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Starlink Is a Big Deal

sneak.berlin

211–220 of 365 posts

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#211

> "Hundreds of cities and dozens of countries, fine for living but previously entirely unsuitable for a place of business, will blink from red to green on the map once Starlink goes live." this reads like a marketing piece rather than actual analysis. Throughput of a single satellite is 20Gbps. The finished constellation if I recall correctly is supposed to be about 12k satellites. So about ~250.000Gbps. So assuming…

Contrary to what Musk & co's claims it doesn't look like this will help the people/countries who actually need access, at least not with the prices that they are saying they will charge. Someone scatter-plotted the GDP of countries and internet penetration, and it turns out none of the countries who need access can afford starlink internet. (There are many other similar calculations out there on the interwebs). https…

Doesn't it also depend on how wealthy your neighbors are?

For an extreme example, an area with extremely low population (like the middle of the ocean), the bandwidth (at least surface to satellite bandwidth) will be wasted if no one is using it. The price could be much lower.

A poor community in a rich and population dense area probably would be priced out.

Will be interesting to see how it shakes out in practice. I could see it go both ways honestly.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#212

> * For reference, my last flat in Berlin (the capital of the largest economy in the EU), on the ground on a main street in the city center, was serviced with approximately 14MBps ADSL, and this was the fastest offering available from any vendor.* That seems really low to me. I was under the impression that Europe had generally better internet access than in the US. Comcast delivers much better speeds than that even…

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Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the satellites in LEO only visible for a short time after sunset?

Even if astronomy isn't affected. Can you imagine a grid/net of fast moving satellites, 80,000 satellites covering the entire globe that are visible for 2 to 3 hours every night. This is the thing that creates global suicides. Mark those words. It will happen.

Sorry this is worth more commenting - I am just imagining this network above us. Every centimeter to an inch "visually" a grid pattern crossing over us for a period of 2 hours a night.

No, a website that tells you when it's coming, ooooh... No this is every single night, and morning, a grid from HELL.

I'm a fairly regular poster, a software engineer, decently intelligent guy - and this future absolutely disgusts me. I hope things change and it ends up not happening. I would rather telephone pole the world.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#215

Just going to plug my Starlink tracker here: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink It tells you when to go outside and look up to see the satellites as they pass over your house. It's a cool sight to see because there are up to 60 of them crossing the sky at the same time in a line.

Are they really appearing as such bright objects? Didn't SpaceX decide to make them non reflective?

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#217
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are scant details about what the launched product will look like in practice, but keep in mind that urban and suburban areas are spoiled by high-speed 4G LTE and wired gigabit. The vast majority of the US, by land area, has to chose from dial-up and very expensive pre-Starlink satelite Internet service. Even 1 Mbit is a huge improvement over 56 kbps. I'm haven't looked into the economics of running fiber everyw…

The pre-starlink stuff isn’t just expensive. It’s slow, has crazy high latency, and low transfer caps (the biggest you can get for geosynchronous might be 20GB a month no matter how much you want to pay.) Really anything is better than what’s currently available in the rural US. Having grown up there I’m kind of mad that we give so much spectrum to cell companies who block people from setting up terrestrial radio net…

That's completely false. Several providers have over 100GB/mo plans.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#218
post #188

Honestly I hope someone figures out how to shoot these down. I feel like the planet isn't getting a say. In fact only a few people are getting a say that this network should even exist. Astronomy is dead. A dark sky with just stars, yeah dead.

I really can't fathom the reasoning behind this much passion about astronomy tied to this much hatred of putting things in space.

Because you're thinking of "space" as just boring orbital stuff. Astronomers think of our solar system, deep space, distant stars... a bunch of gadgets blocking the view of that is a legitimate concern.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#219

What this article didn't mention is the potential for this to significantly disrupt commercial internet monopolies in regional markets. If service is $45/ month for 100GB, a lot of people will drop Comcast in a hurry.

fuck xfinity. AT&T fiber at my apartment is 300+ mbps up for half the price of comcast's 75+ i've been using last 6 years

That’s kind of my point, Comcast generally sucks and anyone with a choice avoids them.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the greater Washington DC metro area (Census-defined) and don't have internet access at my farm. No cable and no DSL available. I connect through a wireless 4G hotspot. This is really inadequate, my kids can't get online and we can't do any connected household stuff like Alexa or Ring. Our entire community is praying for Starlink!!!

> my kids can't get online Sometimes I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing?

It very obviously is. Homework assignments, keeping up with their friend groups, etc.
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