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SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

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Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#21
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post #3

I'm in the (slow) process of acquiring and fitting a sailboat for living at remote places. While I acknowledge that the cheapening of satellite internet will be nice, practical, and make my plans more realizable money-wise, I'm also a bit sad on what this implies to the taking a real distance to the information overloaded society.

I'm not sure this is for you, if you plan to move your boat: https://www.starlink.com/faq > Can I travel with Starlink, or move it to a different address? > Starlink satellites are scheduled to send internet down to all users within a designated area on the ground. This designated area is referred to as a cell. > Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you move your Starlink outside of its assigned cell, a sat…

I can imagine this is only in the beginning. As more sats go up ships can easily be a lot of customers.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#22
post #5

This is only a dozen users per active starlink satellite. I wonder how many customers each satellite can actually support in terms of both available bandwidth and the ability for the phased arrays on the satellite to target the customer. I can't really see how Spacex will scale their system to reach the millions of customers they need to cover the costs of launching and maintaining all those satellites.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship

They are hoping to launch roughly 600 per Starship launch with the launch itself eventually costing roughly 2M. Don’t know how much each satellite costs.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#23
post #16
post #14

I see comments on latency every so often when Starlink come ups. I would love some clarity on how satellite connectivity is expected to perform. Example: Streaming services will be great, but syn ack dependent SAAS apps have to be optimized for local cache and data retrieval? What ways are they looking to overcome latency? I could soap box, but this community is much smarter than me.

This video has a good simulation of the latency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m05abdGSOxY

This video is great, thank you for sharing.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#24

Here is a link to some benchmarks: https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/i9w09n/list_of_co...

I'm not sure benchmarks on an unloaded beta system are extremely useful. Once they add more satellites it may go down, but more users counter that... It's decent early indicator, but hard to say long term if it's useful.

The latency numbers are useful because lots of people, including the FCC, doubted the ability to achieve sub-100ms latencies at all. See https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-has-serious-doubts-about-space...

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#25
post #10
post #3

I'm in the (slow) process of acquiring and fitting a sailboat for living at remote places. While I acknowledge that the cheapening of satellite internet will be nice, practical, and make my plans more realizable money-wise, I'm also a bit sad on what this implies to the taking a real distance to the information overloaded society.

I'm not sure this is for you, if you plan to move your boat: https://www.starlink.com/faq > Can I travel with Starlink, or move it to a different address? > Starlink satellites are scheduled to send internet down to all users within a designated area on the ground. This designated area is referred to as a cell. > Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you move your Starlink outside of its assigned cell, a sat…

Also a sailboat (even a big one) is not stable and from experience satellite receivers can lose connection on slightly strong winds. So I guess this wouldn't work even if Starlink allowed it.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#26
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is for you, if you plan to move your boat: https://www.starlink.com/faq > Can I travel with Starlink, or move it to a different address? > Starlink satellites are scheduled to send internet down to all users within a designated area on the ground. This designated area is referred to as a cell. > Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you move your Starlink outside of its assigned cell, a sat…

I can imagine this is only in the beginning. As more sats go up ships can easily be a lot of customers.

Would you like to upgrade to the roaming plan for $99.99?

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#27
post #12
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is for you, if you plan to move your boat: https://www.starlink.com/faq > Can I travel with Starlink, or move it to a different address? > Starlink satellites are scheduled to send internet down to all users within a designated area on the ground. This designated area is referred to as a cell. > Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you move your Starlink outside of its assigned cell, a sat…

I wonder if they'll reserve a segment for global use, probably at higher expense. I could see a lower tier strata that requires planning but allows for relocation on a planned schedule.

It’s because most of the satellites do not have laser links yet, so the satellite you use must be able to see a downlink station in order to provide internet.

When they have laser links widely deployed, you will be able to move about.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#28
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally still in testing?

GP is not questioning the feasibility of Starlink, yes you can make it work, yes you can provide 60Mbps links. But there is physical limit per satellite, so all of this goes out the window beyond maybe a few million users? If you create all this infrastructure (with the impact it has) to then just serve a couple million people then this service will be unaffordable for mortals and limited to the wealthy and most like…

There is (practically) no limit to how many satellites you can put in place. You just position the next satellite a bit up-north and the dishes adjust their position.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#29
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally still in testing?

GP is not questioning the feasibility of Starlink, yes you can make it work, yes you can provide 60Mbps links. But there is physical limit per satellite, so all of this goes out the window beyond maybe a few million users? If you create all this infrastructure (with the impact it has) to then just serve a couple million people then this service will be unaffordable for mortals and limited to the wealthy and most like…

Wifi can only serve one computer at a time, but that doesn't make it expensive. You won't want to use Starlink if you have other options. It's a surprisingly nice service compared to existing satellite providers, but most people will prefer fiber if they can get it. Fiber is faster and most people won't care that they could get slightly better latency by using Starlink. The people most likely to use Starlink are in rural locations where they are less likely to have decent internet available.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#30
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure benchmarks on an unloaded beta system are extremely useful. Once they add more satellites it may go down, but more users counter that... It's decent early indicator, but hard to say long term if it's useful.

The latency numbers are useful because lots of people, including the FCC, doubted the ability to achieve sub-100ms latencies at all. See https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-has-serious-doubts-about-space...

And I believe they promised much lower than that with laser links (although only the Polar North satellites will use those for now).
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