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Starlink Maritime

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Re: Starlink Maritime

#81
post #31
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I didn't know that coverage was limited. I assumed satellite == pretty much all of earth.

> Interesting. I didn't know that coverage was limited. I assumed satellite == pretty much all of earth. The low orbits that give Starlink its low latency compared to geostationary satellite internet services also mean that each satellite can only see a small part of the earth at any given time. This is why they need so many satellites to provide reliable coverage. Right now each satellite has to communicate directly…

>I'll believe it when I see it.

This whole "yea inter-sat free space fiber links are totally going to happen" charade smacks of the same hype baiting as "full self driving by end of year" nonsense that Elon has been spouting since 2018.

The Starlink "team" did an AMA on reddit[0] last year and it was comical how empty the answers were. People asked about the space lasers and the answers were all "yea it's a really hard problem, BTW we're hiring!" which honestly felt like an admission from HR that they're looking for engineers willing/able to cash the checks marketing already wrote.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/jzozv3/every_answ...

Re: Starlink Maritime

#83
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Definitely aimed at the champagne caviar, St Barts crowd rather than the hard scrabble, cruiser on a fixed income. More like: commercial and military vessels

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.

The Starlink donations to Ukraine has probably been about showing Starlink capabilities to the military, now going after navy contracts?

Re: Starlink Maritime

#84
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Definitely aimed at the champagne caviar, St Barts crowd rather than the hard scrabble, cruiser on a fixed income. More like: commercial and military vessels

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.

They're not going to all switch to Starlink overnight.

But over a few years, if Starlink delivers on it's ambition, I'd expect a steady stream of converts.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#85

The second sentence in the paragraph at the top of the home page is pricing. Bravo. All web sites selling a product should make the pricing this prominent. At the least, have a pricing page with actual prices on it and not a "Call us for pricing" call to inaction. Me spending time on your site researching a product which turns out to be out of my price range is just wasting your time and mine, and I don't like you wh…

The usual reason for that pattern is that they want to do variable pricing depending on how much their product is worth to you, but yeah, it's never a good sign...

Re: Starlink Maritime

#86
post #78

Wow they are now clearly selling a product that depends upon starlink 2.0 satellites which depend upon starship for launch. Starship tests haven't even attempted a static fire on their launch platform let alone a stacked launch attempt. Not to mention, their launch calculations include re-use based upon a completely invented and also untested catching apparatus. Talk about going all in...

Why do they depend on Starship for launch?

Are the new satellites too big for the current rockets?

Re: Starlink Maritime

#87

$5000 a month? That's pretty embarrassing, isn't it? That indicates they aren't doing satellite-to-satellite and are using some kind of specialized hardware to simply send the signal to coastal satellites from farther away.

Compared to what?

Inmarsat is the only viable alternative for smaller boats that offers unlimited data plans, has higher latency due to being geostationary, much lower bandwidth, and charges about $8000 for a gigabyte…

I‘m not sure what Ku or Ka band GEO providers charge, but I doubt you can find anything competitive there either, and these require very large antennas.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#88

The second sentence in the paragraph at the top of the home page is pricing. Bravo. All web sites selling a product should make the pricing this prominent. At the least, have a pricing page with actual prices on it and not a "Call us for pricing" call to inaction. Me spending time on your site researching a product which turns out to be out of my price range is just wasting your time and mine, and I don't like you wh…

[deleted]

Re: Starlink Maritime

#89

$5000 a month? That's pretty embarrassing, isn't it? That indicates they aren't doing satellite-to-satellite and are using some kind of specialized hardware to simply send the signal to coastal satellites from farther away.

Or maybe it's the Tesla Roadster of this particular long-term plan. Some scoff, others wait for the price on the upcoming tier that's not quite 350 Mbps...
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