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SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

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Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#281

Post by dboreham »

fragmede wrote: post #99
anonymousiam wrote: post #5

I watched the announcement. Knowing Musk, I'll believe it when I see it, but it sounds promising. Apparently the G2 Starlink satellites will be equipped with large antennas to support cellular users on the existing spectrum. Video was live-streamed, and still available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzli-Ww26Qs

Self-driving cars have proven harder than expected, but given the rest of Musk's tale, I wouldn't bet against him. SpaceX is already launching satellites, and Starlink is already providing service. T-mobile owns the frequencies for it, it's "just" a matter of building the satellites and putting them into space. If the claim were more outlandish, it would be harder to buy, but the technology is eminently doable.

> proven harder than expected

Expected by whom? People who didn't understand the problem presumably.

Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#282

Post by dboreham »

cma wrote: post #26
anonymousiam wrote: post #5

I watched the announcement. Knowing Musk, I'll believe it when I see it, but it sounds promising. Apparently the G2 Starlink satellites will be equipped with large antennas to support cellular users on the existing spectrum. Video was live-streamed, and still available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzli-Ww26Qs

Garmin inReach but works on any phone and a bit more bandwidth so not restricted to emergency messages. Also free with most T-Mobile plans (inReach is currently expensive, but may drop in response if that isn't a capacity only issue).

> Garmin inReach but works on any phone

That's because it's an app that connects to an Iridium phone via BT.

Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#284

Post by [deleted] »

mlindner wrote: post #92
judge2020 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I would expect our pricing for this service to be the un-carrier's favorite price: we expect, on our most popular plans, for this service to be included for free" https://youtu.be/Qzli-Ww26Qs?t=851

Yes, that's what I said. Edit: Downvotes are happening for some reason. "most likely" and "I would expect" mean basically the same thing unless we're playing grammar police. The entire point of my above post was to deny the fact that they "did not disclose specific pricing". That was the part that was incorrect that I was correcting, as shown in the long form direct quote.

[deleted]

Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#285

Post by dboreham »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #184
btown wrote: post #10

This is actually fascinating. T-Mobile doesn’t need a fiber or even cable buildout to a remote location, just power and the local clearances for a tower, they plop a Starlink antenna on the top and bam. Congestion will be a challenge but it will be way better than the current status quo.

As others have pointed out, this isn't that. But you bring up an interesting possibility for the progression of this partnership.

Once they discover the "bird to handset" thing doesn't actually work.

Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#286

Post by rlt »

yurishimo wrote: post #275
vineyardmike wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They figured it out for the free inflight wifi that allows messaging.

That isn't anything special. Every smartphone can send SMS over wifi. You need to connect to the in-flight wifi to use the service. The router on the plane has a hole in the firewall that allows unpaid users to access the specific HTTP server to send and receive SMS messages. Absolutely nothing special about it.

Eventually this would be no different: Starlink can provide (firewalled) data service to iPhones to support messaging apps.

Speculation is that initially there would be a small number of satellites periodically passing overhead, leading to the 30 minute send/receive times, and likely not supporting non-SMS messaging apps well.

Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#287

Post by kylehotchkiss »

carabiner wrote: post #117
joshuamoes wrote: post #42

This will shake up a lot of things in the sattelite market. It will take a lot of marketshare from satellite trackers like inreach. Also living in a remote area, and being familiar with the existing tracking solutions for transport this could be a lot cheaper per asset. Also remote sensor locations. Anything low bitrate.

FUCK yes. Can't wait for the Inreach to drop from $400 to $100.

That’s probably so low they won’t be able to launch anything to replace the live sats once they hit end of life

Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#288

Post by dailykoder »

vlovich123 wrote: post #276
thepasswordis wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My current Tesla started doing FSD almost a year ago.

Let me clarify. Musk claimed 6 years ago [1] that shipping Teslas would be capable of Level 5 autonomy. While Tesla’s markets their feature as “full self driving” it’s a far cry from even level 3 afaik. It’s kind of sad people fall for this. It also has lethal consequences as people assume it can do things it very well can’t (cruise control+ is really what the feature is). It’s a very obvious grift and SEC and FTC re…

Musk already admitted that he was very wrong about FSD and that it's not that easy.

Sure his talk was dumb and a lot of people fell for it, but that's just how marketing works.

Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#289

Post by kylehotchkiss »

14 wrote: post #283

The only thing I am thinking of is constant tracking anywhere in the world even outside cell range. My guess is the capability will be always on even in a powered off state. Some sort of faraday cage will be needed to stop it.

Sure: https://slnt.com/collections/faraday-sleeves/products/farada...

They probably don’t make a car sized one yet which is a problem since every new car ships with a 4g chip these days that can’t be easily switched off.

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