Is SpaceX's Starlink Becoming the World's Dominant ISP? (cringely.com) 162
Technology/space pundit Robert Cringely writes that SpaceX's winning bid on NASA's Artemis lunar lander contract was helped by its flexibility in how it would be paid — made possibly by SpaceX's cushy financial position.
But he believes that's part of a larger story about SpaceX's "steadily crushing its competitors by building a hyper-efficient space ecosystem where the other guys are just building rockets," arguing that SpaceX has already won the global war of ISPs "at a net cost of ZERO dollars," if not a negative net cost, while realizing a dream of a satellite internet service that for 30 years has eluded investors like Bill Gates:
SpaceX making a profit where one would not normally exist comes thanks to U.S. residents who pay telephone and Internet bills. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been socking-away for a decade about $1.8 billion per year from you and me, saving-up to pay for expansions of rural telephony and broadband. There is now about $16 billion in this federal kitty and the FCC is starting to spend it with telephone and internet service providers, paying them to extend broadband and voice services to remote rural users who are presently underserved or unserved completely. All of this is both perfectly legal and even a good idea. Everybody wins. But circumstances are turning out to indicate that SpaceX is probably winning more than anyone else... So far SpaceX has won auctions for service in parts of 35 states for a total of $885 million... SpaceX just bid for potential customers in places where other companies typically didn't even bother to bid. They took the obvious remote customers and apparently won't be over-charging them or the government, either...
There is no FCC rule saying Comcast couldn't sub-contract...difficult customers to Starlink... Instead of earning $885 million of those FCC subsidies, Starlink is more likely to gain half of the full $9.2 billion — money that can be used for any purpose including financing that Artemis lander. But remember that satellites are a global resource. If SpaceX launches 4000 or 12,000 Starlink satellites to serve the USA, they'll also serve anywhere else the satellites overfly, even North Korea. The same level of service Starlink offers in Omaha will be available in Vietnam or on tankers in the Pacific ocean.
Once Starlink becomes effectively the dominant ISP in America, it will also become the dominant ISP in the world. And all at no cost to SpaceX since the expansion will have been financed from our phone bills.
Cringely cites estimates that 40,000 satellites would be enough to serve every Internet user on Earth, as well as IoT devices and even future as-yet-uninvented network services.
He also asks whether this might ultimately make it harder for China to censor the internet — and whether Apple might attempt a competing satellite-to-phone network, possibly using technology from Samsung.
But he believes that's part of a larger story about SpaceX's "steadily crushing its competitors by building a hyper-efficient space ecosystem where the other guys are just building rockets," arguing that SpaceX has already won the global war of ISPs "at a net cost of ZERO dollars," if not a negative net cost, while realizing a dream of a satellite internet service that for 30 years has eluded investors like Bill Gates:
SpaceX making a profit where one would not normally exist comes thanks to U.S. residents who pay telephone and Internet bills. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been socking-away for a decade about $1.8 billion per year from you and me, saving-up to pay for expansions of rural telephony and broadband. There is now about $16 billion in this federal kitty and the FCC is starting to spend it with telephone and internet service providers, paying them to extend broadband and voice services to remote rural users who are presently underserved or unserved completely. All of this is both perfectly legal and even a good idea. Everybody wins. But circumstances are turning out to indicate that SpaceX is probably winning more than anyone else... So far SpaceX has won auctions for service in parts of 35 states for a total of $885 million... SpaceX just bid for potential customers in places where other companies typically didn't even bother to bid. They took the obvious remote customers and apparently won't be over-charging them or the government, either...
There is no FCC rule saying Comcast couldn't sub-contract...difficult customers to Starlink... Instead of earning $885 million of those FCC subsidies, Starlink is more likely to gain half of the full $9.2 billion — money that can be used for any purpose including financing that Artemis lander. But remember that satellites are a global resource. If SpaceX launches 4000 or 12,000 Starlink satellites to serve the USA, they'll also serve anywhere else the satellites overfly, even North Korea. The same level of service Starlink offers in Omaha will be available in Vietnam or on tankers in the Pacific ocean.
Once Starlink becomes effectively the dominant ISP in America, it will also become the dominant ISP in the world. And all at no cost to SpaceX since the expansion will have been financed from our phone bills.
Cringely cites estimates that 40,000 satellites would be enough to serve every Internet user on Earth, as well as IoT devices and even future as-yet-uninvented network services.
He also asks whether this might ultimately make it harder for China to censor the internet — and whether Apple might attempt a competing satellite-to-phone network, possibly using technology from Samsung.
