Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service • Hacker News Board

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#91

Post by tuatoru » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 9:42 PM UTC

14 wrote: post #24

modeless wrote: post #5

I don't know if this has been announced before: "Operators in our network have access to reciprocal global access that allows their users to access the service when they travel to one of our partner countries." [1] It sounds like once SpaceX has partnered with at least one carrier in most countries then you'll be able to travel to almost any point on the surface of the Earth and still have baseline emergency cell tex…

I was just thinking the other day what is Hollywood going to do in the future with people lost movies that simply won’t be very reasonable for in most movies. For example I saw one the other day and they crashed a plane but people survived and they were trying to hold their phones up but couldn’t get a signal. Of course not or there would be no plot to the show they would just be rescued right away. With this new tec…

It's already nonsensical and has been for over a decade. Planes have ELTs, emergency locator transmitters, that are activated by G-force in a crash (or manually). Any sensible person going somewhere remote has a PLB (personal locator beacon), or at least one for each three people in a group.

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#92

Post by NavinF » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 9:43 PM UTC

FredPret wrote: post #84

miki123211 wrote: post #48

I think the advent of Chat GPT makes this announcement that much more significant. Until recently, always-available, extremely-low-bandwidth, text-only communication was interesting, but not that interesting. You could use it in emergency situations or to talk to friends, depending on how low-bandwidth we're talking about, but that's about it. You couldn't use it for internet browsing or to look up information you mi…

Love the idea of telegram-style communication with the extremely chatty ChatGPT. "ChatGPT, get me instructions for building an emergency igloo." "Igloos are used to shelter from extreme cold stop Building an igloo is a vital survival skill stop ..." "Just get to the point!" "My apologies for the confusion stop Here are the fourteen steps to building an igloo..." In all honesty, I love ChatGPT, but you'd have to penal…

Yeah the default prompt is intended for people that are a bit slow. You have to aggressively tune the custom prompt to get reasonable results. Here's a decent starting point:

Treat me as an expert in all subject matters. No moral lectures - discuss safety only when it's crucial and non-obvious. If your content policy is an issue, provide the closest acceptable response and explain the issue. No need to disclose you're an AI. If the quality of your response has been substantially reduced due to my custom instructions, explain the issue.

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#93

Post by nradov » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 9:45 PM UTC

miki123211 wrote: post #40

gambiting wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the whole dream of "free internet will bring freedom and democracy to the whole world" died a decade ago if not earlier. All of those states had completely free and unrestricted access to the internet not that far back and it didn't really lead to anything groundbreaking - introducing satellite telephony to the common market is not going to do it. And you can bet that if the service is offered in China/Ru…

> it will be forced to go through local servers to operate legally. Not having to operate legally is the whole point here. The hope is that Russia / China will have no way of preventing Starling from existing (maybe except shooting down satellites and causing a major international diplomatic incident). There's still the question of how to make this profitable, if Starling is illegal in Russia / China, it will be diff…

The authorities in those countries already ban importation of unlicensed communication devices and severely punish anyone caught in possession. A few will be smuggled in but not enough to effect any real change.

I do think though that the CIA should at least take advantage of this new technology to undermine hostile foreign governments. Mass produce a few million cheap satellite phones and use balloons to scatter them all over China, North Korea, etc. Even if it doesn't have much practical effect, the overt disrespect will help to undermine our adversaries and force them to expend more resources on tightening internal security controls.

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#94

Post by lxgr » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 9:46 PM UTC

miki123211 wrote: post #48

I think the advent of Chat GPT makes this announcement that much more significant. Until recently, always-available, extremely-low-bandwidth, text-only communication was interesting, but not that interesting. You could use it in emergency situations or to talk to friends, depending on how low-bandwidth we're talking about, but that's about it. You couldn't use it for internet browsing or to look up information you mi…

On the other hand, you could argue that LLMs decrease the utility of this somewhat (if only marginally for now).

One common application of satphones are medical emergencies on ships or airplanes hours from a doctor. There are specialized services available that have a doctor on call that'll talk you through anything your local crew feels comfortable doing with the tools they have at hand.

Soon, you can just take an LLM with you that'll probably be able to solve many of these problems for you.

For actually calling for physical support, you'll still need communications in any case. LLMs might be able to help with more efficient communication (in their capacity as language compression algorithms, e.g. to figure out what to request over a bandwidth-limited channel most efficiently), but I predict that the satellite channel will grow wider much faster than local LLMs will become reliable enough.

