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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

#101

Post by tuatoru »

ixfo wrote: post #49
kornbattery wrote: post #13

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…

AIUI per-satellite bandwidth is power constrained.

The beauty of a five-year lifespan for the satellites is that when, for example, multilayer PV panels (i.e., more efficient/higher output) get cheap enough, it'll be simple to roll them out.

Likewise with more power-efficent routing chips, and everything else.

It's not 10,000 satellites. Starlink has FCC support (with the ITU) for over 40,000 satellites.[1]

With a steady-state demand of about 10k/year, Starlink will be able to get fairly good prices from semiconductor fabs for ASICs. Is the market for Juniper MX2020s the same size? (I honestly have no idea.)

No doubt Starlink will be researching furiously to optimise transmit power, modulation schemes, antenna design, et cetera as well.

A final point is that Starlink's markets are additive, not mutually exclusive.

They can do low-latency links over the North Atlantic and North Pacific for HF traders/arbitrageurs, and when the satellites are over other parts of the globe, they can serve village WISPs, or individual consumers (and the US military if you insist). The one market Starlink can't serve well is exactly that which is best served by fibre: urban areas in the developed world.

Looking at the business case, the risk is all upside for Starlink.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink

On 15 October 2019, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) submitted filings to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on SpaceX's behalf to arrange spectrum for 30,000 additional Starlink satellites to supplement the 12,000 Starlink satellites already approved by the FCC.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#102

Post by zizee »

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #43
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Verizon 4G first launched I had a 45mbps connection all over silicon valley. Then adoption spread and my data rates on the same device dropped to 5mbps. Loading matters!

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…

> Due to blatant corruption there’s zero competition for broadband here, just resellers of the same system.

Can you tell us more about this blatent corruption? Are you saying corruption has stopped multiple players entering into the highly profitable internet market of the sparsely populated rural Australia?

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#103

Post by MattGaiser »

mrauha wrote: 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 also a bit sad on what this implies to the taking a real distance to the information overloaded society.

You could just turn it off.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#104

Post by tuatoru »

jcims wrote: post #60
unixhero wrote: post #50

I don't understand why they are slow to roll it out. The world needs this service, NOW.

It’s not ready yet. They don’t have enough satellites in operation yet and as a result it goes offline for short spells throughout the day. They are also estimated to be losing about $1900 per dish sold. I’m sure they want to get that number down before they really go into mass production. Lastly, there’s going to be regulatory hurdles in every country they release in.

There's a youtube of a teardown of a Starlink dish.[1] A nicely patterned printed circuit board, two servomotors, plastic housing parts and an aluminium foil back shield. There's not even an ethernet jack on the PCB, just a JST connector for the ethernet cable. First time I've seen that level of cost cutting.

Those'd have to be some seriously expensive ICs on that PCB for the bill of materials to come to $1000, let alone $2400.

And ICs are like software, printed circuit boards, aluminium foil stampings, and plastic mouldings. The expensive bit is the upfront design. The more you make, the cheaper the unit cost. EDIT: I see mschuster made the same point.

---

Totally agree about the regulatory hurdles. Those could be insurmountable, especially (sadly) in countries where people would really benefit from having access to better internet.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOmdQnIlnRo

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#105

Post by ribas »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #100
aaron695 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse than 'dropbox' There are 3 billion people without internet. It's not a human right, but it's the next tier. There's a clear path to hooking many of these people up. For instance aid organisations. Unlike installing the scam computer labs where they can just forget upkeep and training, it's known upfront costs they have to be accountable for. And better, small businesses like cafes. But the 1% are worried it mig…

> There are 3 billion people without internet. It's not a human right, but it's the next tier. The half of humanity without an Internet access is for the most part poor and uneducated people from third world countries. I don't want these people on the Internet. The state of online discourse outside of tightly moderated niche communities like HN is already awful. Cranks, bigots, conspiracists, and other trashy people…

God forbid poor people having access to something so pure as the internet, we should make a KYC before letting anyone use Google or Facebook

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#106

Post by rkangel »

bloopernova wrote: post #99
MrLeap wrote: 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.

