Starlink - Satellite Internet

[elytron]

Anyone heard of Starlink? SpaceX will be launching thousands of small satellites, in an attempt to provide decent Internet service to large area and remote locations on the planet. I want to try this out, only if it's fast, secure and affordable. I hope they are successful with it's deployment.

 

[Occams Barber]

Anyone heard of Starlink? SpaceX will be launching thousands of small satellites, in an attempt to provide decent Internet service to large area and remote locations on the planet. I want to try this out, only if it's fast, secure and affordable. I hope they are successful with it's deployment.

I'm not sure how different Starlink is to normal satellite internet but the current satellite setup has its share of problems.
OB
What is Satellite Internet - Pros & Cons
Satellite Internet Cons

• The weather affects the signal path. During bad wind or rain storms you should expect poor quality internet, assuming you have internet at all.
• Poor latency or high ping rate. Latency and ping rate is essentially the same thing; they both test how long it takes to communicate between another computer, device, service or server in a network.

In the case of satellite internet, it’s how fast you send and receive files (the delay or how much lag there is). Since you have to send data to space, to your ISP and back again, satellite internet has poor latency, or a high ping rate. So satellite internet is not good for you if you’re a gamer or if you intend to use VoIP services.

• Minor obstructions can affect your signal. Your dish need to point south (where all the orbiting dishes are), and anything in the way of your dish’s signal such as branches or buildings can affect the quality. This can be a major pain if you live out in the woods.
• Bandwidth limitations. Each month you’ll have so much bandwidth you can use up before your ISP throttles your connections (slows it down). This is in accordance to their (Acceptable use policy - Wikipedia) Fair Use Policy. Some ISPs do daily bandwidths instead, which is slightly better, as you don’t have to wait as long as an entire month if you use up your bandwidth right away.
• VPNs aren’t compatible with satellite internet. They require a low latency, high bandwidth setup which is the complete opposite of what you’ll get with satellite internet.
• Satellite internet is relatively expensive. You’ll pay around $100 per month for speeds of 2 Mbps. To put this into perspective, this is twice what I pay per month for 25x faster cable internet.

Satellite Internet Pros

• Satellite internet is faster than dialup. It’ll depend on what package you buy, but you can expect satellite speeds to be 10x to 35x times faster than dialup.
• Satellite internet connections can handle high bandwidth usage, so your internet speed/quality shouldn’t be affected by lots of users or “peak use times.”
• You don’t need a phone line for satellite internet.

As you can see, the cons of satellite internet (far) outweigh any pros. It’s not the greatest or most reliable option, and it’s incredibly expensive

 

[timothyu]

Apart from permanently marring the night sky with a ring of 40,000 satellites one might question will its 100mb laser accuracy and nanobot related technology be used for only our best interests?
SpaceX Starlink 'space lasers' successfully tested in orbit for the first time

 

[elytron]

I'm not sure how different Starlink is to normal satellite internet but the current satellite setup has its share of problems.

The SpaceX satellites will be in a lower orbit. There will be more of them, like thousands more. They are trying to improve over previous satellite Internet tech. They launch and reuse their own rockets. Yeah will probably be expensive.

 

[Occams Barber]

The SpaceX satellites will be in a lower orbit. There will be more of them, like thousands more. They are trying to improve over previous satellite Internet tech. They launch and reuse their own rockets. Yeah will probably be expensive.

Unfortunately a lower orbit isn't likely to solve service degradation or interruption due to weather conditions or the latency problem or the line-of-sight reception issue.

I think the whole idea is based on getting a basic service into remote areas rather than building a super internet service. We use a satellite service to get the internet to small communities and stations (big ranches) in remote parts of Australia (remote = most of the country).

OB

 

[elytron]

Apart from permanently marring the night sky with a ring of 40,000 satellites one might question will its 100mb laser accuracy and nanobot related technology be used for only our best interests?

Astronomers are already irritated by all the extra light interference. Ruining their images.

 

[Darkhorse]

My family has used satellite internet for about 10 years (we live in the country), and it works pretty well most of the time. We used HughesNet for a while, then moved to Viasat. $70 per month. It's good enough to work with a VPN, and they don't have restrictive bandwidth limits - at least here.

 

[Jonathan Walkerin]

Apart from permanently marring the night sky with a ring of 40,000 satellites one might question will its 100mb laser accuracy and nanobot related technology be used for only our best interests?

Nothing in the orbit is permanent. We are sure to clean the orbit when we develop technology for it. With current rate of progress it shouldn’t be that far in the future.

What do nanobots have to do with Starlink ?

Is every Tesla now a killer transformer just waiting for Elon to shout “execute order 66” on Tesla battery day to start his conquest of Earth ?

If that is the case I agree it might not be in our best interests.

 

[Jonathan Walkerin]

There was a short video about starlink