A Brief History of Robert X. Cringely (Score:5, Interesting)
In 1987, Mark Stephens was hired as a writer by Infoworld magazine. Writing under the name Robert X. Cringely, he began his career as a professional bullshitter.
When he left Infoworld in 1995, Stephens continued using the Cringely name and Infoworld sued him. They eventually reached an agreement where he was allowed to use the Cringely name as long as he wasn't working for a competitor of Infoworld.
Today, Stephens claims that he is "the original Robert X. Cringely". But he isn't. Before he was hired by Infoworld there were at least two other people who wrote columns using the Cringely pseudonym.
At various points in his career, he has also claimed that he was employee number 12 at Apple, he helped them move out of Steve Jobs' garage, and he designed the original Mac trash can icon. None of this is true and ther is no evidence that Mark Stephens ever worked at Apple.
In 2015 Cringely announced "The Mineserver Project" on Kickstarter. These miniature Minecraft servers would be small, inexpensive ARM-based boards, running Linux, slightly more powerful than a Raspberry Pi and selling for $99. The project raised a total of $35,452 from 388 people and the finished boards were supposed to ship in December 2015. They didn't.
For two years Cringely repeatedly claimed that the Mineserver boards were finished and ready to ship but there was always "one more little thing" that needed to be fixed.
In July 2017 Cringely posted on his blog that he was suddenly blind from cataracts, but that he would have his sight restored in ten days so maybe everyone could stop asking about the Mineserver boards until then. Never mind that nobody has cataract surgery on both eyes at the same time, that's a minor detail.
Then in October 2017 Cringely claimed that his house burned down and all the Mineserver boards were destroyed. Just like the cataracts and his tenure at Apple, there is no evidence that any of this is actually true.
In May 2018 Cringely blogged that it would be another 16 months before his insurance company paid him for his house that burned down, and that it might not pay for the melted Mineservers at all. But yet again, the promise: "We're back in the Mineserver business, preparing a successor model because the available boards and other parts have all changed. Every supporter will get their Mineserver before the end of the year."
All through 2018 there were repeated promises that money would be found somewhere, and the Mineservers would finally ship. But 2018 ended with nothing.
On June 7, 2019, Cringely posted his thoughts on "The Future of Television", not mentioning the Mineservers at all, and he didn't post anything to his blog for the rest of the year, although he was still posting about airplane trivia on Quora.com.
On January 23, 2020, Cringely's latest and biggest lie hit his blog when he announced his new business venture called Eldorado Space. This would be a company using F-104 jets to launch satellites. Cringely says revenue from this business will fund his retirement (he's 67 now) and give him enough money to finally deliver those Minecraft servers he's been promising for the last 5 years.
He also claimed that the business is guaranteed to succeed because his new company has bought all the F-104s in existence, so he won't have any competition. To prove this is all real and legitimate, Cringely found a picture of an F-104 on the Internet and photoshopped the word Eldorado onto it.
So, you can't pay back the money you stole from people for the Mineserver project, but you can buy a bunch of F-104 jets?
The truth and Robert X. Cringely are not well acquainted.
As of April 2021, there has been no further mention of Eldorado Space by Cringely.
Re: A Brief History of Robert X. Cringely (Score:2)
The name is certainly chosen well.
His behavior is *quite* cringely!
Re: (Score:2)
Today, Stephens claims that he is "the original Robert X. Cringely". But he isn't. Before he was hired by Infoworld there were at least two other people who wrote columns using the Cringely pseudonym.
Research indicates that this lineage can be traced back to the Dread Pirate Roberts [wikipedia.org] ...
Re: (Score:2)
100% correct. Thank you for writing it. Cringely just regurgitates the obvious and known things (while his stupid followers think he is a genius) -- when he's not lying, that is. He's also written a lot of xenophobic things in the past.
Re: (Score:3)
No to worry. When Elon ultimate goal of be declared kind of the solar system all doubters like this will be dealt with. We are just waiting for that day to come, and taking down names....
Pass (Score:5, Insightful)
Technology/space pundit Robert Cringely writes...
No, thanks.
Re: (Score:2)
It's funny how Bob's estimate for the number of satellites matches SpaceX's permit filings that are more than a year old and his theories about how SpaceX could access rural broadband funding are also already in the FCC database. Public info: they're talking about end-user cost to poor folks of $49/mo for at least 2TB of transfer. The FCC fund would make up some of the difference.
Bob also overestimates how capitalized SpaceX is vs. the cost of Starlink. If Starlink fails, there is no Mars project, no Sta
Re: Pass (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Starlink can not handle ultra dense urban environments where apartments reach dozens of floors.
