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Starlink Aviation

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Re: Starlink Aviation

#451

Post by deelowe »

blitzar wrote: post #413
zaroth wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The base stations were never free - they were subsidized by various sources. But that $4,500 a month is insanely cheap and an absolutely incredible value for Ukraine. The media loves to whip up a frenzy over Musk, but Ukrainian commanders on the front have said Starlink is the single biggest advantage they have, their efficacy would drop by more than half without it, and even, they’d rather have more Starlink than mo…

> that $4,500 a month is insanely cheap and an absolutely incredible value for Ukraine "I have bought over 50 StarLinks, with official prices right from the website in EU countries - Poland, CZ, Germany - like 400-500 bucks each, then enable portability for extra IIRC 50$, then payed monthly fee of 60$ (was 120$ before). It’s the same for everyone else in EU" Dimko Zhluktenko, the head of Dzuga’s Paw charity fund, tw…

Regular joe seems to be donating the typical residential units on residential plans. My understanding is that the military set up is different, especially in terms of support/priority.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#452

Post by rkangel »

cptskippy wrote: post #447
rkangel wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is, and how well this stuff works. That's not really fair. Their solution requires knowing the exact location of the base station and the client at all times. It's significantly more complex and expensive than Wifi.

Obviously it's more complicated and expensive - the radio hardware is massively more capable.

Also, you're not entirely correct about how the system works.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#453

Post by infofarmer »

zokier wrote: post #400

Sure, airplanes are neat, but can we get good internet also on trains? Regular 4G/LTE doesn't work that great inside a metal box going 250km/h through countryside packed with hundreds of bored people wanting to use internet, nevermind all the EMI that the train might generate.

Anecdotally, in China, 4G and 5G work quite decently on high-speed rail up to 300 km/h, and Shanghai maglev at 400 km/h. For publicity Huawei demonstrated sustained 40 Mbit/s on the maglev back in 2010 and they did similar stunts in 2019 for 5G.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#454

Post by chatterhead »

mlindner wrote: post #224
chatterhead wrote: post #163

> No long term contracts What? lol Listen, if I'm paying you a 1 time fee of $150K you better be contractually obligated to provide my expensive ass internet each and every month I want it.

Some charter aircraft may sit on the ground for some time so having flexibility to start and stop the service seems useful.

Then you don't need low latency internet like that unless you only use your plane for real-time spying.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#455

Post by rtkwe »

oceanplexian wrote: post #445
rtkwe wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t agree because bandwidth isn’t the only part of nominal operations in a war zone. You’re also painting a bright red target on your back for the highly sophisticated state actors (On the level that they might bribe or threaten employees, try to infiltrate the company, etc.) If I were SpaceX I wouldn’t want any part of it.

Those are all things they should already be guarding against though for the most part and definitely not a cost incurred per unit. If they're not already doing tons of work to secure against malicious employees they're a joke of an ISP to begin with.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#456

Post by rockemsockem »

FireBeyond wrote: post #116
zuhayeer wrote: post #100

Once upon a time, all plane transmissions were pretty much air to ground. As inconsequential as it may seem, the positioning of antennas above the plane are a bit metaphoric for flipping things up side down. Looking out into space instead of back to earth. Also notable that SpaceX keeps finding these cool (revenue generating) use cases to further cheapen the cost of sending things up to space. Pretty much dogfooding…

> In-flight wifi (and otherwise all other transmissions) have pretty much always been air to ground This has not been the case for several years. Most in flight Wifi is now being provided by Viasat which, as the name suggests, is air to space. Even Gogo started rolling out satellite service in 2015. Very few services are now air-to-ground. Random pictures: https://i.stack.imgur.com/I7Yfd.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.n…

I flew across the Pacific on Alaska Airlines last month and they specifically said they'd only have Internet until we left the continental US. Most of the trip had no Internet, just the in-flight movies that you can stream over their wifi.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#457

Post by segmondy »

kilroy123 wrote: post #350

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.

No one is forcing you to connect, next time you fly. sit back, watch a movie, listen to music then sleep.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#458

Post by mytailorisrich »

rkangel wrote: post #423
mytailorisrich wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks. That sounds like the standard approach.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#459

Post by throwaway894345 »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #414
lxgr wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There‘s a new hybrid system in Europe called EAN, based on a specialized LTE network and an S-band satellite to fill in gaps in coverage (mostly over the oceans). I recently got to use it, and as expected latency is significantly better than on a pure GEO system.

Gogo is also working on an air-to-ground 4G/5G network covering the continental US. The thing is that once Starlink has the service working, and they have, it does not require a lot of extra investment to support ships and aircrafts. On the other hand, an air-to-ground system requires a full cellular network on the ground (at the very least with dedicated RF and antennas), although with fewer sites because cells can…

> it does not require a lot of extra investment to support ships and aircrafts.

Are you sure about that? I have a friend who worked in airspace comms his whole career (including at Gogo) and he described some of the challenges of the engineering problem (these systems have to be airgapped from the critical systems on the plane, the certification processes, the antennas have to be super highly directional to talk with satelites high overhead while both the plane and the satellite are moving at tremendous speed, etc). Maybe your "not a lot of extra investment" is relative, but it seems like there's still a bunch of work to make these things work on planes.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#460

Post by bombcar »

rockemsockem wrote: post #456
FireBeyond wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In-flight wifi (and otherwise all other transmissions) have pretty much always been air to ground This has not been the case for several years. Most in flight Wifi is now being provided by Viasat which, as the name suggests, is air to space. Even Gogo started rolling out satellite service in 2015. Very few services are now air-to-ground. Random pictures: https://i.stack.imgur.com/I7Yfd.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.n…

I flew across the Pacific on Alaska Airlines last month and they specifically said they'd only have Internet until we left the continental US. Most of the trip had no Internet, just the in-flight movies that you can stream over their wifi.

Depending on the satellite provider, they may still be using satellite and still only work over the continental US. Even starlink basically bounces the signal off a satellite and down to a ground station; this doesn't work over the ocean. They just started doing satellite to satellite links to get "back to land".
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