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Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

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Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#91

Post by svnt »

internetblimp wrote: post #23
svnt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is weird what happens when you privatize so much and then find out too late it isn’t profitable for companies to have fleets of emergency internet blimps primed and ready to go 24/7.

https://www.domusweb.it/en/sustainable-cities/gallery/2023/1... funny cause sergey is building exactly that - private companies for the win :)

So someone who doesn’t need to make money is building blimps to revolutionize air transport and you are proposing that company is going to then halt business during storms and travel to and float over hurricane recovery areas?

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#92

Post by threeseed »

silisili wrote: post #37
realce wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're mostly getting the hardware for free. No. Ordering this costs $320 and takes 1-2 weeks. They even charge for shipping and handling. By the time you get this, internet and cell service will most likely be re-established. I live 20 miles outside of Asheville, this is basically profiteering off a disaster imo. Much easier for the richest man on Earth to simply install a hundred base stations himself. Instead,…

To be clear, I didn't mean for free from Starlink, I meant free via donation. I follow a half dozen accounts in the area, and they're all donating a lot. Here is one, for example. Ignore the politics and just scroll through the Starlink posts - https://x.com/robbystarbuck Here's another that claims Starlink drove the units straight out. Unclear if they were free or not. https://x.com/TheShawnHendrix/status/1841823155…

[flagged]

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#93

Post by vel0city »

willcipriano wrote: post #57
neveroddoreven wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this even enforced? Don't you have plausible deniability by claiming you just wanted to send high entropy random noise?

Ham radio people are Lawful Good types. Your Chaotic Good idea isn't well recieved by them. No way there is any ability to enforce that law in a disaster zone, they have enough trouble with looting and the like.

People abusing the airwaves with noise aren't chaotic good.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#94

Post by rtkwe »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #24
jagtstronaut wrote: post #17

Despite the hate on the promo the tech they offer is still pretty cool. Only way I knew my in-laws were safe near Asheville was because one of their neighbors had starlink and a generator. Took a week for them to get power and cell phone service back and there is no way to get to them without a helicopter so if it wasn't for the product we would have just learned that they were alright.

To ask a tech question: how much capacity does Starlink have? If every single person in US rural areas switches to Starlink, can the system handle it? What's the bandwidth/customers/capacity limit for the service? (I'm obviously not talking about emergencies, where degraded bandwidth is acceptable.)

No they're already added a one time "congestion charge" of $100 dollars to some (unspecified afaik) areas to try to lower the demand. Or cynically maybe it's a profit taking maneuver get more money out of areas where it's most popular. I tend towards the former personally.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#95

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #24
jagtstronaut wrote: post #17

Despite the hate on the promo the tech they offer is still pretty cool. Only way I knew my in-laws were safe near Asheville was because one of their neighbors had starlink and a generator. Took a week for them to get power and cell phone service back and there is no way to get to them without a helicopter so if it wasn't for the product we would have just learned that they were alright.

To ask a tech question: how much capacity does Starlink have? If every single person in US rural areas switches to Starlink, can the system handle it? What's the bandwidth/customers/capacity limit for the service? (I'm obviously not talking about emergencies, where degraded bandwidth is acceptable.)

It depends how you define rural of course.

Starlink could pretty easily serve everyone whose only current option is 4G/5G/DSL/Satellite.

Basically everywhere where there is no Fiber or Cable. That's still a decent chunk of the population.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#96

Post by Retric »

CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #71
colechristensen wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if that kind of information is public. Starlink is continually adding new satellites, and each one adds bandwidth capability. Likewise with end user ground station hardware updates and spectrum purchases (at least the former is happening on a regular basis), capacity likewise goes up. I don't believe there is a theoretical or practical upper limit which would exclude very wide adoption of Starlink and si…

5G is going exactly the opposite way to provide higher bandwidth, more cells with each less users. With satellite internet you're sharing the medium with everyone, and that doesn't scale well. Beamforming probably helps a lot, but I don't how accurate it can be on that distance.

You can have essentially unlimited satellites the issue is the percentage of time each one spends over high density areas.

Design for NYC density and 99% of satellites would be redundant at any given moment. The solution for increasing density is dropping costs so it’s viable for satellites to be idle 95% of the time. At least as a first approximation, there’s some tricks with how you setup orbits after the basic network is done.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#97

Post by huijzer »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #53
matthewdgreen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To ask a tech question: how much capacity does Starlink have? If every single person in US rural areas switches to Starlink, can the system handle it? What's the bandwidth/customers/capacity limit for the service? (I'm obviously not talking about emergencies, where degraded bandwidth is acceptable.)

The bandwidth is limited on a per-cell basis, somewhere around 700Gbps max per cell. Actual capacity at any time is somewhat less. If everyone is actively using theirs, you might get single digit Mbps or less at cell capacity limits, even if there aren't bottlenecks elsewhere. It's fine , but it's highly dependent on having extremely low customer density. The system doesn't work well if everyone is using it all the t…

Oversubscription is also an issue on wired networks. It might be a problem but usually you shouldn’t notice; on wired at least.

What is your extremely low customer density source? In theory they could reduce beam size and throw more satellites in space. How much they can handle is up for speculation, but your “extremely low” claim could use a source.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#98

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

realce wrote: post #35
silisili wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're mostly getting the hardware for free. A lot of people in TN and elsewhere are delivering and installing Starlink units for free to the disaster areas(more than the US govt), and begging Elon for free service. Seems like he or someone at Starlink was listening.

> They're mostly getting the hardware for free. No. Ordering this costs $320 and takes 1-2 weeks. They even charge for shipping and handling. By the time you get this, internet and cell service will most likely be re-established. I live 20 miles outside of Asheville, this is basically profiteering off a disaster imo. Much easier for the richest man on Earth to simply install a hundred base stations himself. Instead,…

You don't need to wait weeks. My local home depot has 9 in stock with dozens more nearby.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#99

Post by throwaway984393 »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #53
matthewdgreen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To ask a tech question: how much capacity does Starlink have? If every single person in US rural areas switches to Starlink, can the system handle it? What's the bandwidth/customers/capacity limit for the service? (I'm obviously not talking about emergencies, where degraded bandwidth is acceptable.)

The bandwidth is limited on a per-cell basis, somewhere around 700Gbps max per cell. Actual capacity at any time is somewhat less. If everyone is actively using theirs, you might get single digit Mbps or less at cell capacity limits, even if there aren't bottlenecks elsewhere. It's fine , but it's highly dependent on having extremely low customer density. The system doesn't work well if everyone is using it all the t…

Yep, in a few years these dishes will be $600 paperweights. We need real rural broadband.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#100

Post by Spivak »

hammock wrote: post #85
jagtstronaut wrote: post #17

Despite the hate on the promo the tech they offer is still pretty cool. Only way I knew my in-laws were safe near Asheville was because one of their neighbors had starlink and a generator. Took a week for them to get power and cell phone service back and there is no way to get to them without a helicopter so if it wasn't for the product we would have just learned that they were alright.

>Despite the hate on the promo What does "hate on the promo" mean?

Offering a "30 day free trial" doesn't really feel like a gift as much as it's an ad for the service trying to onboard customers. It's not a bad thing per se, just kind of in poor taste.
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