2. Starlink can not handle super packed suburbia where there are 70 subscribers per road-mile in a lattice.
3. There will not be an iPhone that works as a satellite phone unless Apple wants to strap a bulky antenna on it and have it work only outdoors or where WiFi works. You know how you miss out on satellite radio when you drive under a bridge? Imagine that as your phones internet and voice connection.
I agree that they will rock the underserved market, and where no internet exists today like on RVs and yachts or commercial transport. They will fill gaps. They will not replace existing infrastructure. It was worth it to build that infrastructure at that cost because of the densities of subscribers. Something Starlink is not very good at (maybe the only thing).
Re: (Score:2)
Rural areas where it's expensive to wire per household are often subsidized, similar to mail and passenger trains. Thus, Starlink doesn't have to be cost effective on its own: it only has to be equal or cheaper than rural wiring.
It's a big niche and hard to break into, in part because it risks too many "space problems", such as astronomy interruption. Starlink has a first-mover advantage.
Re: Pass (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's stupid.
Fortunately, some people don't have such gatekeeping algorithms (an abundance of free time? Do you read flat earth articles too?) and you guys are here to tell us that it's actually worth reading.
So I wouldn't rush to judge someone for not reading everything written by every known piece of shit that may fly across his headline list.
Re: Pass (Score:2)
He misses on the main point: "The same level of service Starlink offers in Omaha will be available in Vietnam or on tankers in the Pacific ocean."
The way to cover the US with satellites most efficiently is to have them on various orbits parallel to latitude lines across the US. If you space the satellites evenly along those lines, you can have a grid over the US at all times, which gives uniform coverage without bunching up or spacing out anywhere.
So where else would those orbits cover? They would have simi
Re: (Score:2)
The way to cover the US with satellites most efficiently is to have them on various orbits parallel to latitude lines across the US.
First I thought you are mixing up latitude with longitude.
The way to cover the US with satellites most efficiently is to have them on various orbits parallel to latitude lines across the US.
But seems you don't.
Sorry such kinds of orbits do not exist. If had not missed the physic classes in school, you knew that.
Re: Pass (Score:2)
Sorry, I should have said "roughly parallel to latitude lines". The type of orbit I mean is shown in purple in the image here: https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Types_of_orbits#LEO [esa.int].
The rest of my point holds. If they had a bunch of these in arcs across the US, they would also cross the matching patch on the other side of Earth (the Indian Ocean, between Madagascar and Australia, as shown here [wikipedia.org]). And those orbits would cross Africa, Australia, the Pacific and not much else. Certainly
Re: (Score:2)
So there would be great coverage in Northern Africa and the tropical Pacific. But none in Vietnam or N. Korea, let alone the rest of Asia or Europe.
It seems you failed the geographics classes, too. North America is a continent. And the USA spread from roughly 50 degrees to 25 degrees.
North Korea: 42 degrees to 38 degrees.
Vietnam: northern part just touches USA's 25 degrees.
Europe - most of Europe is on the same latitude as USA ...
Seriously. Get an education. Or buy a globe. Or google one.
Orbits go around the centre of the earth. (Score:2)
However, if arrange the angle of your orbits so that it's furtherest north point is a little to the north of where you want to reach, you will get the best coverage where you want it. You need many different satellites in different planes - or positions around the earth, and these planes overlap at their northern (and southern - but there's nothing but ocean down there!) points.
Starlink will be limited by ground stations! (Score:5, Informative)
The article claims that Starlink will provide equally good internet service anywhere in the world, including in the middle of oceans, but this isn't really so: The only way Starlink can deliver so much better latency/ping times than classic sat internet is because the orbits are very low, but this also means that they need far more sats and (in order to avoid multi-hop sat-to-sat connections) there also needs to be a ground station which is reachable by the same sat delivering service to you.
Musk have stated that they will have two different types of sats: Single-hop which normally only provides user-sat-ground station bounces and multi-hop sats which can act as hubs. The latter type is crucial for all those connections which will be 1000s of km away from the nearest ground station.
Even with more than 10K sats and Gbits/s speeds, there is still a hard limit on the total bandwidth available to be shared among all users in a given area.
Terje
Re: (Score:2)
Sat footprint, but there's also his idea of it becoming a dominant ISP. Maybe in certain demographics, but by and large the world has better alternatives than satellite internet.
Re: (Score:3)
Even with more than 10K sats and Gbits/s speeds, there is still a hard limit on the total bandwidth available to be shared among all users in a given area.
