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Starlink Maritime

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Re: Starlink Maritime

#111

Post by madengr »

baq wrote: post #65
notahacker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial and military vessels have contracts with Iridium/Inmarsat etc for mission critical stuff. An extra box which based on current coverage map provides GSM level coast-only coverage of unproven reliability doesn't hold much appeal, even factoring in how expensive satellite broadband is.

Neither iridium nor Inmarsat provides capabilities of starlink: low latency, high bandwidth, asat-resistant, jamming-resistant infrastructure, all this proven in a real world conflict. They are ‘only’ missing coverage. Military will pay top dollar for this, Musk is in the name-his-price territory here. It’s become mission critical overnight. If they manage to cover the full globe, you’ll see the DoD quietly spending…

No post body was provided.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#112

Post by xoa »

notahacker wrote: post #101
xoa wrote: post #68

Always a treat to see the urban HN crowd comment with great confidence on anything outside of their immediate area. While hopefully eventually SpaceX will bring this down and be more disruptive, right now they simply cannot possibly meet demand, they are very rightfully anxious to get revenue going for Starlink, they're in a completely unique level of performance for maritime, and HELLO FOLKS, here is a taste of what…

It isn't a BGAN terminal competitor until and unless the intersat mesh rolls out though. At the moment it's a competitor for specialist yacht 4G packages, and whilst they're also eyewateringly expensive to anyone benchmarking them against mobile phone contracts, Starlink certainly isn't undercutting them.

Which they've now put a hard number on for end of this year in primary latitude band and global first quarter of next year, and they've gone ahead and filed with FCC for permission to activate polar satellites which depend on it [0]. If we were talking years out sure, but this is an early launch for something they're promising in ----

0: https://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=...

Re: Starlink Maritime

#113

Post by usrn »

venti wrote: post #2

Is anything know about the power consumption of the Starlink antenna? Does the maritime version use less power than the conventional unit? The fixed-location version of Starlink consumes around 60 to 100 W constantly which is problem if you want to e.g. use solar panels on a sail boat to supply the device.

If you're set up for electric propulsion that's not too bad. That plus my work machine would be under half what a properly sized motor should draw at 50% throttle. It only needs to work for ~6-7 hours a day.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#114

Post by michaelt »

yardie wrote: post #59
Someone1234 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iridium Go is 2.4 Kbits/s compared with 350 Mbps here, and data is charged in minutes (i.e. the slower/worse the connection the more it costs). Apples and oranges. Iridium GO is cheap, but that's all you can really say positively about it. It is arguably not even offering "internet" in the normal sense, since loading a website would be incredibly expensive/bad and is therefore restricted to low data rate messaging an…

Iridium Go is designed to hit a price point. Whats the cheapest way to get data out in the middle of the Atlantic and is basically plug and play. It has leapfrogged SSB packet radio as the preferred, low cost data service. Also data is not charged in minutes, it's theoretically unlimited. The voice plans are charged in minutes and I don't think worth it. Just like the RO water-makers in the past, I believe this is th…

> Also data is not charged in minutes, it's theoretically unlimited.

If you buy the 'medium plan' for $119/month [1] you get 150 Minutes of 'Data, Standard Voice or combination of both' and can buy additional data for US$0.42/min. And the 'light plan' [2] at $57/month includes just 5 minutes.

Data seems to a "call via the Iridium GO! Access number" like old school dial-up.

It's only if you buy the 'heavy plan' for $149 [3] that you get the 'Unlimited Data'

Or am I misunderstanding things?

[1] https://www.satphone.co.uk/product/iridium-go-post-paid-serv... [2] https://www.satphone.co.uk/product/iridium-go-post-paid-serv... [3] https://www.satphone.co.uk/product/iridium-go-post-paid-serv...

Re: Starlink Maritime

#115

Post by kbenson »

WJW wrote: post #71
notahacker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial and military vessels have contracts with Iridium/Inmarsat etc for mission critical stuff. An extra box which based on current coverage map provides GSM level coast-only coverage of unproven reliability doesn't hold much appeal, even factoring in how expensive satellite broadband is.

I used to be a naval officer in the Dutch navy, this is the type of capability that we would love to have. It was always a mess to divide satcom bandwidth between operational and recreational purposes, so if we could put all non-essential traffic on Starlink (for only 5k/month/ship too!) that would be a huge win and free up massive operational bandwidth on the more serious satcoms.

Would there be any concern that you are essentially advertising your location at all times to some third party corp? Or is that only a concern during certain times and you can just turn off the commercial system at that point?

Re: Starlink Maritime

#116

Post by paulsutter »

Genius price segmentation. Of course it costs them little more to provide the service than for home users on land, but easily worth the 50x higher price for this market

The Starlink IPO will provide hundreds of billions in funding for Starship and Mars

Re: Starlink Maritime

#117

Post by dzhiurgis »

cronix wrote: post #11
gvb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Starlink for RVs is not designed for use while in motion." Marine starlink needs to compensate for rolling, pitching, and forward motion.

Sounds like they added a gimbal or something?

This guy has been testing it without one

https://www.reddit.com/r/SailboatCruising/comments/vovaxs/st...

Re: Starlink Maritime

#118

Post by SergeAx »

Starlink RV is $135/m and looks exactly the same. I wonder what happens if I put one on the boat? Will Starlink turn it off for usage violation?
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