True. My point was that employers may not offer them a choice if having them work at home saves the company money.
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Fair.
Also fair, and I totally agree there will be people who want better service than what they have, I'm just also considering the power of money. Starlink isn't going to provide both significantly better service and significantly lower cost for more than a few percent of the US's population. For most customers on the potential fence it will come down to a social experiment on the value of service quality over money.
Maybe I'm just a bit of a pessimist, but my lifetime's worth of anecdotal observation suggests the latter...
Lastly, the "my ISP is terrible so I want SpaceX" argument clearly comes from a) people who have never dealt with SpaceX and b) people who have never dealt with Tesla customer service.
Sure, but only a few percent of the US is all it takes to be profitable.
If the tech works, I don't have to deal with SpaceX
I actually expect StarLink to become the primary uplink for Wireless ISPs (WISP).
Instead of building a network of towers, inter connected, to where you can finally get good bandwidth, each tower could have it's own StarLink based uplink.
Think Battery + Solar + Canopy or UBNT based PtMP wireless gear + StarLink terminal.
You could easily service 10-50 customers off of the tower if located sanely.
I also expect StarLink to get used by major (and minor) cell phone providers, as you could do the same type of thing with 4G LTE and 5G, This greatly reduces the capital expense of new towers, and can make temporary towers very easy.
With sub 25ms StarLink becomes really attractive for these types of solutions, depending on the prices for commercial use. Actual end user locations will depend on the cost and availability of alternatives.
Perfect example, a friend of mine owned (since sold) a house 7.6 miles from my house. His only options for Internet were 1.5Mbit DSL from the local telco or 3Mbit wireless from a local wireless ISP (he could have gone a bit higher, but the tower was rather loaded at the time anyway). Local cable company wanted $28,000 for extending the cable/fiber line ~.5 miles, and the privilege of becoming a customer.
Turns out the topography was perfect for us to do a point to point wireless link between our houses. I was able to get it stable at around 25mbit, due to some trees in the way. It took renting a 50 foot boom lift (yes, towed with our Model X), and it took quite a bit of work, but the link was used for almost 2 years before he sold the house.
Instead of building a network of towers, inter connected, to where you can finally get good bandwidth, each tower could have it's own StarLink based uplink.
Think Battery + Solar + Canopy or UBNT based PtMP wireless gear + StarLink terminal.
You could easily service 10-50 customers off of the tower if located sanely.
I also expect StarLink to get used by major (and minor) cell phone providers, as you could do the same type of thing with 4G LTE and 5G, This greatly reduces the capital expense of new towers, and can make temporary towers very easy.
With sub 25ms StarLink becomes really attractive for these types of solutions, depending on the prices for commercial use. Actual end user locations will depend on the cost and availability of alternatives.
Perfect example, a friend of mine owned (since sold) a house 7.6 miles from my house. His only options for Internet were 1.5Mbit DSL from the local telco or 3Mbit wireless from a local wireless ISP (he could have gone a bit higher, but the tower was rather loaded at the time anyway). Local cable company wanted $28,000 for extending the cable/fiber line ~.5 miles, and the privilege of becoming a customer.
Turns out the topography was perfect for us to do a point to point wireless link between our houses. I was able to get it stable at around 25mbit, due to some trees in the way. It took renting a 50 foot boom lift (yes, towed with our Model X), and it took quite a bit of work, but the link was used for almost 2 years before he sold the house.
If you've dealt with one ElonCo you've dealt with them all.
If Starlink is as good as Not-a-Flamethrower, I'm in!
(ask me again when I get Cybertruck)
adiggs
Well-Known Member
...
Also fair, and I totally agree there will be people who want better service than what they have, I'm just also considering the power of money. Starlink isn't going to provide both significantly better service and significantly lower cost for more than a few percent of the US's population. For most customers on the potential fence it will come down to a social experiment on the value of service quality over money.
Maybe I'm just a bit of a pessimist, but my lifetime's worth of anecdotal observation suggests the latter...
Lastly, the "my ISP is terrible so I want SpaceX" argument clearly comes from a) people who have never dealt with SpaceX and b) people who have never dealt with Tesla customer service.
That last bit - clearly I haven't dealt with SpaceX (roughly nobody has), and that's an honest opportunity for failure. However, I've been dealing with Tesla Service since 2013. It's been good mostly, and bad occasionally for us. I know that our experience isn't necessarily what's shared.
I like the observation about the social experiment. I think we'll be able to see an exploitable trend if we see a big shift to remote work, at least in the tech industry, coming out of CV disruption. I think that remote work shift will also see a sizable number of people moving out of city limits (more space), and those people will know that their livelihood is directly dependent on the quality of their internet connection.