Terje
This. After leaving the comfy confines of wires and fiber, the real world has some nasty effects for those GHz range signals. we have rain fade, we have foliage fade. path loss is increased as well, although not quite so big a problem here. And yeah, it's pretty trivial to jam it.
In addition, it's going to be impressive after Muskie's budget rate Dyson sphere suffers collisions. And they will. Given the huge numbers that will be up there, we might have our first Kessler event. https://en.wikipedia.org/ [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
My understanding is that the "two different types of stats" are actually early sats and newer sats, and that all of the newer satellites would be linked by lasers so that a ship in the middle of the Pacific could hit a London ground station if it came to that.
Re: (Score:2)
My understanding is that the "two different types of stats" are actually early sats and newer sats, and that all of the newer satellites would be linked by lasers so that a ship in the middle of the Pacific could hit a London ground station if it came to that.
Per Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], they're being phased in this year on polar launches. Since they have launched about 500 satellites in 2021 alone, I don't expect it will take very long for them to roll out this functionality.
Re:Starlink will be limited by ground stations! (Score:5, Informative)
This. Starlink may become a big player globally, but it will never compete with fibre where that is available, or even copper in any urban areas. It simply can't provide the bandwidth for that many users in a given area.
It was never designed to compete with fibre, in terms of density, bandwidth or latency. So while it is obviously very handy for people in more remote locations, for everyone else it's of limited use.
As for becoming a big player, maybe. They have first mover advantage but they are not the only ones who will be offering this kind of service, and I expect nations will start to see it as the new long wave radio - a tool for soft power an influence. For example you might see China or India start offering low cost satellite broadband, along side their global navigation systems.
Re: (Score:2)
Bandwidth? It simply cannot compete with PRICE.
Starlink in Argentina is $500 for the antenna and $100 a month. The average salary for an Argentinian is currently less than $400 a month. My current 300mbit cable+broandband service is $25 a month.
Unless they start offering region-based pricing, they'll corner themselves into the "niche" market of "outside the city".
Yes, it's a niche market. I know there are billions living outside urban areas, but 99% of those billions can't afford $100 a month internet.
$100/
Re: (Score:2)
Likely many their the initial users in Argentine, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay etc will be businesses (or offices of businesses) in the middle of nowhere (think the headquarters for a 100,000+ acre ranch/farm (aka a "Estancia") and their various smaller groups of offices, barns, shops, etc), or a oil drilling operation, mining operation, etc, etc.
Aaron Z
Re: (Score:2)
That was my point.
$100 is reasonable for an estancia.
$100 is a steal for a mining operation or oil rig. You can bump that 10x at least and it'll still be attractive to them, slaves of Inmarsat and Iridium.
Re: (Score:2)
I expect Starlink to offer region-based pricing eventually, or they will simply FAIL: there aren't enough users in first-world rural areas for that kind of operation.
I'm going to assume that you read the article summary at least. Which means that after the US Gov't has paid for Starlink to launch their satellites, you think the maintenance costs of Starlink will surpass subscriptions?
I don't think you're really thinking this through. I think, once again, Elon has secured the bag.
Re: Starlink will be limited by ground stations! (Score:2)
You are missing the point. There are many communities that have no internet at any price.
In those communities 10 households can combine to get 1 Starlink account for $10 a month. Today each would get 10mbps and eventually 100mbps per household.
Arguably in even poorer communities 100 households could organize to get internet at $1 per household. Even at current pricing this is a game changer for much of the disconnects world.
Re: (Score:2)
If they're that disconnected and poor, where do they get the computers to use the internet with?
Re: (Score:2)
I think the idea that billions of people have no internet (or not fast enough) is completely overrated.
The truth is more that a few million (dozens?) of USians have no affordable or fast internet.
Everywhere in the world they never had internet, only a few dedicated places with land line phones. But they suddenly got a G4 mobile phone network. Because: they simply started with the state of the art when they set up their first country wide network.
Just go into a so called "third world country". Fibre and G3/
Re: (Score:2)
I live in a third world country. Argentina. There is no 4G everywhere. Fibre rollouts started in my city (of 400 000) only 1 year ago.
And this is only for big cities.
So no, it's not everywhere and mobile plans are ridiculously expensive. In Argentina "GOOD" mobile plans still only have 5GB of data (and cost the same as 100Mbit cable)
Re: Starlink will be limited by ground stations! (Score:3)
Actually Starlink is encouraging splitting. They are connecting native communities with a single dish. Sure, per person the bandwidth is maybe low but it is better than it was - which was nothing.
