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Satellite IoT dreams are crashing into reality

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Re: Satellite IoT dreams are crashing into reality

#11

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

xyzzyz wrote: post #6
abeppu wrote: post #3

Maybe this is crazy, but should we be thinking of satellite connectivity the same way we think about public utilities? - For a lot of public utilities, the point is that building several parallel sets of infrastructure would be really wasteful. It makes sense to build it once, hopefully well, and let everyone use it. - One might think this only is true of strictly terrestrial infrastructure like phone landlines or wa…

> which is operated by the US military with an annual budget of roughly $1B -- and we can all use it for free. Non-Americans, yes, but Americans pay taxes to use it. In fact, if you replaced tax-funded model with, say, a markup on each receiver, Americans would pay less than they already do, and only those that use it would pay for it. I find both of these things beneficial. > Had the US not provided for civilian acc…

> Why, though?

They'd be subscription services.

Re: Satellite IoT dreams are crashing into reality

#12

Post by jinzo »

I checked the Hiber [1] IoT Solutions (mentioned in the article) that are mostly focused on Asset/Vehicle/Machinery tracking. Even tho their message focuses (among other things) on how cheap they are - I have to disagree. Maybe if they find someone that truly needs global connectivity where 2G/NB-IoT/LTE-M can get pricey, but then someone needing that probably has quite a big purchasing power. Also their claims of easy install and productivity/uptime gains (without a CAN module, as they don't offer it currently) are very much PR speak and don't work like that in reality (I run a tiny asset/vehicle tracking business). Really not seeing how they are even close to being competitive in this space - or able to provide value added solutions later on. There are niche tracking solutions which are a lot better fit than what they are currently offering/focusing on. Something like yacht tracking, you know, where satellite connectivity is actually needed. But what do I know, maybe I'm wrong.

Also looks like you have to sign a 5 year contract, very optimistic from them.

Generally thinking the IoT and satellite connectivity (at affordable, non Iridium level, pricing) have it's uses. But for general vehicle/machine tracking where you usually have power, need to extract data from the machine anyway (for real insights), a plain old (or even better new NB-IoT/LTE-M) cellular connectivity will (generally) be plenty.

[1] - https://hiber.global/

Re: Satellite IoT dreams are crashing into reality

#13

Post by orangeoxidation »

xyzzyz wrote: post #6
abeppu wrote: post #3

Maybe this is crazy, but should we be thinking of satellite connectivity the same way we think about public utilities? - For a lot of public utilities, the point is that building several parallel sets of infrastructure would be really wasteful. It makes sense to build it once, hopefully well, and let everyone use it. - One might think this only is true of strictly terrestrial infrastructure like phone landlines or wa…

> which is operated by the US military with an annual budget of roughly $1B -- and we can all use it for free. Non-Americans, yes, but Americans pay taxes to use it. In fact, if you replaced tax-funded model with, say, a markup on each receiver, Americans would pay less than they already do, and only those that use it would pay for it. I find both of these things beneficial. > Had the US not provided for civilian acc…

> Why, though? Why would they be worse? Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved.

> Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved.

If those state services weren't available for the public they would exist anyway, they are primarily for military purpose.

Imagine the US didn't offer free GPS and civilian competition would arise. Wouldn't it just mean the US users would have to pay for two satellite services? Once for the military one, once for the civilian. Since cost does not increase with users, the military (tax supported) one wouldn't be cheaper to run either.

Apart from that there are competitors even today. My smartphone does connect to Galileo, Glonass and GPS.

Re: Satellite IoT dreams are crashing into reality

#14

Post by xyzzyz »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #11
xyzzyz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is operated by the US military with an annual budget of roughly $1B -- and we can all use it for free. Non-Americans, yes, but Americans pay taxes to use it. In fact, if you replaced tax-funded model with, say, a markup on each receiver, Americans would pay less than they already do, and only those that use it would pay for it. I find both of these things beneficial. > Had the US not provided for civilian acc…

> Why, though? They'd be subscription services.

Maybe, or maybe not (most likely not, in fact). Have you read the rest of my comment?

