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
With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019
31–40 of 179 posts
Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019
#32Please call it Skynet. :)
Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019
#33Do this means that it'll be possible to play with folks from another continent with a good latency?
Not really, you still are limited to speed of light – so > ~100 ms roundtrips for half of the globe.
Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019
#34Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Data customers would pay for access on an individual basis. At a subscriber level, monthly billing to 'SpaceX Broadband, Redmond' might be cause for inquisitive State Police to visit. At a state level, the legality of jamming / interfering with satellites over national territory has never been definitively established. So SpaceX might find it easier to just turn-off over hostile nations than have them upset the net…
BitCoin?
Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not to mention they will probably use legal means to hamstring this if possible. I wonder how this could work. It's not like, e.g., Milwaukee has any legal oversight over LEO.
One possibility is passing laws/regulations about how many sats can be in a orbital plane or single launch, as they will want to launch dozens, if not the full 53 they want to put in a plane, with a single booster to reduce costs. They could also get some silly RF regulations passed that make it not feasible economically.
Then the operator of the constellation would just shift to using Arianespace as launch provider (which is equally expensive at the moment).
Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019
#37Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gigabit fiber is being rolled out in my area. It is amazing how quickly it is progressing compared to the work of Verizon or Google Fiber. So at least from that one example, there seems to be new players entering cities
Comcast just released Gigabit (over copper, DOCSIS 3.1) for all of Utah. It's only 40Mbit up, but I'm pretty happy with it. I thought it would take a lot longer.
This is exactly why cable providers have been so reluctant to spend huge amounts of money on FTTH. Squeezing more bits through existing copper infrastructure is a win-win situation for everyone.
Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019
#40Oh how I wish I could buy SpaceX stock...
I wish they don't go public anytime soon if they can avoid it. There is already enough nonsense we have to endure about TSLA every time any discussion about Tesla or Elon comes up.
We don't need the additional mindkill of 'Time to short SpaceX!'.