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Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

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Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#131

Post by biotopia »

WhereIsTheTruth wrote: post #107
berserk1010 wrote: post #11

I wonder if this service will facilitate collapse of censorship in dictatorship countries like China and Russia. Especially if those countries are currently suffering from economic depression like China and Russia, and its citizens are waking up to its harsh realities and are keen to get unfiltered information

> Especially if those countries are currently suffering from economic depression like China You seem to ask a question to push a narrative rather than by curiosity https://www.reuters.com/world/china/imf-upgrades-chinas-2023... ~5% growth when the west is contracting, specially Germany and the US is quite the feat, what's happening in the Red Sea didn't even hurt that forecast Have you seen the forecast for most EU c…

that 5% growth is just a fantasy number made up by the Chinese government, and parroted by other institutions like world trade bank. No way the 5% growth is real when FDI has fallen all the way from 344B in 2021 to 15B!! in 2023. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-chinese-fdi-inflows.... Global investors like Blackrock and Vanguard obviously know the real financial truths. When Chinese youth suffers from 46.5% unofficial unemployment rate https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-real-youth-unemploymen.... When a large shadow bank with $65B in debt just declared bankruptcy https://fortune.com/asia/2024/01/08/zhongzhi-china-shadow-ba....

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#132

Post by concordDance »

alterego2 wrote: post #41
berserk1010 wrote: post #11

I wonder if this service will facilitate collapse of censorship in dictatorship countries like China and Russia. Especially if those countries are currently suffering from economic depression like China and Russia, and its citizens are waking up to its harsh realities and are keen to get unfiltered information

It will not. Don't know about China, but Russian citizens already have almost unfiltered access to information. The only major western media outlet currently blocked in Russia is BBC. Anyone can read pretty much anything else - Reuters, Newsweek, CNN, whatever - right from their phones. Access to information is not the problem (at least for now). It is trivial to get access to uncensored news for anyone with a modicu…

Interestingly, most (all?) UK providers block RT, so it's pretty symmetrical.

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#133

Post by KomoD »

concordDance wrote: post #132
alterego2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will not. Don't know about China, but Russian citizens already have almost unfiltered access to information. The only major western media outlet currently blocked in Russia is BBC. Anyone can read pretty much anything else - Reuters, Newsweek, CNN, whatever - right from their phones. Access to information is not the problem (at least for now). It is trivial to get access to uncensored news for anyone with a modicu…

Interestingly, most (all?) UK providers block RT, so it's pretty symmetrical.

Just on DNS level, or?

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#134

Post by Podgajski »

lxgr wrote: post #83
modeless wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that Apple's capability is similar. The feature only allows texting emergency services, requires holding the phone in a specific orientation to send or receive, is separate from your carrier service (only two years are free with purchase), and is exceedingly slow. SpaceX's service will allow texting and receiving texts from anyone using your carrier number, plans to support third party messaging apps such…

Elon has mentioned a speed of about 7 Mbit/s for an entire cell (which in these systems usually means a circle with a radius of a few hundred kilometers). That's within an order of magnitude of current LEO systems. The innovation here is that it'll supposedly work with unmodified off-the-shelf phones. (Personally I'm assuming that at least messaging software will have to be modified in order to use the available band…

From what I understand the cell is about 13 km².

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#135

Post by eternityforest »

lxgr wrote: post #123
modeless wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I expect that SpaceX will start supporting voice calls with this system in the not too distant future, so maybe that will make it work automatically. Unless the telcos can get their act together before then and change their standards to support text-to-911 without a service agreement.

That would be great, but in addition to network-side changes it would definitely require changes to existing baseband firmware as well – i.e. it's not happening for existing phones.

Is the baseband firmware not updatable?

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#136

Post by eternityforest »

tuatoru wrote: post #85
dave78 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are huge portions of the USA that have no cell coverage. Often the kinds of places that people go to hike and explore - and also places that people sometimes get injured. I'm sure that's true in many other countries as well. I know people who volunteer for search & rescue teams, and they all universally believe that this kind of thing definitely will save lives. The smart thing to do if you were going somewhere…

> The smart thing to do if you were going somewhere remote would be to have a Personal locator beacon, PLB, on land; or an EPIRB, emergency position indicating radio beacon, on ocean. Satphones and cell phones are luxuries but these are vital. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_position-indicating_...

PLBs are not cheap, used ones cost at least $100, 100x more than most people are willing to spend on safety (How many people have no emergency water at home?).

I don't understand how anyone could regularly go hiking out of cell range without one though. Some commenters seem to actively like being that disconnected I suppose.

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#137

Post by tjohns »

modeless wrote: post #7
extheat wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume this works like traditional cellular roaming, no? So this would mean you have to be a customer of one of the service providers to get reciprocated roaming capabilities abroad.

Yes, you would need service with one of the partners to get roaming on all of them. Although on terrestrial networks in the US at least 911 service is supposed to work even on phones without any carrier plan. Maybe they can eventually work it out so that texting emergency services works on any phone anywhere globally even without service. That would be a great achievement for humanity.

Texting 911 via satellite usually involves a relay through a private monitoring company (like GEOS), who then places a voice call to local emergency departments on your behalf to activate SAR.

With satellite based SOS, there's no guarantee that the local 911 can support texts, or even that there's an equivalent to 911 (think calling from Antarctica or the middle of the ocean).

It's complicated and relatively expensive to coordinate - which means it's unlikely they can open this up for phones without a plan. (Compare with traditional cellular 911, which is all government funded.) The US Air Force RCC does this as a taxpayer-funded service for PLBs, but they don't support any private satellite services.

Long-winded way of saying there's a lot that would need to change on the backend and funding model to make that work without being tied to a paid cellular plan.

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#138

Post by [deleted] »

tuatoru wrote: post #85
dave78 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are huge portions of the USA that have no cell coverage. Often the kinds of places that people go to hike and explore - and also places that people sometimes get injured. I'm sure that's true in many other countries as well. I know people who volunteer for search & rescue teams, and they all universally believe that this kind of thing definitely will save lives. The smart thing to do if you were going somewhere…

> The smart thing to do if you were going somewhere remote would be to have a Personal locator beacon, PLB, on land; or an EPIRB, emergency position indicating radio beacon, on ocean. Satphones and cell phones are luxuries but these are vital. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_position-indicating_...

[deleted]

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#139

Post by forgot-im-old »

Podgajski wrote: post #134
lxgr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon has mentioned a speed of about 7 Mbit/s for an entire cell (which in these systems usually means a circle with a radius of a few hundred kilometers). That's within an order of magnitude of current LEO systems. The innovation here is that it'll supposedly work with unmodified off-the-shelf phones. (Personally I'm assuming that at least messaging software will have to be modified in order to use the available band…

From what I understand the cell is about 13 km².

13km diameter.. which is about 133km².
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