Re: Satellite IoT dreams are crashing into reality

#15

Post by abeppu »

xyzzyz wrote: post #6
abeppu wrote: post #3

Maybe this is crazy, but should we be thinking of satellite connectivity the same way we think about public utilities? - For a lot of public utilities, the point is that building several parallel sets of infrastructure would be really wasteful. It makes sense to build it once, hopefully well, and let everyone use it. - One might think this only is true of strictly terrestrial infrastructure like phone landlines or wa…

> which is operated by the US military with an annual budget of roughly $1B -- and we can all use it for free. Non-Americans, yes, but Americans pay taxes to use it. In fact, if you replaced tax-funded model with, say, a markup on each receiver, Americans would pay less than they already do, and only those that use it would pay for it. I find both of these things beneficial. > Had the US not provided for civilian acc…

> Why, though? Why would they be worse? Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved.

I think the key points are:

- because there would be fragmentation, we might have several smaller private services, each with crappier coverage because of fewer satellites in each, different variance in clocks, etc

- because GPS _doesn't_ need to worry about collecting revenue from users, you don't have to prove you're a subscriber to use it. Every GPS device you have doesn't have to be linked to your account. And you don't have to worry that e.g. your phone and your car partnered with different satnav services and so now you need two subscriptions _and_ they don't play together, etc.

I think it's not that hard to imagine casual consumer applications where the product benefit of incorporating satellite-based location services would become swamped by the overhead of connecting to your preferred location service.

Re: Satellite IoT dreams are crashing into reality

#16

Post by Jtsummers »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #11
xyzzyz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is operated by the US military with an annual budget of roughly $1B -- and we can all use it for free. Non-Americans, yes, but Americans pay taxes to use it. In fact, if you replaced tax-funded model with, say, a markup on each receiver, Americans would pay less than they already do, and only those that use it would pay for it. I find both of these things beneficial. > Had the US not provided for civilian acc…

> Why, though? They'd be subscription services.

There is, practically, no model in which GPS subscriptions make sense without enabling bidirectional communications with the satellite. GPS modules (ground side) do not need transmitters, only receivers and, potentially, a decryption module (soft or hardware).

A subscription GPS system with bidirectional communication (to authenticate users) would have grossly inefficient devices (transmitting to space is not cheap, plus the incurred latency on the communication). But that's the only way to enforce a subscription.

Subscription GPS systems with unidirectional communications (down only) would be cracked in about 5 minutes. Every authorized device would have to share the same key for it to be practical, which means even with key rotation schemes (sucks to be in the wilderness without internet connectivity for an extended period in this case) the keys would be on every device and trivially recovered.

The only way a unidirectional communication scheme works is if the GPS devices are already internet connected on the ground side, which largely defeats the purpose of GPS in many situations (at least historically, before widespread cellular data networks). You certainly couldn't use this effectively at sea or when hiking through the backcountry.

Re: Satellite IoT dreams are crashing into reality

#17

Post by abeppu »

abeppu wrote: post #3

Maybe this is crazy, but should we be thinking of satellite connectivity the same way we think about public utilities? - For a lot of public utilities, the point is that building several parallel sets of infrastructure would be really wasteful. It makes sense to build it once, hopefully well, and let everyone use it. - One might think this only is true of strictly terrestrial infrastructure like phone landlines or wa…

Ok I described this poorly. That's my fault.

I think the fixation should be less on the 'free to use' portion of GPS, and more on the fact that for many of us there's basically one satellite-based location system to which we have access, in the same way that there may only be one set of phone landlines in my neighborhood, and one municipal water supply. Phone service and water are not free to use, but we also didn't pay to build several competing overlapping systems.

I compare this to cell service, where multiple private networks covering the same area are built and maintained, and if you're on the wrong network, you might have worse coverage in a given neighborhood than your friend -- and you both have worse coverage than you would under a hypothetical network which was the union of both.

The original article was about a plethora of companies who had aspired to create their own constellations and are now seeing that actually that's really expensive. We're still going to end up with several competing ones. Would we be better off (i.e. pay less for connectivity from a constellation with more satellites and better coverage) if there was one larger one?