My guess is they (heck - me) would cheerfully pay $300/month for 100Mb / low ping time internet. That might be a lot more than we'd pay elsewhere, but between lower housing prices in the country (that might not last) plus the fact that a high paying job is directly tied to the quality of that internet, $300 or even $500/month won't be hard to put into the family budget. I don't think it'll be that expensive. Or maybe the really good package WILL be that expensive. (People with disposable income, using some of it to fund a country lifestyle - no-brainer expense).
Definitely an interesting social experiment!
Lol. You won't find small business willing to pay that.
There's a market for $300 whiz bang service just as there's a market for Tesla P-cars.
strider
Active Member
So what's the problem? Use the same basic building blocks but give better service to people who will pay more.Lol. You won't find small business willing to pay that.
There's a market for $300 whiz bang service just as there's a market for Tesla P-cars.
As I posted above, I'm paying $200 for top of the line geosat service. I would easily pay that for Starlink. I am exactly the kind of person @adiggs was talking about. I had a Bay Area job. Four years ago I moved to the country and kept my Bay Area job. Cost of living is radically lower here so I can easily pay more for connectivity. Obviously, I don't know if there are enough of me to support a company.
adiggs
Well-Known Member
Heh - and I want to be exactly the kind of person I was talking about earlier (still living in suburbia for now though).
Small business pays $200-$250 a month for fibre internet service and a few static IPs.Lol. You won't find small business willing to pay that.
There's a market for $300 whiz bang service just as there's a market for Tesla P-cars.
No problem. In light of the anecdotal "I'm willing to pay more" comments, I'm just highlighting that camp's very small fraction of total market share, even before you filter out everyone that has access to 'better' service than Starlink will provide.
Obviously SpaceX thinks that real customer base is large enough to not only build the first really successful internet constellation but also have it fund their Mars program. I'm slightly concerned that the ElonCo MO of pulling back from grand vision may not achieve such far reaching aspirations.
Anyway, just to reiterate the core point, it comes back to how one assesses likelihood of customers switching service from whatever they have [once Starlink becomes available] to whatever Starlink can provide. I think we can all at least agree that any honest assessment will land somewhere well within the extremes of 'certain success' and 'certain failure'.
Exactly. You won't find many residential customers willing to pay more than that for an RF link...
Interesting, if not expected progress.
SpaceX applies for gateways covering the contiguous US - Interactive map : Starlink
SpaceX applies for gateways covering the contiguous US - Interactive map : Starlink
adiggs
Well-Known Member
My understanding is that the current sats do not have the inter sat laser links. So all comms will be single hop ground->sat->ground as shown by compete coverage of the ground stations. The ground stations themselves may be as simple as a bunch of the standard ground terminals set up to provide connections to multiple birds simultaneously. They could also have larger phased arrays with smaller beam widths to better discriminate between the multiple beams all pointing at the ground station, allowing for more connections.
The whole shebang then ties into the existing backbone.
adiggs
Well-Known Member
Ah hah! That makes sense. My house would be talking to the satellite, that will in turn be talking to the ground station, and connecting to the rest of the internet from there.
My house-in-the-forest (that also has fiber optic to the house - seriously) will have 2 ground stations within the operational range. That sounds like pretty stable / good coverage for Starlink.
Mostly, that sounds to me like I'm not limited to that house, should Starlink service be good - good rural Internet is coming to rural Oregon outside of the Portland Metro area. That sounds awesome to me
Theoretically, yes. The issue would be if you traveled too close to a location that already has a high density of users. They already did a test with an in-flight airplane, so you may even be able to use it on the road.
Yes. The gateway is, as it were, the satellite network's gateway into "The Internet". Can't get there without it. Below is a good, random public domain diagram that I Googsed--note that all two way satellites work the same. There are literally two payloads on each satellite, one that's called forward link (the internet to the user) and one that's the return link (the user to the internet)...though digital payloads (vs traditional satellite bent pipe) sort of combine the processing so they're not completely separate payloads. If there are ISLs involved this diagram would simply have another satellite(s) with links between the satellites, and in that case the on board processing is responsible for basically figuring out which way data goes--does it go through another ISL to another satellite, does it drop down to a user, or does it drop down to a gateway.
Note that, at the risk of stating the obvious, without ISLs the user terminal and a gateway both need to be able to see the satellite in order to actual close a link.
SpaceX will no doubt have a ton of gateways around the world--the more gateways there are, the more the network can rely on terrestrial infrastructure.