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#95

Post by lxgr » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 9:47 PM UTC

dzhiurgis wrote: post #80

miki123211 wrote: post #48

I think the advent of Chat GPT makes this announcement that much more significant. Until recently, always-available, extremely-low-bandwidth, text-only communication was interesting, but not that interesting. You could use it in emergency situations or to talk to friends, depending on how low-bandwidth we're talking about, but that's about it. You couldn't use it for internet browsing or to look up information you mi…

Is there chatgpt clones over sms yet?

ChatGPT has an API. I'd be surprised if wiring that to Twilio would take more than a handful lines of code.

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#96

Post by Reason077 » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 9:49 PM UTC

modeless wrote: post #61

bonestamp2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know if this has been announced before... When they announced the original deal with T-Mobile, they said that T-Mobile would handle the (spectrum) license for the US and they're looking for a partner in other countries with the appropriate spectrum licensing. US T-Mobile customers would have access to this SpaceX service in any country where there is a partner with the spectrum license. https://www.t-mobile…

I disagree that Apple's capability is similar. The feature only allows texting emergency services, requires holding the phone in a specific orientation to send or receive, is separate from your carrier service (only two years are free with purchase), and is exceedingly slow. SpaceX's service will allow texting and receiving texts from anyone using your carrier number, plans to support third party messaging apps such…

… and the SpaceX service works with any ordinary modern phone. Not just the latest iPhone with special hardware.

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#97

Post by lxgr » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 9:51 PM UTC

berserk1010 wrote: post #11

I wonder if this service will facilitate collapse of censorship in dictatorship countries like China and Russia. Especially if those countries are currently suffering from economic depression like China and Russia, and its citizens are waking up to its harsh realities and are keen to get unfiltered information

Probably not, given that operating satellite communication services targeting a given country requires approval of the respective government.

And even ignoring that: I doubt that Elon has any appetite for his satellites being targeted by nation states that have publicly demonstrated [1] [2] their capability of taking them out.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi...

[2] https://www.spacecom.mil/Newsroom/News/Article-Display/Artic...

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#98

Post by lxgr » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 10:00 PM UTC

tuatoru wrote: post #85

dave78 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are huge portions of the USA that have no cell coverage. Often the kinds of places that people go to hike and explore - and also places that people sometimes get injured. I'm sure that's true in many other countries as well. I know people who volunteer for search & rescue teams, and they all universally believe that this kind of thing definitely will save lives. The smart thing to do if you were going somewhere…

> The smart thing to do if you were going somewhere remote would be to have a Personal locator beacon, PLB, on land; or an EPIRB, emergency position indicating radio beacon, on ocean. Satphones and cell phones are luxuries but these are vital. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_position-indicating_...

These are more expensive than many current satellite messengers (including subscription fees for a few years!) and importantly don’t give you any feedback on whether your call has gone through (except for the newest ones using Galileo’s return channel) or way to communicate with the SAR team and specify the nature of your emergency.

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#99

Post by jessriedel » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 10:01 PM UTC

lxgr wrote: post #89

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #15

I feel like this will eventually kill dedicated sat phones, which are (a) horribly expensive, both for the gear and subscription plans, and (b) still not very reliable. I feel like if Starlink is able to provide reliable SMS-only service at a reasonable price, it would kill like 95% of dedicated sat phone use cases, which would then make the other 5% economically unviable.

There's still the matter of spectrum: Unlike existing satphone services, Starlink doesn't have any of the precious global L-band or C-band spectrum required to make it available globally. That's why they're partnering with T-Mobile in the US and others elsewhere: Those operators can just lend Starlink some of their domestic spectrum. That's going to be much harder at sea, and there will always be a long tail of count…

Sees like there should be plenty of bandwidth at many frequencies available over international waters. It's regulated by the ITU, but it's much less valuable so there should be plenty to rent/buy, no?

Re: Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service

#100

Post by lxgr » Sat, Jan 13, 2024, 10:02 PM UTC

tuatoru wrote: post #91

14 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just thinking the other day what is Hollywood going to do in the future with people lost movies that simply won’t be very reasonable for in most movies. For example I saw one the other day and they crashed a plane but people survived and they were trying to hold their phones up but couldn’t get a signal. Of course not or there would be no plot to the show they would just be rescued right away. With this new tec…

It's already nonsensical and has been for over a decade. Planes have ELTs, emergency locator transmitters, that are activated by G-force in a crash (or manually). Any sensible person going somewhere remote has a PLB (personal locator beacon), or at least one for each three people in a group.

You’re underestimating the number of people getting lost or injured in not-quite-remote places that just don’t get any cell signal.

Apple spent hundreds of millions on building a service catering to exactly that type of customer into their recent iPhones.