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IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

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Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#21

Post by inglor_cz »

k__ wrote: post #15
inglor_cz wrote: post #2

[flagged]

I hope it gets a bit better now that Germany got rid of it's conservative government.

The SPD is every as bit as psychologically conservative as the CDU/CSU, a party of the 65+ electorate and 65+ membership.

The FDP and the Greens are the more modern ones, but there is an anti-tech undercurrent in the Green party that distrusts anything industrial. The space industry has a nontrivial carbon trace; its development in Germany would be, at the very least, pretty controversial.

Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#23

Post by baq »

inglor_cz wrote: post #13
baq wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody has seen what Starlink does in Ukraine. Expect similar initiatives from China, India and Russia (once the shitshow is over.) Heck the Pentagon probably has a plan B in the drawer for a Starlink-like constellation dated fall 2022 should Musk go more unhinged that he already is. LEO constellations went from ‘interesting’ to ‘paradigm shift’ overnight, nothing to be surprised about.

I certainly do believe that there will be initiatives , but I am really curious about their results . One of the necessities is cheap access to the orbit, and I just cannot see the national behemoth space agencies developing economic, reusable rockets. The traditional rocket industry in the US was unable to do that either.

Oh I agree. But now the situation is quite different: the impractical became necessary, both in cheap launch capacity and leo comms infrastructure. They must make it happen.

Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#24

Post by luckylion »

gizmo wrote: post #4

> This future satellite constellation infrastructure will allow for synergies with private sector to develop commercial services and provide with high-speed internet and communication in all EU territory. Satellite internet isn’t great for speed. Europe is also so densely populated that full 4g coverage is totally doable. I think satellite internet is cool, but it doesn’t serve a real need and I expect this project t…

> Europe is also so densely populated that full 4g coverage is totally doable.

Broadband via fiber (fine, let's save money and use VDSL for the last mile) is totally doable for the population centers. But we can't even manage that reliably at scale.

In Germany, mobile internet of any speed gets spotty once you're outside of the cities. It's just a sad state of affairs.

Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#25

Post by fooker »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #22
inglor_cz wrote: post #2

[flagged]

My latest smartphone is mostly EU with Taiwanese manufacturing. It's the best phone I've used yet. The only thing Google adds is branding. True enough about search engines though.

>The only thing Google adds is branding.

Which phone is this?

Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#26

Post by ben_w »

gizmo wrote: post #4

> This future satellite constellation infrastructure will allow for synergies with private sector to develop commercial services and provide with high-speed internet and communication in all EU territory. Satellite internet isn’t great for speed. Europe is also so densely populated that full 4g coverage is totally doable. I think satellite internet is cool, but it doesn’t serve a real need and I expect this project t…

There are a lot of places with surprisingly poor mobile coverage even inside the Berlin city limits.

I think one way Starlink could massively improve the digital infrastructure here is to be a demonstration that it's possible to be better; the existence proofs of other nations doesn't have the same emotional valence as the existence proof of your coworker.

Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#27

Post by peterfirefly »

inglor_cz wrote: post #7
kybernetyk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is due to massive, shaping French influence on the EU. There are many relatively market-friendly nations in the EU, especially in the eastern half, but the EU is mostly an extension of the French model and without the British, it really started leaning heavily into the protectionist bureaucratic model. The UK acted as a brake of sorts on those tendencies and its influence is sorely missed, at least by people lik…

> This is due to massive, shaping French influence on the EU.

True. I still think Thierry Breton does a really good job, though, despite being French. Sylvie Goulard would have been a disaster -- she couldn't even speak English!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvie_Goulard

(The wiki page lies and says she speaks English -- no, she really doesn't. Her German is pretty good, though.)

I think a modest proposal for curb stomping the bad French influence in the EU is to have all EU civil servants retake their entrance exams in another language if they originally took it in French. We should also form an alliance to automatically reject Commissioner candidates who 1) don't speak English and 2) speak French at the confirmation hearings in the European Parliament.

Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#29

Post by inglor_cz »

ChemSpider wrote: post #20
inglor_cz wrote: post #2

[flagged]

> and if it wasn't for a few outliers in Scandinavia and the Baltics, it would be negligible I agree that Estonia is doing great and a role model in many ways, but the by far biggest EU software company is still German: SAP Also, have a look at the very successful ELISE AI initiative: https://www.elise-ai.eu/

SAP is also 51 years old. There is no shortage of big, old companies in Germany. There is a visible shortage of successful young companies.

In my comment edit, I mentioned the 20 year limit specifically, because the ossification in last decades is real. The US generates a lot more startups, even the London scene is livelier than the rest of Europe taken together.

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