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With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

arstechnica.com

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Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#111

Post by cma »

tengbretson wrote: post #78
oceanswave wrote: post #31

Seven years. US Broadband providers have seven years to take us over the coals, practice full bore capitalism with our data and generally run oligilistic practices until their time even begins to run out

I'm afraid I don't understand what you're trying to insinuate here. Capitalism is part and parcel to disruptive services such as this one entering a space where established players have created price fixing opportunities for themselves. The oligopoly you're deriding is what enables innovations like this in the first place.

Plus NASA contracts.

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#112

Post by TeMPOraL »

linkregister wrote: post #38
elevensies wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they need licenses to use the radio spectrum. I believe Iridium set up a system in China so that all calls are routed through Chinese systems, so there is some historical precedent. The government of China also has anti-satellite weapons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi... .

A nation using an anti-satellite weapon against another entity's satellite would be an unlikely, enormous escalation.

OTOH one country enabling communication infrastructure to another country's citizens without approval of their government would be rightly considered as violation of national sovereignty and could presumably be seen as an act of war.

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#113

Post by TeMPOraL »

seiferteric wrote: post #99
oh_sigh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can jam whatever frequency the networks operates on. Or embargo any receiver/tramistter that could be used to connect to the network. Yes, some people would be able to work around any attempt at blockage, but that wouldn't scale to providing non-technical people with cheap/unrestricted internet.

Question for anyone who might know, would jamming work if you used highly directional antennas? Seems like it wouldn't really.

The antenna is already highly directional - those are LEO satellites we're talking about, you need to constantly track them.

How phased array antennas respond to jamming is unfortunately beyond my knowledge.

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#114

Post by alkonaut »

_archon_ wrote: post #13
bane wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll probably just end up turning off service over certain geographic areas.

Why would they do this? EDIT: Data customers would pay for access on an individual basis. Helicopter-parent countries might cry foul, but what leverage do they have? It's not like they were going to launch things with SpaceX and they can threaten to stop.

> but what leverage do they have?

The buying, selling and using of satellite internet equipment will be outlawed in countries that don't allow free access to the internet (unless of course the internet satellite company signs agreements to impose the blocking of choice of the regime in question).

SpaceX might be safe from the Turkish, Chinese or Egyptian governments, but the users won't be.

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#115

Post by alkonaut »

IndexicalDemon wrote: post #16

It's a cool system. There's a slight disadvantage that the satellite-to-ground link is at 10-15 GHz for users, so it will go down in a heavy rainstorm, and some fraction of the time due to other atmospheric effects. Should be reasonably reliable but far from fiber, and it will be interesting to see what uptime they guarantee. Assuming this all ever actually happens.

I assume the sensitity to weather etc depends on the type of equipment you have? Couldn't a community use a huge high power and high sensitivity common receiver/transmitter station, that provides fiber to 10-1000 households? The community station could also provide some kind of limited bandwidth fallback such as DSL or LTE that just ensures peoples fiber lines limp along when the satellites can't be reached (so their juice machines don't stop working...).

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#116

Post by alkonaut »

noonespecial wrote: post #18
mattcoles wrote: post #6

Do we have space in orbit for this? This is a lot of satellites and I also don't get how the latency can be so much lower than current satellite ISPs?

1) Space is huge. This is a little like asking if there's enough space left in earths oceans to float a few thousand pingpong balls. 2) Present internet satellites are all in mostly geostationary orbits that are much further away then the proposed leo's. Realistically the ones we have now introduce a whopping 650ms. This will be a huge improvement.

> This is a little like asking if there's enough space left in earths oceans to float a few thousand pingpong balls.

I'd be pretty nervous about throing 10k pingpong balls into the atlantic IF the collision of two pingpong balls was disastrous :)

Obviously these satellites will be carefully placed NOT to collied - but the effect of a collision is pretty bad. The problem is that any one of them might collide with some tiny piece of junk, turning it 1000 pieces of junk (which is now 1000x more likely to collide with something, and impossible to control). These satellites won't tip the scales, but it's a nightmare scenario that comes ever closer with every satellite launched.

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#117

Post by [deleted] »

nojvek wrote: post #103
viraptor wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's more of problematic than great news for places with state controlled study. But it has potential. Where it's Great news is places which already can use only satellite internet, but have very poor experience. Rural Australia for example. Having low local (or even global) latency would be amazing.

I'm pretty sure NSA will want a backdoor in the system. If it can do what they say it can do, they are basically the new pipes of the Internet. It's too good for NSA and our current US govt to leave untouched.

[deleted]

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#118

Post by jacobush »

nojvek wrote: post #103
viraptor wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's more of problematic than great news for places with state controlled study. But it has potential. Where it's Great news is places which already can use only satellite internet, but have very poor experience. Rural Australia for example. Having low local (or even global) latency would be amazing.

I'm pretty sure NSA will want a backdoor in the system. If it can do what they say it can do, they are basically the new pipes of the Internet. It's too good for NSA and our current US govt to leave untouched.

Say hello to ultra-fine real-time triangulation of your position. Of course privacy protected with the same care and zeal that protects your Tesla.

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#119

Post by ams6110 »

mobilefriendly wrote: post #97
akgerber wrote: post #7

My aunt's town in rural Western Massachusetts still only has broadband in the library plus scanty LTE service and current terrible satellite— how and whether to wire the town with broadband is driving the first contested election in decades. This could make a major difference for that type of rural town.

Same situation for our mid-Atlantic home. There's a ton of pent up demand for this service in all of the rural and semi-rural pockets of the U.S. We have been very poorly served by Congress, state, and local government.

> We have been very poorly served by Congress, state, and local government

I live in a semi-rural area. I chose to live there. Why should everyone else pay to give me top-tier internet access?

If high-speed internet access is important to me, I need to move to a neighborhood that has that amenity

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#120

Post by Retric »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #112
linkregister wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nation using an anti-satellite weapon against another entity's satellite would be an unlikely, enormous escalation.

OTOH one country enabling communication infrastructure to another country's citizens without approval of their government would be rightly considered as violation of national sovereignty and could presumably be seen as an act of war.

Radio has long been used to communicate propaganda across state lines. The relative ease of signal jamming is why it's not seen as an aggressive act.
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