Re: (Score:2)
As for becoming a big player, maybe. They have first mover advantage but they are not the only ones who will be offering this kind of service, and I expect nations will start to see it as the new long wave radio - a tool for soft power an influence. For example you might see China or India start offering low cost satellite broadband, along side their global navigation systems.
Unfortunately, they're going to have to wait on cheaper launch services if they do not want to be paying the competition, because nobody can currently come close to the cost or cadence of SpaceX right now. They've put 480 satellites into orbit over eight launches just these last four months.
If Starship pans out (big if) they're at an even greater disadvantage.
Re: (Score:2)
Nation states looking for influence don't care so much about launch cost.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I think China, in particular, will want to ensure there's as little incentive as possible for people to want to smuggle Dishy McFlatface's into China.
Re: (Score:2)
Nation states looking for influence don't care so much about launch cost.
Everybody cares about cost.
Re: (Score:2)
Ground stations and EPFD. (equivalent power flux density)
In order to hit those speeds, the ground stations (both customer and uplink) need to hit multiple birds for a single location. Which means that those satellites need to be pushing sat power to those locations. You can only push so much power to a given area before you violate FCC regulations for epfd AND potentially cause interference to another party. In SpaceXs case, that other party is Dish Network who they are trying to "share" spectrum in the
Re: (Score:2)
>It will be far more difficult, if not impossible, for them to compete on price.
Not in the short term - economics 101: once you've spent the money it becomes a sunk cost and is no longer relevant to future rational decision making.
Basically, the price has already been paid, actually using their satellites is essentially free. The incremental cost of delivering service to one more customer is zero, and in a free market (if such a thing existed) the market price converges to the incremental cost. Of cour
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure the satellites can last a decent number of years, but to assume they'll last forever is silly. Moreover, the competition won't be standing still. 15 mbps might be plenty for rural customers who might not even have DSL, but many places have gigabit fiber available already. Those also don't need much maintenance and have the added benefit of not being disrupted by Earth or space weather.
No (Score:4, Insightful)
It's American. And, I'm sorry Americans, but that already excludes it from most of the world. You know what that is, "the rest of the world", right?
It's like asking "Is $ChineseTelecomCompany becoming America's dominant mobile network equipment provider?"
Even in the EU we're quite wary of any US business. Because they always come with horrible terms and conditions that have to go through several revisions to even be legal, and even wors employee conditions. Not to mention absolutely ruthless business practices that are de-facto just legalized organized crime. Amazon being the orime example.
(Yes, we have those too. It's rubbing off onto us ever since WWII. Hence that Rammstein song.)
No, you Americans should not accept any of that shit either. But somehow I often see even victims acting like there is pride in such a "successful business".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
> but that already excludes it from most of the world
Wanna bet ten Euros that Starlink will have significant penetration into rural Europe where people can't get decent speeds by Q4 2023?
Re: (Score:3)
Wanna bet ten Euros that Starlink will have significant penetration into rural Europe where people can't get decent speeds by Q4 2023?
...
That would be pointless. There is no "rural Europe" where people can not get decent speed
There are backyard areas in Berlin or Dortmund or Munich, that have not even the tenth of the speed of a random farm in Finnland or Denmark, though. But it will still be in the high mega bit range.
Assuming Star link even gets one single customer in Europe is hybris. Yes, they will ge
Re: (Score:2)
They'll probably get some customers in places like Russia and Belarus, where the internet is censored. If you consider such places to be "Europe" (in a cultural/political sense).
Re: (Score:3)
>It's like asking "Is $ChineseTelecomCompany becoming America's dominant mobile network equipment provider?"
It would be, if $ChineseTelecomCompany had infrastructure in every American city, town, and wilderness area.
Because that's what SpaceX is going to have - every remote hamlet in your nation will have ready access to Starlink infrastructure, the only barrier to accessing it will be price, and any regulatory hurdles your government puts in their way - hurdles which will continue to prevent that hamlet
Re: (Score:3)
If China were to simply say, "no Starlink! Anybody caught with Starlink is in big trouble!" then they really have no sway with Starlink.
But if China says, "hey Starlink, let's do business, you want access to our market of $1.4B people, no problem, you just need to comply with A/B/C X/Y/Z." Then Starlink will say, "Starlink works vigilantly to comply with all legal requirements wherever
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly.
Re: (Score:2)
and any regulatory hurdles your government puts in their way - hurdles which will continue to prevent that hamlet from getting any internet access at all.
You are - well, my phrase I would use is "idiot" - however you are not an idiot in this case: but only a super stupid uninformed person.
