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SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

wsj.com

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Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#371

Post by adev_ »

lrvick wrote: post #360
adev_ wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All bets are on centralized and/or proprietary ones that can afford to pay for the privilege Or not. App like Silence ( https://silence.im/ ) have been able to do secure e2e messaging using SMS as transport layer for almost one decade now.

SMS makes it very hard to be anonymous. Not a good option IMO.

> SMS makes it very hard to be anonymous. Not a good option IMO.

How is that even related ?

Silence is the equivalent of Signal over SMS instead of the usual Mobile Data: There is nothing by design in Signal to stay anonymous.

E2E encryption are mainly there to prevent eyes dropping, not to provide anonymity.

Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#372

Post by cheschire »

mr_toad wrote: post #340
ericabiz wrote: post #153

I believe this is SpaceX trying to stay one step ahead of Apple. Anyone else remember this strange rumor about iPhones including satellite capability a year ago? https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/29/iphone-13-to-feature-le... Now you have Apple’s event in a couple weeks themed “Far Out” with space pictures. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Apple announced something similar, possibly with Globalstar instead. Of cours…

> Of course, Apple’s solution will likely only work with iMessage. If I’m in the middle of nowhere and need to send an urgent message I wouldn’t want to be worrying about whether the recipient had an Android phone.

This conversation is a frequent annoyance for me. I’m tired of asking folks if they have Apple or Signal available just to send a photo. MMS is unreliable and opaque to most folks it seems since pictures never seem to get through if they’re on android.

Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#373

Post by vineyardmike »

shaklee3 wrote: post #291
vineyardmike wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could put-compete if they can create an iPhone with extra powerful antennas or other hardware. Like they always do- own the full stack to allow it to work better.

you can't create "extra powerful antennas" in a cell phone. it's physics, and antenna gain is driven by size.

It was somewhat off the cuff and meant to encapsulate the idea that you can improve the ability of the phone to connect with the satellite. That isn’t possible if you don’t design the phone.

You could potentially control the situation enough where a user can enable “satellite mode” which uses extra power for sending messages. It’d affect battery life, and need to be manually enabled, but it’d enable better connections in emergencies.

You could try to improve directional antennas and some sort of aiming system with the screen.

Lots of things that maybe could happen when you control the client side instead of just the satellite side.

Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#374

Post by KennyBlanken »

mr_toad wrote: post #340
ericabiz wrote: post #153

I believe this is SpaceX trying to stay one step ahead of Apple. Anyone else remember this strange rumor about iPhones including satellite capability a year ago? https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/29/iphone-13-to-feature-le... Now you have Apple’s event in a couple weeks themed “Far Out” with space pictures. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Apple announced something similar, possibly with Globalstar instead. Of cours…

> Of course, Apple’s solution will likely only work with iMessage. If I’m in the middle of nowhere and need to send an urgent message I wouldn’t want to be worrying about whether the recipient had an Android phone.

Because clearly nobody has ever been able to send a text message from an iPhone to an Android device.

Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#375

Post by nocsi »

mlindner wrote: post #200
jacquesm wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us here would dream of being that effective. He's a jerk though, that's the part the world could do without and with him now firmly in the Trump camp we'll see what kind of long term misery will come from that. I can't stand it when immigrants into a country become champions for the anti-immigration party, it's the moral equivalent of kicking the door shut behind you.

> with him now firmly in the Trump camp we'll see what kind of long term misery will come from that. [citation needed]. I guess you missed the news of Trump completely lambasting Elon? Trump is no friend of Elon. Nor is Elon a friend of Trump. Elon is a centrist, not far right.

lol you can tell someone doesn’t understand elon when they claim he’s on anyones side. He trolls everyone equally

Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#376

Post by Cogito »

solarkraft wrote: post #357
fragmede wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-driving cars have proven harder than expected, but given the rest of Musk's tale, I wouldn't bet against him. SpaceX is already launching satellites, and Starlink is already providing service. T-mobile owns the frequencies for it, it's "just" a matter of building the satellites and putting them into space. If the claim were more outlandish, it would be harder to buy, but the technology is eminently doable.

Musk has had some failures (FSD, battery replacement, solar roof, satellite laser communication), but also notable successes (supercharger network, landing a rocket). While this particular idea seems theoretically possible, as far as I know there haven't really been proper tests of it yet. So I could imagine it theoretically working, but being really bad (which may honestly be enough). There's probably a reason Apple…

Satellite laser links have been deployed haven't they? And all new satellites going up have the laser links on them, I thought.

Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#377

Post by [deleted] »

yurishimo wrote: post #275
vineyardmike wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They figured it out for the free inflight wifi that allows messaging.

That isn't anything special. Every smartphone can send SMS over wifi. You need to connect to the in-flight wifi to use the service. The router on the plane has a hole in the firewall that allows unpaid users to access the specific HTTP server to send and receive SMS messages. Absolutely nothing special about it.

[deleted]

Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#378

Post by lrvick »

Cogito wrote: post #368
lrvick wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a net neutrality killer any way you look at it as whitelisting apps in any way will by design mean blocking legitimate privacy focused messaging solutions that do not have fixed IP addresses or identifiable traffic patterns. I somehow doubt for instance they would have a way to allow a federated and often self-hosted messaging protocol like Matrix over an anonymization networking layer like Tor, which is the…

I mean, sort of? I believe they have some sort of similar solution in place for free messaging on in-flight wifi. Having a look at how they've done that might give a better idea for what this will look like than speculation. Still, it's a hard problem. They want to prioritise connectivity on an extremely low bit-rate channel that covers an extremely large geographic region. Messaging apps needs to be a part of that c…

I think it is quite simple. Just apply net neutrality rules to this like any other internet connection.

If they can afford to support whitelisted messengers at a very limited data rate of 1k/s then they can afford to simply give people 1k/s of neutral internet access to use to communicate whatever data they feel is high value enough to fit over those constraints using any protocol they wish.

We already have internet access over HAM radio via net44. Highly bandwidth restrictive because of physics, but you can get a permanent IP assigned to your callsign and use whatever software you want with your tiny bandwidth pipe even in the middle of the ocean.

Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#379

Post by oldgradstudent »

babypuncher wrote: post #308
thepasswordis wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My current Tesla started doing FSD almost a year ago.

Not L5 like Musk claimed. It's a stretch to even call it L3 right now.

It's not "a stretch". It's just wrong.

FSD requires constant human supervision. It has nothing to do with level 3 or above.

Re: SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote areas

#380

Post by lrvick »

adev_ wrote: post #371
lrvick wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS makes it very hard to be anonymous. Not a good option IMO.

> SMS makes it very hard to be anonymous. Not a good option IMO. How is that even related ? Silence is the equivalent of Signal over SMS instead of the usual Mobile Data: There is nothing by design in Signal to stay anonymous. E2E encryption are mainly there to prevent eyes dropping, not to provide anonymity.

I was simply pointing out Starlink supporting SMS is not good enough, even with layers like Silence on top.
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