) in Africa and India is worth it. In fact, even 20 Mbps would be life changing in bringing information to ~10-15% of humans is worth it.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#30

Post by pupppet »

modeless wrote: post #16

Just going to plug my Starlink tracker here: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink It tells you when to go outside and look up to see the satellites as they pass over your house. It's a cool sight to see because there are up to 60 of them crossing the sky at the same time in a line.

This is great!
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