571–580 of 831 posts
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There are long-range e.g. 20km WiFi transmitters/repeaters. It's a solved problem.
that solution isn't without issues. specifically, you have to climb trees and run power or do solar, and then if there's a heavy storm you can have issues. those aren't insurmountable problems but being able to get Internet anywhere there's liner of sight to the sky is easier (or harder!) depending on the terrain.
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AST Spacemobile has contracts with ATT and Verizon to do the same so just wait
I am skeptical AST will be able to really compete. SpaceX has a massive cost advantage. I hope that they will, but the engineers at SpaceX have made me a believer. If the gen 1 direct to cell sats don’t perform (it seems like they do), they’ll just launch another batch a couple weeks later. I don’t think AST will have this ability, so I hope they get it right.
In the US SpaceX just announced a contract with Tmobile, AST has contracts with Verizon and AT&T
For service it works, and for business viability AST just has to launch more satellites, which they will
for a business case thats their only overhead cost and they dont need cellular partnerships in a bunch of countries to be viable
They have to raise capital for more satellites but it all looks possible
This is the nomad dream. Have a single phone service and wander anywhere on the planet with it. No more having to swap SIMs out on every border, being unable to use text-based 2FA, forcing friends to contact only via messaging apps, system messages in a foreign language, etc. It's not the coverage; that's mostly good. It's not the price; mostly SIM cards and plans are cheaper when travelling than they are at home. It…
It's been possible to solve these problems by using Google Fi for many years now.
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…
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China is going to do it for sure. It doesn't have to be as efficient as SpaceX if it is massively subsidized for defense purposes. And China is pretty good at building things cheap. On the commercial side Blue Origin has been slow in starting but they are almost ready and will have relatively cheap launches. There are other up and coming private launch competitors too.
The issue is that space launch has some huge economies of scale. And {world space launch demand} is >> {one country's space launch demand} The argument for China overcoming SpaceX would be: - China needs to get within functional (not cost) technological parity with SpaceX ASAP (i.e. which means reusability, albeit for cadence/capacity reasons) - After that, they need to incentivize global demand to launch on Chinese…
Expound more on this please assuming I'm a potential Brazilian South African ,Saudi or Thai client .
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There are a few factors that make this possible: 1. As others have pointed out, the link budget (how much energy loss a particular radio link can handle before it is broken) for D2C satellites assumes a nearly direct line of sight from your handset to the satellite. This is much easier to achieve with satellites in space than it is with traditional cell towers that might have numerous walls/buildings in the way. 2. T…
So the satellite can point a narrow beam. How does it handle multiple connections. Can it aim 1000s of beams at once?
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Boosters don’t depreciate. They are actually considered more valuable with more successful launches.
They do depreciate, even if the later launches are more valuable, that increase in value is marginal compared to the per-launch capital cost. Airplanes, cars, buildings, everything depreciates.
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.
Initially I thought the same re: hiking, skiing etc. The only issue I see is that cellphone battery life is terrible compared to inReach like devices. Not sure I'd want to depend on it for longer than a few hours.
At least my work S24 says ~16 days in airplane mode + power saver. Not tested.
If anyone from Starlink or SpaceX is reading these comments here’s what you want to do: Sell your own branded trail cam with solar charging and LTE from orbit. You can charge $25-$40 a month for unlimited pictures sent from the cam. This would open up hunters, nature enthusiasts, and researchers to be able to place their hardware anywhere in the field without worrying about connectivity. Here in SWVA we have deep hol…
In general, having low-bandwidth Starlink IoT connections globally accessible would be just great, I can see lots of usage.
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IMO, one of the central problems is the cost of launching stuff into space. Today, SpaceX offers world leading low prices to launch satellites: $4 m / tonne[1]. But Starlink has access to launch at cost , which is $0.86 m / tonne[2]. Which is a huge advantage when launching an enormous number of satellites. One thing to keep in mind, especially for these LEO constellations: the lifetime of these satellites is 5-10 ye…
Is it really required to be an LEO constellation? It would certainly be good, so that eventually the satellites deorbit and contribute less to Kesseler syndrome risk. But some nation state might chose to not care about that and deploy at higher and more stable orbits.