So can somebody more technologically inclined tell me which would be a "better" connection? Is it possible to do more from satellite than simply radio? Could Tesla arrange for SpaceX to send us up a satellite for all tesla customers, creating some sort of connection to the Internet or would we always need 3G or 4G something to keep us connected to our phone, etc? Do my questions even make any sense?
Satellite internet is extremely slow because of the 40,000 mile round trip (Geosynchronous orbit is 20,000 miles up). Satellite is mostly used for feed services only where a response is either non-existant or very infrequent. Some very remote places have satellite internet because there isn't any other option but no one chooses satellite internet as a first choice.
Not to answer for Al Sherman but typically you can get decent speeds of north of 10Mbps but latency is an issue to due the signal length. Damn speed of light issue.
Figures. Ah well. 3G is still pretty cool, and I wasn't overly impressed with the satellite radio quality during my brief trial. Maybe 4G will happen for Tesla sometime soon. Thanks for the educated responses!
I never thought of a SpaceX tie in before, but wouldn't that be cool if we could have our own Satellites The only thing I thought of was it could download Google Maps when 3g is out of range (backup to satellite) But as they are both public companies, I don't think Tesla could get special treatment
No worries on anyone answering for me. This is CLEARLY not my area. That's what our forum is about after all. My (uneducated) guess is a LOT latency and a decent part bandwidth. Just for reference, I've NEVER seen north of 10Mb/s. Generally in the high 2's. It can vary a lot depending on what time of day. Latency has NEVER been south of 600ms and is generally in the mid 700's.I suspect this has a much greater affect on the speed than the bandwidth. But both pretty much suck. I'm friends with the guy who owns our local phone/internet/cable company. I asked him when we are getting high speed internet and he said "you're never getting it from me, and I'd be surprised if you ever get it from anyone in the current configuration." So it's satellite for now. Dial up pretty much became unusable about 2 years ago.
Yep, but GEO is not the only option. With a network of satellites, LEO can be used. The lower the orbit the more satellites needed, but then signal strength and bandwidth is better. With an altitude of a few hundre miles, latency is a non-issue.