Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Starlink Direct to Cell

starlink.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 831 posts

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#21

Post by sebzim4500 »

grecy wrote: post #13
innagadadavida wrote: post #7

Doesn’t Globestar still have more satellites in orbit? With Apple supporting them, hoping there will be some consumer choice. This looking like regular cellular will become the new landline company.

Globestar have 48 Satellites in orbit [1] Starlink has 6,426 [2] (Though that number is likely out of date by the time you read this) [1] https://www.groundcontrol.com/knowledge/calculators-and-maps... [2] https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html

I think his point is that most Starlink satellites do not have this technology, but he's probably still wrong quantitatively.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#22

Post by inglor_cz »

yfw wrote: post #8

[flagged]

There are about 6 thousand Starlink satellites out there and their total count may grow to some 40 thousand in the future.

But even if we abstracted the LEO to just one sphere, it would be quite a bit BIGGER than the Earth alone.

If 40 thousand, say, small cars were distributed across the entire globe including oceans, would you call the result "unsustainable pollution"? In fact, compared to what we live in today, such a world would be positively pristine. We are used to having 40 thousand cars in every city of 80 thousand people, which is usually just a small dot on the map.

Space is big. Even near-Earth orbits are mindbogglingly huge. Even if there were millions of satellites on low Earth orbits, that space would still be several nines of vacuum.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#23

Post by rootusrootus »

bhauer wrote: post #3

I switched to T-Mobile at the last upgrade interval because of this. My family looks forward to no longer relying on Garmin InReach devices when out hiking.

Why switch carriers for that, you can get the same functionality built-in to iPhones and it's not dependent on carrier.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#24

Post by christophilus »

Retric wrote: post #16
charliebwrites wrote: post #6

I wish I could pay Starlink directly and have global satellite based LTE instead of having to go through a specific carrier and be limited by other carriers’ reciprocity to specific countries and bands One space based cell plan for the whole world

It’s not going to work inside buildings, and they would need to charge you a fairly astronomical fee per minute. However, a Starlink mini dish can let you cheaply make calls from basically anywhere with some minor setup.

> astronomical fee

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#26

Post by nordsieck »

hackernewds wrote: post #10
charliebwrites wrote: post #6

I wish I could pay Starlink directly and have global satellite based LTE instead of having to go through a specific carrier and be limited by other carriers’ reciprocity to specific countries and bands One space based cell plan for the whole world

It will happen over time

> It will happen over time

I'm optimistic.

I think that, once SpaceX starts launch Starlink satellites with Starship, they'll be able to increase their globally available bandwidth by a factor of 5-10x (although it might take 5 years to roll out). A lot of that bandwidth will be eaten up by existing demand. But hopefully some of it will enable novel services like global cell service through a single provider (even if it's limited to low bandwidth applications like text and voice).

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#27

Post by goda90 »

lupusreal wrote: post #15
yfw wrote: post #8

[flagged]

You don't have a clue what you're talking about, so from what did you derive these harsh feelings? Starlink satellites are in LEO, without active boosting they decay in mere years.

A decayed satellite doesn't just disappear though. There's particulate pollution from it burning up, not to mention the pollution from rocket launches.

There's also the light pollution that the astronomy community has been complaining about for years.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#28

Post by hipadev23 »

bhauer wrote: post #3

I switched to T-Mobile at the last upgrade interval because of this. My family looks forward to no longer relying on Garmin InReach devices when out hiking.

I'd still carry an old-school PLB (not a satellite messenger subscription service) for the enduring battery-life, ruggedness, and reliability when it matters. And use LTE-Starlink for the basic non-urgent but super convenient communication needs.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#29

Post by grecy »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #21
grecy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globestar have 48 Satellites in orbit [1] Starlink has 6,426 [2] (Though that number is likely out of date by the time you read this) [1] https://www.groundcontrol.com/knowledge/calculators-and-maps... [2] https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html

I think his point is that most Starlink satellites do not have this technology, but he's probably still wrong quantitatively.

> I think his point is that most Starlink satellites do not have this technology

Ah, thanks, I missed that.

Wait another month, there will be at least another ~500 in orbit.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#30

Post by ignoramous »

charliebwrites wrote: post #6

I wish I could pay Starlink directly and have global satellite based LTE instead of having to go through a specific carrier and be limited by other carriers’ reciprocity to specific countries and bands One space based cell plan for the whole world

> One space based cell plan for the whole world

The baseband on handheld devices do not have that much power to transmit and receive from Starlink directly; and hence the partnership with MNOs. With 5G (after Google & Meta got involved, the designs took on a Cloud/Internet-heavy focus), Starlink very well might have "slices" carved out exclusive for its own use world over.

See also: Cloudflare's Zero-Trust SIM (2022), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32982697

Post reply on HN