The government regulation is like this:
- you provide telecommunication services
- a customer asks for a contract/line
- you have to provide it - cost free
I can sit in the most remotes area in any place in Europe, and if a te
Re: (Score:3)
Even in the EU we're quite wary of any US business. Because they always come with horrible terms and conditions that have to go through several revisions to even be legal, and even wors employee conditions.
Nobody is going to make your farmers use Starlink. Your governments can ban it or the ground stations it currently relies on, or even place a heavy tariff on it, a 'sin tax' if you will. That would show Elon Musk for having the audacity to tell his employees they are free to work elsewhere if they do not like the demanding environment.
You're always free to wait for a mega constellation launched by Arianespace. Then you'll have the peace of mind that no unpaid overtime contributed to your cat video enjoymen
Re: (Score:3)
You mean like refugees from the south american countries your government has a history of interfering with and destabilizing? If you can't deal with the aftermath, stay out of other people's countries.
Re: (Score:2)
You do realize at a certain point blaming the past kind of peters out and you have to start looking at current events. Kind of like black slavery and current events happening to said group.
Re: No (Score:2)
I am a European migrant living in the USA.
There is some merit to what you say in that money is critical in the USA. If you are living paycheck to paycheck and you become ill you will struggle and potential get substandard health care.
However, on the other hand, if you are gainfully employed and reasonably successful in your job you will likely do better than you will anywhere else in the world.
My company pays me very well
- in fact more that European colleagues who are C level executives. I pay much lower t
Public IPs (Score:2)
Re:Public IPs (Score:5, Informative)
They are currently using CGNAT, no public IP.
They said there was a planned commercial service package after the beta that would provide public IPs.
The only other detail I know, they explicitly said that during the beta there would be no bandwidth caps or throttling of regular service.
My assumption is after the beta, perhaps depending on load, we'll be capped or limited somehow and it would take a commercial package to be exempt from that.
There was no pricing details at all for commercial service last I looked about a month ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
> Anybody has tried it yet maybe?
Yes. Natively on IPv6 or rent a VPS and do your own NAT. I'm using Wireguard for backhaul. Works perfectly (some shenanigans are needed for CGNAT/UDP conflicts but I have that all puppetized and automated so adding a new machine is just a couple lines of config).
Re: (Score:2)
So Starlink is providing routable IPv6 addresses?
I don’t care about running services from my home, but (in normal times) I do occasionally find it useful to connect to one of my home machines from my office.
Re: Public IPs (Score:2)
It's difficult for startups to get that many IPs, so they might have no choice but to do cgnat.
Re: Public IPs (Score:2)
This post makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
What is he complaining about? That spaceX will serve the internet customers that other ISPs ignored? That it used it is own money to create a service that is able to do what others tried and failed and now is getting government subsidies to expand it? that even if that were not subsides spaceX would launch the satellites anyway because they are pretty confident that it will turn a profit? that it can do it better and cheaper than any other competitor?
He (chose to) forget a few things, one that these subsidies have been given in the past for exactly this purpose and were pretty much pocketed by the big ISPs with almost no network expansion, that even if (or when) spaceX became a huge ISP with global coverage the system design won't work in high density areas, the satellites cover areas the size of cities (~50km^2) and do not have the capability (nor the bandwidth) to server thousands of clients at the same time, at least for the foreseeable future.
Starlink is not guaranteed to succeed, there are a lot of issues to solve yet (like sat to sat links) and is far from turning a profit, but in the end if government subsides can keep it afloat long enough and the costumers (in us or worldwide) that had crappy or no service are well served, what is the problem???
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Satellite to satellite seems to have been tested and shown to be solved as of September 2020, do you have other information? One reference: https://spacenews.com/spacex-a... [spacenews.com]
As for profitability you probably have not been in rural areas (where 5% of the US population lives) where dialup is considered fast. If they can get even 10% of ONLY those customers that would be two million subscribers at $50 a month *just in the USA* paying $100 million a month .. or $1 billion a year -- that should pay off the capita
40K satellites, eh? (Score:2)
So, 40K satellites to give unrestricted internet access to everyone in the world, but we have world powers that either don't want their citizens to have access to it, and others that want to spy what their citizens are using it for. There's going to be wars fought about all this, and the hammer is going to come down hard.
You might even call this event... Warhammer 40,000.
Re: (Score:2)
If you already have a good and low-cost internet connexion, there is no reason for you to look at Starlink.
For people living in "unwired" rural areas, however, Starlink is going to be at least ten times better than the one or two alternatives, if any.