Re: Satellite IoT dreams are crashing into reality

#18

Post by xyzzyz »

nemothekid wrote: post #10
xyzzyz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is operated by the US military with an annual budget of roughly $1B -- and we can all use it for free. Non-Americans, yes, but Americans pay taxes to use it. In fact, if you replaced tax-funded model with, say, a markup on each receiver, Americans would pay less than they already do, and only those that use it would pay for it. I find both of these things beneficial. > Had the US not provided for civilian acc…

> Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved. It's hard to argue this is the case, especially for businesses that require a significant amount of upfront capital. The trivial example in utilities are ISPs. You can argue that ISPs are not a "free market" because of the government doing X, Y, Z, but if it's the case that government intervention is required anyways , then removing the profit…

> It's hard to argue this is the case, especially for businesses that require a significant amount of upfront capital.

There is plenty of capital to be had these days, and a lot of competition in many capital-intensive industries. For example, we have multiple competitors in cloud computing space, despite it requiring ten of billions of dollars in capital to enter.

The ISPs, and utilities in general are different not because they are simply capital intensive, but rather because they have low marginal return for marginal unit of capital spent, and because competition damages these return even higher. Launching a few satellites to provide service globally is a different sort of capital expense than painstakingly building out utilities every street and every block.

> The $1B number is a red herring. It cost them $1B to maintain the system. The costs of acquiring rockets and designing satellites, as a private company, is likely far greater.

Sure, which is why there has been no competition to GPS so far. However, SpaceX, now that it already has rocket and satellite expertise, could provide competition to Government GPS relatively easily.

> The question you should ask would if a company like Waze (pre-acquisition of course) could have built the infrastructure for GPS. The answer is likely no.

No, but they would simply buy license to use GPS, just like they bought license to use maps. No reason to pass these costs to users directly as a line item in a bill. That’s my point: there is no reason to believe that privately owned GPS would diminish the user experience. As I already mentioned, instead of subscription fees that people lacking business imagination keep bringing up, you could for example charge royalties per GPS receiver sold, you know, the way Android phones already pay dozens of dollars in royalties.

Re: Satellite IoT dreams are crashing into reality

#19

Post by abeppu »

xyzzyz wrote: post #6
abeppu wrote: post #3

Maybe this is crazy, but should we be thinking of satellite connectivity the same way we think about public utilities? - For a lot of public utilities, the point is that building several parallel sets of infrastructure would be really wasteful. It makes sense to build it once, hopefully well, and let everyone use it. - One might think this only is true of strictly terrestrial infrastructure like phone landlines or wa…

> which is operated by the US military with an annual budget of roughly $1B -- and we can all use it for free. Non-Americans, yes, but Americans pay taxes to use it. In fact, if you replaced tax-funded model with, say, a markup on each receiver, Americans would pay less than they already do, and only those that use it would pay for it. I find both of these things beneficial. > Had the US not provided for civilian acc…

If competition makes stuff better, and a large company like Google can make one at "a pittance", it's worth asking -- why isn't there a privately created global satellite navigation system yet? GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO were created and are operated by state institutions.

Re: Satellite IoT dreams are crashing into reality

#20

Post by xyzzyz »

orangeoxidation wrote: post #13
xyzzyz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is operated by the US military with an annual budget of roughly $1B -- and we can all use it for free. Non-Americans, yes, but Americans pay taxes to use it. In fact, if you replaced tax-funded model with, say, a markup on each receiver, Americans would pay less than they already do, and only those that use it would pay for it. I find both of these things beneficial. > Had the US not provided for civilian acc…

> Why, though? Why would they be worse? Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved. > Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved. If those state services weren't available for the public they would exist anyway, they are primarily for military purpose. Imagine the US didn't offer free GPS and civilian competition would arise. Wouldn't it just mean the US users w…

In that world, military would just contract with commercial providers and use commercial GPS, same way they already spend hundreds of billions of dollars on products and services provided by private companies.
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