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

wsj.com

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

#361

Post by Cogito »

lrvick wrote: post #344
arbuge wrote: post #55

More detail here: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/25/spacex-and-t-mobile-team-up-... "T-Mobile users will be able to use messaging, MMS and certain messaging apps, from remote points across the lower 48 states, Alaska, Puerto Rico and Hawaii and even some remote points in the water. Eventually, the service will work with voice, Sievert said. T-Mobile plans to include the service in its most popular mobile plans but did…

Certain messaging apps... All bets are on centralized and/or proprietary ones that can afford to pay for the privilege. I have been saying from day one that Starlink is well poised to end net neutrality.

At the event they addressed this, and said they would work with anyone, and that the real issue is making sure that the data is correctly identified as messages and not generic data. This apparently would require back-end work between T-Mobile and the messaging app to identify the data in some way.

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

#362

Post by rkangel »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #301
mwint wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(How) Does beamforming work in a moving device?

I'm not an expert, but I believe a receiving radio can make note of the relative phase of the incoming signal across all antennas, and then simply transmit its signal with the same phase offsets. This can happen incredibly quickly on the time scale of milliseconds, and so the typical device really isn't moving that quickly to matter. I believe modern wifi has periodic "sounding packets" specifically designed for devi…

This is all roughly right except that when you say "incredibly quickly on the time scale of milliseconds" it's often actually microseconds.

This sort of work is done either in custom hardware or FPGAs - that's the only way you can precisely control the phase offset of signals (and measure it). They can respond very quickly.

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

#363

Post by rocqua »

arbuge wrote: post #55

More detail here: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/25/spacex-and-t-mobile-team-up-... "T-Mobile users will be able to use messaging, MMS and certain messaging apps, from remote points across the lower 48 states, Alaska, Puerto Rico and Hawaii and even some remote points in the water. Eventually, the service will work with voice, Sievert said. T-Mobile plans to include the service in its most popular mobile plans but did…

The quotes here are only about transmitting to cellphones, not about receiving from cellphones. Is uplink also a part of the plan?

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

#364

Post by KaiserPro »

thepasswordis wrote: post #259
vlovich123 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your existing Tesla can do FSD with its current sensor package. Any day now.

My current Tesla started doing FSD almost a year ago.

My 2009 kia rio has FSD too, and like the tesla, it won't stop for children in FSD mode

(note the FSD mode here is basically a brick on the accelerator)

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

#366

Post by lrvick »

Cogito wrote: post #361
lrvick wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certain messaging apps... All bets are on centralized and/or proprietary ones that can afford to pay for the privilege. I have been saying from day one that Starlink is well poised to end net neutrality.

At the event they addressed this, and said they would work with anyone, and that the real issue is making sure that the data is correctly identified as messages and not generic data. This apparently would require back-end work between T-Mobile and the messaging app to identify the data in some way.

This is a net neutrality killer any way you look at it as whitelisting apps in any way will by design mean blocking legitimate privacy focused messaging solutions that do not have fixed IP addresses or identifiable traffic patterns.

I somehow doubt for instance they would have a way to allow a federated and often self-hosted messaging protocol like Matrix over an anonymization networking layer like Tor, which is the only chat solution I use.

Breaking net neutrality even a little bit has consequences like creating network effects further favoring centralized solutions forcing vulnerable people like journalists, dissidents, female healthcare seekers, etc, to take on a lot more risk.

If SpaceX has bandwidth limitations they should cap everyone to dialup speeds and keep it neutral.

If they insist on breaking net neutrality, people like me will be forced to do stupid nonsense like piping arbitrary TCP/IP as base64 blobs via chatbots over some whitelisted app like Whatsapp. Or masquerade traffic as port 53 DNS queries like dnstunnel.

Protocol/app whitelisting will most discriminate against those with low technical ability.

We have been down this road.

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

#367

Post by jacquesm »

signatoremo wrote: post #279
jacquesm wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us here would dream of being that effective. He's a jerk though, that's the part the world could do without and with him now firmly in the Trump camp we'll see what kind of long term misery will come from that. I can't stand it when immigrants into a country become champions for the anti-immigration party, it's the moral equivalent of kicking the door shut behind you.

He is not a champion for anti immigration. Where did you get that impression? Musk is also not in Trump’s camp [0]. He is centrist and libertarian, and he doesn’t have to cater to any particular political party. [0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-12/musk-says...

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1526997132858822658?lang...

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

#368

Post by Cogito »

lrvick wrote: post #366
Cogito wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the event they addressed this, and said they would work with anyone, and that the real issue is making sure that the data is correctly identified as messages and not generic data. This apparently would require back-end work between T-Mobile and the messaging app to identify the data in some way.

This is a net neutrality killer any way you look at it as whitelisting apps in any way will by design mean blocking legitimate privacy focused messaging solutions that do not have fixed IP addresses or identifiable traffic patterns. I somehow doubt for instance they would have a way to allow a federated and often self-hosted messaging protocol like Matrix over an anonymization networking layer like Tor, which is the…

I mean, sort of?

I believe they have some sort of similar solution in place for free messaging on in-flight wifi. Having a look at how they've done that might give a better idea for what this will look like than speculation.

Still, it's a hard problem. They want to prioritise connectivity on an extremely low bit-rate channel that covers an extremely large geographic region. Messaging apps needs to be a part of that connectivity solution, but you can't have one user making the entire cell unusable by everybody else. I don't know if there is a 'net neutral' way to do that, but would love to hear your ideas.

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

#369

Post by samstave »

boredpudding wrote: post #347
palata wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPS satellites broadcast data, and the GPS receivers (e.g. your phone) only receive. That means that they are completely invisible to the satellites. You are tracked on your phone because it is connected to the Internet somehow, so it can send your location. But with only a GPS receiver (my Garmin running watch for instance), you are completely invisible.

I'm aware of this. I was commenting on the > Think you can be in an RF free zone, anywhere on planet? Nope. It seems OP wants to be 'signal free'. Which, since GPS is already not happening anywhere on the planet.

Everybody seems to focus on the RF free comment...

I was talking about towers and such.

But I really appreciate the comments.

If you have ever been in remote areas, and intrinsically 'felt' a disconnect from the tech world (meaning not near any major RF transducers) let me know...

because I have been super remote (arctic circle) etc a bunch and also remote jungle, and I feel a difference.

Perhaps placebo mental conditioning, but just curious if anyone else felt the same effect??

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

#370

Post by Neil44 »

memco wrote: post #147
trillic wrote: post #44

Anecdotally, 5G is significantly better at line of sight at significant distances than previous technology. While sailing 40+ miles offshore this summer, I've gotten 5G on deck, with decent upload performance using my iPhone, when in years previous I didn't get coverage much beyond 12 miles anywhere around where I sail, despite there being tall buildings with cell towers on them with a 30+ mile horizon for at least 2…

I’m booking a cruise on which they’re asking $200 for five days of data. This would be helpful if we were too far off shore to get reception to avoid such high fees. Starlink itself currently offers service to ships at a cost of $5000/mo. plus $10,000 for the hardware. This could save a lot of money where a simple mobile data plan would suffice.

I took a cruise last week where they wanted 25$ a day per device for internet. I took a little battery powered 4G dongle to leave on the balcony to give our room wifi which worked quite well even when land was barely in sight. Of course the land had to be on our side of the ship.
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