Visualization for Starlink (Score:2)
I saw a link a while ago that showed an awesome visualization of Starlink paths and showing how latency could be lower for orbital paths. The guy has a few other Starlink visualizations on his youtube channel. I'm hoping he updates some time this year to show what's in place as it grows.
Using ground relays with Starlink [youtube.com]
No Satellite experience (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It would be better contribution if you debunked these missconceptions here (you are The Expert, I presume?).
Slashdot garbage (Score:2)
Cringely is now a self styled "space pundit"? lol
Also, it's clear what a feral kitty is, but wth is a federal kitty?
Dominant ISP? Not bloddy likely! (Score:2)
Sure, getting Starlink makes sense if you live out in the sticks and don't have any other reasonably priced broadband options.
That said, I don't see how any Satellite Internet service that costs $500 to set up and costs $100 a month for 200 Mb/s service is going to compete with regional cable and fiber Internet providers. They offer speeds that are twice that fast at roughly half the monthly cost with little or no initial setup fee.
Cringely (Score:2)
Why does slashdot keep posting this know idiotic and xenophobic mental midget's rambling, yeah he may be "correct" about Starlink .. but we already knew half the stuff he says, while the other half is a blatant lie .. whenever I force myself to read his vomit stew I feel like a math professor opening up a math journal to see an article that proclaims to "discover" that 1+1=2, and oh yeah P=NP as a consequence.
New Measurement Unit (Score:2)
Shut Up And Take My Money (Score:4, Informative)
As a recent transplant to Fairbanks, AK, I can say, see Subject. I don't care.
I want my Starlink, and I want it now. Internet access here is hilariously bad, and hilariously expensive. Starlink is changing that.
His nom de plume is fitting (Score:2)
On those mercifully few occasions I see a Cringely story posted to Slashdot, seeing whatever uninformed drivel he’s spewed forth invariably makes me cringe.
Actual cost to consumer? (Score:2)
Given the example of Satelite Phone and Radio, it is not cheap...(yes different tech but still...)
What will be the _actual_ long term cost to the consumer?
Cost of base stateions?
Cost of maintaining the satelite system?
Cost of operating the satelise system (flight ops)?
Cost of user terminals?
Cost of collision insurance (w/ 40k satelites in orbit that may be significant risk)?
These will break, would they not? Replacing these that bake will be more costly than seeding empty space in large numbers?
Space X will be much needed competition (Score:2)
They will be competition with the likes of AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, et al.
They may not be able to compete in the high-density areas, but they will probably dominate all of the rural ones.
It may even compete in the low to medium density areas as well, we'll see.
Personally, I'm all for any competition to the regional monopolies at this point because that is the only way costs come down at all.
( Example: Where I live, my choices are either 1 bar of cellular signal or Comcast. That's pretty much it. )
Spherical cows (Score:2)
Cringely cites estimates that 40,000 satellites would be enough to serve every Internet user on Earth, as well as IoT devices and even future as-yet-uninvented network services.
Hmm, is that 8 billion people spread evenly over the planet, or does that take into account high density cities? Because everything I've heard about Starlink is that it won't work in cities where the population density is too high for the number of satellites that can serve a single area, so that's ~50% of the world's population ruled out straight away.
Re: Whether this might make it harder for censorsh (Score:2)
Not all that hard but expensive because youâd need a million jammers and would also block that frequency for your own use.
Much easier to instead drive along a road with a detector truck and if you see signals coming out of a house you search it and throw the people there in jail for possession of illegal telecoms equipment.
Re: Whether this might make it harder for censorsh (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Whether this might make it harder for censorsh (Score:2)
Well, it will definitely go through *US* censorship.
Just like you cannot even show a naked breast on YouTube, "because Catholiban".
And I haven't even mentioned the NSA *definitely* being in there with some "national security letters". In the business. So it doesn't matter if they have base stations elsewhere in the world.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The typical signal path will supposedly be customer -> nearest satellite -> nearest base station.
It's going to be kind of difficult to snoop on a signal that never comes anywhere close to the US. Not unless each of those satellites have far more powerful snooping-oriented hardware than we've heard any suggestion of. Takes a lot more CPU power to analyze data streams than to just route them to the correct destination. Especially with widespread use of encryption. Even assuming the encryption system
Re: (Score:2)
The US govt absolutely has the power to compel SpaceX to forward any Starlink traffic from any particular customer to a three-letter agency of choice. It's entirely legal with a warrant, and SpaceX will comply like any other US telecom company. The satellites don't need any particular snooping-oriented hardware to do this - they can already talk to each other so routing the signal from, say, China to the US without touching the ground is a matter of giving them the command to do so. As a result I don't expe
Re: (Score:2)
The ones here? I wouldn't be surprised. The ones in China? I imagine their government will get similar consideration, along with the right to make sure the NSA doesn't.
