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Starlink Direct to Cell

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441–450 of 831 posts

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> license LTE spectrum in every country I think this is the biggest reason. All nation's governments will absolutely ensure, overtly or covertly, that their national regulators limit any space-based supra-national system from being able to threaten their national telephony and data carriers. Why? Preventing losing national capabilities, government revenue (taxes, licenses & other domestic carrier fees, lobbying, kick…

> All nation's governments will absolutely ensure, overtly or covertly, that their national regulators limit any space-based supra-national system from being able to threaten their national telephony and data carriers The ITU is pretty overt about how frequency allocation governance works. Absolutely no one wants a free-for-all frequency regime, for a multitude of reasons - not even SpaceX. You may recall that Huawei…

> You may recall that Huawei 5G equipment was expunged from domestically-controlled, western infrastructure without having broken any laws, due to fears of future abuse. Your suggestion of a foreign company unilaterally, and illegally[1] imposing it's foreign-controlled, space-based phone network goes much further than whatever fears Washington had over Huawei.

Radio Free Europe has been doing something similar successfully for what, 70 years? Of course being in violation of a given country's laws is a tradeoff.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For obvious reasons I think it's pretty safe to say we can count on at least the next four years of zero regulation or government scrutiny of any company Musk is involved in, monopoly-related or otherwise.

You believe the FAA, FCC, OHSA, EPA, FDA, etc., will cease to regulate SpaceX, Tesla, Nuralink operations? That seems pretty outlandish.

Elon Musk was just appointed by Donald Trump as being in charge of firing half of the government. He won't likely do that. But any regulator who gets in his way?

Yeah, not many will volunteer for "the firing line."

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#444
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, yet in a somewhat different way. He is an investor investing in science fiction. This isn't even implied, he comes out and says it again and again. I'm reminded of xerox parc's "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" and I think that's his philosophy. As to "businesses he knows well" I do not agree. He didn't go into electric vehicles, rockets, robots or neural interfaces as "business h…

[flagged]

He's actually a marsatic.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#445

I really wonder if anyone is going to be able to catch up to SpaceX anytime soon. Kuiper seems dead in the water, the legacy operators seem unwilling to expand into LEO constellations.

Rocket Lab and Peter Beck are your best hope!

I think the potential comptetitors in this business (low latency satellite internet megaconstellation) missed their opportunity.

Starship is very close to being able to put next gen Starlink satellites into orbit ("very close" as in most likely within a year or so). Once that happens, it's over, there will not be competition for at least a decade. Before Bezos and others (and/or EU/China) build their own Starship copies (and if you've seen recent EU/China concepts, you can't call it anything else...), it's going to be the 2030s.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#446

Vertical integration by Starlink of the cheapest launch capability in the world (by far) is the reason there are no competitors, and there will be no competitors. The pace of innovation at SpaceX is not THE reason - it’s an additional reason that no one has a snowballs chance in hell of ever catching Starlink. I’ve seen talk of competitor satellite networks or a possible competitor emerging. Folks it’s game set and m…

I disagree. Starlink is indeed awesome and SpaceX deserves every bit of their success. But there will be competitors eventually, if for no other reason than foreign militaries sponsoring them. There's no inherent reason for this to be a winner takes all market. We can only hope the competitors are half as responsible as SpaceX has been about space debris risk and ensuring the satellites are not visible to the naked e…

We civilians aren't going to get anything useful from foreign militaries launching payloads

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The danger is his focus on living on Mars with no accountability. What is an example of this non accountability?

How about blatant securities fraud wrt to constant pump and dump of DOGE?

"DOGE" is probably not a security (that will ultimately be a question for the courts I'm sure, but you have to stretch the Howey test quite far to find a "common enterprise". It's a picture of a dog with some dumb text), and there's no credible evidence that Musk ever dumps it or even really pumps it.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#448
post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are right and Starlink will have no competition, then why would it not be regulated? Generally speaking, monopolies are regulated to prevent price gouging, including natural monopolies. And if its not a monopoly, then clearly the game is not over.

What people sometimes don't understand about monopolies, specially of a new product, is that the competition, in additions to all the competition that already exists for internet, is simply not having it. SpaceX can just asked for an absurdly high price, because if they want to sell into the broader consumer market, people aren't going to pay 1000s of $ a month to watch Netflix.

That is called the monopoly price:

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

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#449

Vertical integration by Starlink of the cheapest launch capability in the world (by far) is the reason there are no competitors, and there will be no competitors. The pace of innovation at SpaceX is not THE reason - it’s an additional reason that no one has a snowballs chance in hell of ever catching Starlink. I’ve seen talk of competitor satellite networks or a possible competitor emerging. Folks it’s game set and m…

> The pace of innovation at SpaceX is not THE reason - it’s an additional reason that no one has a snowballs chance in hell of ever catching Starlink.

Don't forget over $15bln of tax money they got for doing barely anything so far.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#450
post #20

What I wonder about the Starlink constellation is, how secure it is physically? There are people burning down 5G towers. How plausible would be for a conspiracy nut to create a rocket to take out the satellites? Maybe starting a cascading effect?

They don't fly sun synchronous orbits, so a giant vertical laser cannon near equator running 24/7 can kill them all in matters of days. I think. Carrying this out likely also constitute a de facto declaration of war against the US.

Why near the equator? How much energy do you think it'd take to destroy one, over what period of time. Do you think you can aim your laser at something the size of a desk moving 8km/s at 500km-1500km away?
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