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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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One customer I weirdly haven't seen mentioned is high frequency traders. Shouldn't Starlink's latency be lower than that of cables?

How would they be faster than microwave / laser terrestial towers, that already travel around the great arc?

Well, unless you can build a line-of-sight microwave/laser tower that can see over the oceans, Starlink's intercontinental links will be faster once the inter-satellite communications lasers are fully integrated. Also the speed of light in a vacuum is faster than the speed of light in air.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our Wireless NBN install in rural(ish, 1 hour from a capital city) Australia went from 25mbps to 0.1-0.5mbps and has sat there for 2 years until we gave up calling them monthly to complain, and switched to a 4G booster and just tethered to our phones. Due to blatant corruption there’s zero competition for broadband here, just resellers of the same system. If Starlink can even sustain 20mbps+ and rolls out to rural Au…

> Considering it doesn’t require any infrastructure, I can’t see how our tech-illiterate decrepit government can stop it. Just sell the modems online and ship directly worldwide. Make unlicensed operation of the dishes illegal, detect violators using an AWACS plane if detector vans are not sensitive enough to detect beams formed directly to the sky. Even if a country's government can't touch SpaceX directly, the user…

That seems like it would require far more effort.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#83
post #76

A lot of these comments read kind of like the ones when dropbox did a ShowHN. "Why not just use rsync?" I suspect starlink will change the course of human history in substantial ways. It already stands to be the most positive technological development for my life since I've been living. At the very least, until the market adjusts, it will provide a verdant field of lifestyle arbitrage.

>It already stands to be the most positive technological development for my life since I've been living.

Video streaming? Smartphones? Wikipedia? Google maps? CRISPR? mRNA vaccines?

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#84
One of my favorite YTers lives in the PNW. Previously they had to scrounge up wifi from somewhere or spend hours uploading their video in 720p over their awful "satellite" internet. They are one of the beta testers for Starlink and now they can live-stream in 4k. Sometimes it stutters, but it's still beta.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#85
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i'm pretty sure boats (especially big ones) are one of the potential markets for starlink, so even if current receiver will lose a connection, there will be special receiver for boats eventually. Stabilizing phased array shouldn't be that hard, even without adjusting motors constantly.

Just place the current one in a gimbal. Problem solved.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#86
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each satellite is said to have ~20 gbit/s usable bandwidth, and they're launching tens of thousands of them. The answer should be "a lot"

10,000 * 20Gbps = 200Tbps, and that all assumes that the traffic is going in and out directly from customer to internet with none of that capacity used for anything else like groundstation-to-groundstation hops or anything like that. You'll find a *lot* more than 200Tbps of usable bandwidth in even a moderately sized national operator. At a small ISP (~90k users) we have about 25Tbps of capacity in our equipment. A s…

Note that the cost of an MX2020 likely exceeds Starlink's cost of building and launching one of their satellites.

Now there is likely to be an relatively few MX2020s in a mid-size carrier (conceding that Starlink will be launching many more satellites) but Starlink has essentially 0 cost infrastructure for last mile deployment other than the satellites themselves.

But lets say Starlink gets to your upper limit of customers (which I assume they will, eventually, assuming they aren't already up against a Shannon limit on their bandwidth,) that is a billion dollars a month at $100 vs ~1.2 billion in launch revenues total in 2020, not even counting high revenue customers like the Department of Defense.

This is going to be a money printing machine for SpaceX once their main cost is just replacing deorbiting satellites and bandwidth on the ground.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One customer I weirdly haven't seen mentioned is high frequency traders. Shouldn't Starlink's latency be lower than that of cables?

How would they be faster than microwave / laser terrestial towers, that already travel around the great arc?

You can't really cross oceans with microwaves though. So a London from can gain a competitive advantage against other London firms on Wall Street exchange.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#88
post #83
post #76

A lot of these comments read kind of like the ones when dropbox did a ShowHN. "Why not just use rsync?" I suspect starlink will change the course of human history in substantial ways. It already stands to be the most positive technological development for my life since I've been living. At the very least, until the market adjusts, it will provide a verdant field of lifestyle arbitrage.

>It already stands to be the most positive technological development for my life since I've been living. Video streaming? Smartphones? Wikipedia? Google maps? CRISPR? mRNA vaccines?

Superfast internet anywhere on the globe will intensify

video streaming, Smartphones, Wikipedia, Google maps, CRISPR, mRNA vaccines

everywhere

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#89
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk mentioned on Twitter that it should be doable. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1323691195239960579 I reckon the current restrictions will ease up when more sats are deployed, especially with more laser interconnects.

When this was announced I actually assumed this was a ploy to get fast Internet into Teslas.

It's a way to for Musk to benefit from government subsidies (as described in the article), like all Musk ventures.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#90
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It already stands to be the most positive technological development for my life since I've been living. Video streaming? Smartphones? Wikipedia? Google maps? CRISPR? mRNA vaccines?

Superfast internet anywhere on the globe will intensify video streaming, Smartphones, Wikipedia, Google maps, CRISPR, mRNA vaccines everywhere

There's already sufficiently fast internet in most places. This is like comparing the societal impact of the Ford Model T to the latest race car.
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