So I imagine US censorship and surveillance will be an issue primarily within the borders of the US and nations whose intelligence communities have an information-sharing agreement with ours. So convenient that our governments can buy surveillance data on us from foreign intelligence agencies when it would be too illegal to collect it the
Re: (Score:2)
Ground stations will be local and I bet my ass it'll be "region locked". You won't be able to "roam" your dish (or if you can, it'll be extra).
They have licenses in every country they operate for that reason. In Argentina they're partnering with state-owned ARSAT to provide base stations.
Re: (Score:2)
There's the other part of a space based internet. The ground station. That has to be within view of the satellite. Remember the current crop (with few exceptions) don't have the laser links.
Re: Whether this might make it harder for censorsh (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Depends on the directionality of the antennas.
A military grade phased array can ignore a whole lot of power outside of the main lobe.
Re: Whether this might make it harder for censorsh (Score:2)
They just need to.make it's use illegal, and then enforce it. Shouldn't be difficult.
Not too many people in China (for example) care about the rubbish spouted by westerners anyway. The censorship that matters is about comments being made inside China by very few with the intent to cause trouble.
Re: (Score:2)
What are you talking about? Making something that is widely useful illegal won't stop people from using it. Satellite dishes are banned in Iran, yet over 50% of households have one blatantly out in the open. Nobody wants to watch the state TV. Officials ignore the satellite dishes -- since they too want to watch entertaining TV. Once in a while they crack down on it selectively when they want to harass certain people.
Everyone wants better and faster internet .. they'll disguise and hide the transceivers --
Re: (Score:3)
Not really an option unless China wants to deny themselves, and everyone else, access to space with the resulting Kessler syndrome. That's going to have some *massive* political fallout. Not to mention financial fallout - though I suppose they could withdraw from the treaties that impose that liability.
Re: (Score:3)
Except that when they get the satellite to satellite links working Starlink does not need a local base station anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
The more interesting application might be CDNs. It might make economic sense to launch caching servers for various video streaming services to reduce groun
Re: (Score:2)
Caching is one of the reasons why Netflix is AWS's biggest single customer.
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you think that they will not get it working?
It does seem like a fairly small technical challenge compared to some others that Space X has succeeded in.
Further it seems like something that they will likely work fairly hard on given that it is a question of a fairly high sums of money of they succeed.
Re: (Score:2)
So you are saying that Starlink will never improve their designs?
I think you misunderstand the way SpaceX works.
They will build while they change things that is how they have worked with the launchers and the satellites.
And they have actually launched satellites with the lasers and the launch of more is planned in July.
On the "having launched" they have currently 1378 satellites out of 12000 currently approved and possibly quite many more as there are filing for quite many more. So only small part of the
Re: Whether this might make it harder for censorsh (Score:3)
They already have it working:
https://spacenews.com/spacex-a... [spacenews.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Everything that guy starts up is on the backs of taxpayers. Quite ridiculous. Companies like this should be taxpayer owned since apparently they funded the whole damned thing. Any profits should be returned to that 'Federal Kitty Bank'
My god NO! That’s too damn close to the S word, one taste of it and you’re addicted, once addicted you become a social program wielding communist overlord. I know my place and I’m already starting to love the taste of boot.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't really get the harping about tax/eco subsidies of Tesla. These are fairly general energy and automototive sector subsidies, how is tesla really any different from GM for instance?
Not really fair to compare that with FCC policy of propping up very specific monopolies and locking all their competition out of the market, and cynically saying this is for the sake of "users who are presently underserved or unserved completely", an unmitigated disaster since the late 90s.
Re: (Score:2)
The tax/eco subsidies are set up in a way that esp. benefits Tesla, because they are range dependent. But most eco-benefits are not range dependent.
It's not just Tesla. The DoD subsidized SpaceX, the Boring company was subsidized by various local governments, Starlink may be subsidized by the FCC (if this article is to be believed), Solarcity was subsidized by the DoE. Everything he does is underwritten by the taxpayers.
Re: (Score:2)
Would you rather have the money go to (pick one):
AT&T
Comcast
Spectrum
WOW
StarLink
The incumbents have been belly up to the trough for years sucking down billions while building non-compete networks that don't serve rural America. I say open it up to locals and electric companies as well. Broadband should be standard anywhere in USA.
Re: (Score:2)