RE: Starlink changing the course of human history. Exactly. We've already seen Russian authorities say that people will be arrested for using Starlink. All of a sudden, governments have lost the ability to shut off the internet without some serious jamming. Just thinking of the post-disaster communications potential is pretty staggering. (I feel compelled to mention that I'm not a "fan" of Elon Musk.) I'd love to see…

> Exactly. We've already seen Russian authorities say that people will be arrested for using Starlink. All of a sudden, governments have lost the ability to shut off the internet without some serious jamming.

I'm not sure that's the case. I believe you have to licence spectrum in the same way that you would if you were offering a terrestrial based service, and if you don't have a licence then you'd have to turn off the beams as the satellites passed over that part of the ground.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#107

Post by joezydeco »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #100
aaron695 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse than 'dropbox' There are 3 billion people without internet. It's not a human right, but it's the next tier. There's a clear path to hooking many of these people up. For instance aid organisations. Unlike installing the scam computer labs where they can just forget upkeep and training, it's known upfront costs they have to be accountable for. And better, small businesses like cafes. But the 1% are worried it mig…

> There are 3 billion people without internet. It's not a human right, but it's the next tier. The half of humanity without an Internet access is for the most part poor and uneducated people from third world countries. I don't want these people on the Internet. The state of online discourse outside of tightly moderated niche communities like HN is already awful. Cranks, bigots, conspiracists, and other trashy people…

So if even one of those 3 billion people is smarter, more creative, more interesting than you...are you willing to give up your seat at the table for that person?

Just asking out of curiosity, because almost all of us here won the lottery by being born in the right place at the right time. What's your reason for being here?

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#108

Post by bryanlarsen »

clon wrote: post #51

As an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer, I'm biased against the massive cost of the StarLink pollution fleet to our ability to gaze at the wonders above. I think the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a much higher priority project for humanity, than StarLink. That said, I think Elon needs to travel the world a little more. Several of his attempts to solve purported world-relevant issues may be founded in limitation…

As an amateur astronomer you should be cheering for Starlink.

Yes, the first Starlink satellites were horrible for light pollution, especially during orbit raising. However Starlink has taken measures to mitigate this. They've added an shade to darken the satellites and they've modified their orbit raising path to avoid reflecting as much sunlight back to earth.

Starlink's goal is to be invisible to the naked eye when in final orbit. They're not quite that dark during orbit raising, but they're a lot better than they were 6 months ago. Orbit raising takes a couple of months for 1/3rd of the satellites in each launch.

Another advantage of Starlink is that they are in super low orbits. This means that they are shadowed by the Earth except for the half hour after sunset and the half hour before sunrise. There is so much refracted sunlight during these times that they aren't useful star gazing times for most.

Starlink's competitors (OneWeb, Kuiper) have none of these advantages. Kuiper may add some, but none are announced yet. They have no sunshades, are cubical so orbit raising perturbations don't help much, and are in higher orbits so are visible during the darker periods of the night.

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#109

Post by rkangel »

wj wrote: post #68
the_duke wrote: post #35

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.

I think it was dreamed up as a way to monetise the increasing capacity of SapceX launches. They might run out of customers and so they need ways to make money out of launching. A constellation of 10k+ satellites is a good way to need lots of launches!

Re: SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users

#110

Post by bryanlarsen »

adventured wrote: post #69
kilroy123 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I mostly agree with you, as I too have traveled a lot (I've been to all 7 continents). I've been to many places with very poor internet. Still, I think you're missing one very important point. The likely biggest user of this system will be the US military and Department of Defense. Just how they use the iridium constellation, only phone calls aren't enough in the 2020 and beyond. They need the same system but w…

> The math just doesn't add up. Can you demonstrate that math in a comprehensive manner? I've seen this kind of claim repeated frequently and it's never supported. > The likely biggest user of this system will be the US military and Department of Defense. The biggest user of Starlink by an extreme margin will be consumers. It won't be a close comparison. There will be at least a million consumers eventually using Sta…

There is some math on the Internet that's commonly linked. With some super pessimistic assumptions, it shows Starlink just barely breaking even (aka, not losing money, but not making much either). Most of those assumptions have already been proven to be false. Doing the math with less pessimistic assumptions shows it to be insanely profitable. I'd do it here, but this has already dropped off the front page so nobody will see it.
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