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Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

arstechnica.com

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Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#551

Post by Retric »

ekianjo wrote: post #516
Retric wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if you NEED to isolate yourself it’s much easier to do in the countryside than in a city. In practice there are several flaws in that assumption. The lack of grocery deliveries is one major issue with rural isolation. Keep digging and you find several short vs long term issues. Consider, if you need a car you then need to eventually take it in for repairs etc.

In rural areas you have more space to stock food to live completely off the usual distribution networks for a longer time. In cities if you live in a small apartment you are tributary to shopping very often or having deliveries frequently, which increases the chance of contamination.

You can keep a years supply of food in a small closet. Everyone can’t suddenly buy a years supply of food in a crisis. Which is how this really plays out, if everyone tries to suddenly stock up on supplies that fails. So space is not a limiting factor in a pandemic.

Further, going to work is a larger concern. A higher percentage of people in cities can WFH indefinitely.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#552

Post by shaklee3 »

ekianjo wrote: post #514
shaklee3 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that impressive if the original press announcement said it would be < 20ms?

> Why is that impressive if the original press announcement said it would be It's impressive that they are not too far off, while the service is still in beta. And compared to regular connections you can get on Earth, it's a very decent ping. As a side note, press announcements are made to generate buzz and create headlines, so you should always expect hyperbole instead of strict facts. If you look at video games ann…

I think the latency will go up after launch. They don't have much of the complexity in the system they'll soon need.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#553

Post by shaklee3 »

kilroy123 wrote: post #530
shaklee3 wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible and has been done before in the past. The companies that tried it went bankrupt because the business plan doesn't work out. The ground stations are too expensive for end consumers. Starlink will likely see the same fate unless they get government money.

That's not necessarily true. SpaceX has a massive advantage that previous companies didn't – launch costs. SpaceX is getting all of these satellites up for an insanely low cost.

As pointed out in many places, the launch costs are still being paid for by their lack of funding from other commercial launches. The bulk of the cost is not in launches; it's running an ISP and equipment.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#554

Post by shaklee3 »

ghthor wrote: post #517
shaklee3 wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Artemis was vaporware. It never made it into the field.

Vaporware is not an accurate description. I'm pretty sure you they have manufactured hardware that you can deploy for a test deployment. Also pretty sure they're working with the military for weaponization and wireless power transmission.

They were supposed to do a large rollout with sprint, and it never happened. The technology itself was vaporware; it only worked in their lab setting.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#555

Post by shaklee3 »

MPSimmons wrote: post #512
shaklee3 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the target audience you refer to doesn't have the amount of money it takes to sustain a system like this. Otherwise any of the existing satellite providers could continue to launch more and more satellites and serve very expensive internet to them. Starlink will be just as much, or more expensive.

How much do you think it will be?

I expect for them to make money it's going to need to cost $150 starting for the low end. Although, if they get government RDOF money, all bets are off since they're burning through government money.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#556

Post by shaklee3 »

busterarm wrote: post #523
shaklee3 wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely not true. They are still selling you a dish in a terminal that most of the population could not install themselves on their house. The majority of the installs will be professionaly done.

That's not what I'm saying. Forest for trees. SpaceX isn't doing the installation work. They're not hiring the fleet of techs to do the work.

No satellite companies do that. They are independent contractors.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#557

Post by shaklee3 »

MPSimmons wrote: post #511
shaklee3 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that impressive if the original press announcement said it would be < 20ms?

You keep mentioning this, and I can't come up with any announcement that it would be under 20ms, just quotes from Elon saying the target was under 20ms. Is there a press release you're aware of with that quote?

> Musk stated that Starlink's 20ms latency is designed to run "real-time, competitive video games." He also stated that Version 2, at a lower altitude, "could be as lows 8ms latency."

https://www.shacknews.com/article/118663/spacex-starlink-20m...

Version 2 is not at a lower altitude. In fact, most of the latency incurred is not from altitude at all. They are moving several hundred kilometers from their highest to lowest orbit, and if you do that math that's not accounting for much of the 20ms.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#558

Post by welterde »

btian wrote: post #341
bargl wrote: post #45

Starlink internet is not meant to replace hard line internet. There is no getting around the physics of cable being so much cheaper/easier. Even terrestrial cell towers are more efficient and cheaper than satellites. This is 100% meant to supplement existing infrastructure not to replace it. You will almost always get cheaper and faster internet (for both you and the company providing internet) over a cable to your h…

What sort of physics? You can multiplex wavelengths for wireless just like cable right? Granted you'd need to buy the licenses for those frequencies, which should be fairly cheap in rural areas. I don't think Elon would approve this project if cable is always cheaper and easier.

Fiber optic cables have a much much higher usable bandwidth than the wireless spectrum. The useful radio spectrum for Starlink is somewhere between 10 and 20 GHz. Fiber optic cables have more than 4THz of usable spectrum.

And it's no affected by things like fog, rain, strong wind (at least if you don't cheap out and stick it on poles), etc.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#559

Post by welterde »

iRobbery wrote: post #52
bargl wrote: post #45

Starlink internet is not meant to replace hard line internet. There is no getting around the physics of cable being so much cheaper/easier. Even terrestrial cell towers are more efficient and cheaper than satellites. This is 100% meant to supplement existing infrastructure not to replace it. You will almost always get cheaper and faster internet (for both you and the company providing internet) over a cable to your h…

Weren't they also going to track airplanes with it, to avoid new mh-370 cases where they don't know where it went and where it crashed?

Didn't it already have Iridium on board as well?

I read some claims that the power bus was unstable and thus it shut down the satellite radio multiple times before it could transmit much meaningful data. Which would imply that Starlink wouldn't have changed much in this regard.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#560

Post by castratikron »

chris_overseas wrote: post #202
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #168

"...that said, we’ll make sure Starlink has no material effect on discoveries in astronomy. We care a great deal about science." Elon Musk A long exposure of Comet NEOWISE by Photographer Daniel Lopez: https://imgur.com/a/rDI1Onn N.B. The white streaks are Starlink constellation passthrough trajectories Starlink currently has 597 orbiting satellites they plan for more than 12k to be deployed. Amazon just got an appro…

That NEOWISE photo was 17 photos deliberately stacked to emphasise the problem rather than minimise it, so it's not really a fair datapoint. Astrophotograhy stacking software will generally remove items that don't appear in all photos in the stack rather than retain them (previous discussion on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23926699 ). That said, I love taking photos of the night sky myself and had…

Since the ephemerides of all starlink satellites are known, shouldn't it be possible to program these into the camera and not expose the sensor when a satellite is overhead? Makes it more complicated of course but this can let everyone win
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