The Ku/Ka band antenna's used by other providers are quite significant in size. https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/gogo-2ku-inflight-wi... https://twitter.com/jonostrower/status/466228743522893824
If I was an airline considering this, I'd want to see $/km fuel costs from the extra air resistance in the sales brochure...
Manufacturers are very good at these calculations.
One interesting example is that for the initial IFE systems that were deployed, the heat generated by the displays was significant enough that the largest cost to the installation was the required upgrade to the cabin air conditioning systems.
Elon Musk has a strong vision for environmentally friendly means of transportation, and I don't think that is currently possible with planes.
> environmentally friendly means of transportation Hate to break it to you but displacing three tonnes of metal and batteries to move your 80kg ass to Walmart isn't environmentally friendly in any way
If the energy to build and power the batteries all came from sunlight then why not?
It says 350 Mbps per plane. How much does it translate to per seat? Say if all passengers start a video call or a S̶t̶a̶d̶i̶a̶ Nvidia GE force game, then?
Using the current fleet of Delta Air Lines as an example[0], they average ~180 seats per plane. If everyone on the plane was using the internet then that would be 1.9 Mbps per passenger. GeForce Now requires 15 Mbps for 720p 60fps[1]. If there was no other internet usage then 350 Mbps could support 23 15 Mbps streams.
Slightly off-topic. I hate that internet is becoming more common on flights. One of my favorite things about flying is that it's a good chunk of time where you disconnect and don't worry about emails or messages. Just sit back and watch a movie or listen to music. Or catch up on sleep.
To be fair, I fly about 30 times per year, and in the last ten years, I've found that the in-flight wifi actually worked approximately once.
I have the same flight stats and I have only had to ask for a refund once because it straight up didn’t work for most of the flight. Many airlines have very usable internet now, some even for free (jetBlue).
I fly jetBlue a fair amount and the free Wi-Fi is a joke
> Like sending Ukraine "free" base stations and charging them $4,500 a month for service. Are there any alternatives? Nope. Also, let's not talk about how SpaceX "should" sponge up the costs, because you would not ask Lockheed Martin or Raytheon Technologies to do that. Compared to regular prices of military hardware, Starlink costs nothing.
To get any credit for 'charity' we should at least look at the nominal cost to service a particular base station instead of the cost to make Starlink profitable. For the former I only really see the bandwidth costs because the base stations are part of Starlink's normal operation and all of the satellites are up there anyways.
Yeah. I mean, from SpaceX's perspective they're perfectly entitled to try to get the US government to underwrite general operational costs as well; any other supplier is going to do the same thing (albeit not on Twitter...), and Starlink could certainly use the additional funds because the whole network is pre-profit. But that doesn't mean that if the US government doesn't fund everything they ask for the Ukraine service is a philanthropic endeavour. Lots of marginal costs are being unwritten and (again, ignoring Twitter) SpaceX is getting a lot of PR benefit and stress testing from doing it.
Interesting. Is it based on 4G/5G or something ad-hoc?
It's basically LTE in the 2.4 GHz band, with a load of extra bits for beam forming, coping with speed and distance etc. Using the 2.4 GHz band allows them to build a network covering the US without spending billions on spectrum. Yes, it's the same 2.4GHz ISM band that wifi uses, with the same power limits. And yes, it works well enough that you can do video calls hundreds of kilometres from the base station. That's h…
Interesting. Is it based on 4G/5G or something ad-hoc?
It's basically LTE in the 2.4 GHz band, with a load of extra bits for beam forming, coping with speed and distance etc. Using the 2.4 GHz band allows them to build a network covering the US without spending billions on spectrum. Yes, it's the same 2.4GHz ISM band that wifi uses, with the same power limits. And yes, it works well enough that you can do video calls hundreds of kilometres from the base station. That's h…
> That's how shit wifi
Seems like you know a bit about this. Could you indulge my curiosity and elaborate why wifi is shit? I assume some combo of DSP bottleneck (i.e. want to keep hw cheap) and maintaining backwards compatibility with older standards?
To be fair you can always choose to disconnect for a period of time. I understand if your job expects you to be online when possible but if you have difficulty disconnecting without an external pressure to be online you could consider talking to a therapist to help you manage your reliance, especially if it's bothering you significantly.
Flights are/were a universally understood, no-questions-asked excuse for someone to be offline. That's the nice thing about them.
If the only reason you're allowed to be offline is because you're on a flight, i think there's much bigger problems that need sorting.
To be fair, I fly about 30 times per year, and in the last ten years, I've found that the in-flight wifi actually worked approximately once.
I fly a lot too and that (assuming this is not a joke) seems abnormally low. I agree it is often not worth it though. Reasons not to use in-flight wifi: * It might be broken, but the credit card processing for some reason works fine. * If you are on a short haul flight, it's going to be disconnected for takeoff/landing so you will get a solid 30m * If you are on an international flight, it often stops work once you a…
> * If you are on a short haul flight, it's going to be disconnected for takeoff/landing so you will get a solid 30m
I worked on inflight wifi for Qantas, where they share the highest trafficked route in the world - the 60 minute light between Sydney and Melbourne. It was a huge win for the project when we got clearance to enable wifi on the ground for takeoff.