StarLink satellite internet service by SpaceX
Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2020 2:48 am
So the long awaited StarLink satellite internet service by SpaceX has finally landed in the form an email update:
(quote) " The Better Than Nothing Beta test, initial Starlink service is priced at $99 a month – plus a $499 upfront cost to order the Starlink Kit. The kit includes a user terminal to connect to the satellites, a mounting tripod and a Wi-Fi router. There is also now a Starlink app listed by SpaceX on the Google Play and Apple iOS app stores.
As you can tell from the title, we are trying to lower your initial expectations. Expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s and latency from 20ms to 40ms over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system. There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all.
Under Starlink’s Better Than Nothing Beta program, initial service is targeted for the U.S. and Canada in 2020, rapidly expanding to near global coverage of the populated world by 2021. " (unquote)
Some thoughts about StarLink...
Having to use a satellite antenna, the shape and size of a pizza box as described by StarLink, it will probably have the same issues as other dishes (DirecTV, Dish Network, etc), when it rains, snows, or birds poop, the data will drop out for some time. Unfortunately, it's the inherent nature of high frequency satellite communications, including relatively high ping times of 40ms compared to 5G's 5ms. There's nothing that can be done about it (unless we invest faster than light communications), the signal has to travel a certain distance, which even at the speed of light has a slight delay. Keep in mind, the signal has to travel in both directions, up 550Km, down 550Km, so when you press a key on your keyboard it actually has to travel 1,100Km back to the server, then the response another 1,100km from the server back to your computer, therefore there's really no way to improve on the ping times (and that's the be case scenario without any other delays of the packet on its way). For this reason, terrestrial mobile services will always have an advantage in speed, ping, reliability and price (#SPRP lol).
If and when price comes down and the service becomes more popular, they could become the victim of their own success. When there's a critical number of concurrent users watching PornHub (you know who I'm talking about! lol), it could bog down the network dragging down speeds and user experience. There's only a finite amount of bandwidth for any given geographic area to cover (they can't just put more satellites in space for that area), and most likely StarLink will be prioritized for Tesla cars (Elon Musk's other venture) as their global network for self driving cars which I'm suspecting was the initial purposes/trigger for the StarLink project.
The current upfront equipment cost of $500 along with the $100 monthly service is pretty unattractive, when you can get similar or better LTE/5G service here on Earth. Nevertheless, StarLink and other satellite internet services will be useful especially for those in for remote areas who have no other choices.
Wooo-hooo! Sign me up! Hmmm... not yet, I rather buy a Tesla. ;D
https://www.starlink.com/
Update on 2020-12-12
The good news...
Upon looking at the pictures in the article posted by R1250GSA (https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spac ... tic-router), looks like they are using a flat phase-array dish antenna instead of the traditional parabolic dish. Phase array is used by the military since it offers several advantages over the "dish", such as lower and smaller profile, less finicky angles, better performance. The POE adapter at https://youtu.be/RDjlhhbbPJE?t=130 looks like it's about 1,000Watts of raw power, no wonder it can also drive a heater inside the antenna. he-he
In it's current form, I would imagine it's an alternative for those with no or crappy and expensive internet, however with a decent mobile signal one can get better internet at a much lower cost, especially as 5G gets deployed more widely.
The bad news...
Initially it was touted as a gigabit internet service, but even Startlink's lab can only get a couple of hundred megabits down and a third of that as up speed. Now, with a half decent mobile router setup along with decent signal or with directional antennas, one can get easily get a couple of hundred Mbps on 4G-LTE and well over 500Mbps on 5G sub-6GHz and over 1Gbps on mmWave for about half the monthly cost of StarLink, let alone the $600 startup cost of the hardware+service. With congestion service cost could go up, and there's no good data at this time once millions of users get online at once how will that affect throughput, so we shall see in the coming years.
Reliability...
As far as reliability, terrestrial based cellular service will always be more dependable. With satellite service there are just way more points of fault, including uplink/downlink, space junk knocking out satellites, weather factors (wind, rain, snow), sun busts, and of course the phase of the moon (well maybe not that last one lol).
The fun news...
Of course it could always be used as a picnic table too with its flat surface and a built-in "microwave oven". Once you're done picnicking, just hang it on a wall as a dart-board. For extra fun, one could use the thousands of StarLink satellites in low orbit as skeet shooting targets. Get that shotgun out! Poww-Poww!! ;D
(quote) " The Better Than Nothing Beta test, initial Starlink service is priced at $99 a month – plus a $499 upfront cost to order the Starlink Kit. The kit includes a user terminal to connect to the satellites, a mounting tripod and a Wi-Fi router. There is also now a Starlink app listed by SpaceX on the Google Play and Apple iOS app stores.
As you can tell from the title, we are trying to lower your initial expectations. Expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s and latency from 20ms to 40ms over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system. There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all.
Under Starlink’s Better Than Nothing Beta program, initial service is targeted for the U.S. and Canada in 2020, rapidly expanding to near global coverage of the populated world by 2021. " (unquote)
Some thoughts about StarLink...
Having to use a satellite antenna, the shape and size of a pizza box as described by StarLink, it will probably have the same issues as other dishes (DirecTV, Dish Network, etc), when it rains, snows, or birds poop, the data will drop out for some time. Unfortunately, it's the inherent nature of high frequency satellite communications, including relatively high ping times of 40ms compared to 5G's 5ms. There's nothing that can be done about it (unless we invest faster than light communications), the signal has to travel a certain distance, which even at the speed of light has a slight delay. Keep in mind, the signal has to travel in both directions, up 550Km, down 550Km, so when you press a key on your keyboard it actually has to travel 1,100Km back to the server, then the response another 1,100km from the server back to your computer, therefore there's really no way to improve on the ping times (and that's the be case scenario without any other delays of the packet on its way). For this reason, terrestrial mobile services will always have an advantage in speed, ping, reliability and price (#SPRP lol).
If and when price comes down and the service becomes more popular, they could become the victim of their own success. When there's a critical number of concurrent users watching PornHub (you know who I'm talking about! lol), it could bog down the network dragging down speeds and user experience. There's only a finite amount of bandwidth for any given geographic area to cover (they can't just put more satellites in space for that area), and most likely StarLink will be prioritized for Tesla cars (Elon Musk's other venture) as their global network for self driving cars which I'm suspecting was the initial purposes/trigger for the StarLink project.
The current upfront equipment cost of $500 along with the $100 monthly service is pretty unattractive, when you can get similar or better LTE/5G service here on Earth. Nevertheless, StarLink and other satellite internet services will be useful especially for those in for remote areas who have no other choices.
Wooo-hooo! Sign me up! Hmmm... not yet, I rather buy a Tesla. ;D
https://www.starlink.com/
Update on 2020-12-12
The good news...
Upon looking at the pictures in the article posted by R1250GSA (https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spac ... tic-router), looks like they are using a flat phase-array dish antenna instead of the traditional parabolic dish. Phase array is used by the military since it offers several advantages over the "dish", such as lower and smaller profile, less finicky angles, better performance. The POE adapter at https://youtu.be/RDjlhhbbPJE?t=130 looks like it's about 1,000Watts of raw power, no wonder it can also drive a heater inside the antenna. he-he
In it's current form, I would imagine it's an alternative for those with no or crappy and expensive internet, however with a decent mobile signal one can get better internet at a much lower cost, especially as 5G gets deployed more widely.
The bad news...
Initially it was touted as a gigabit internet service, but even Startlink's lab can only get a couple of hundred megabits down and a third of that as up speed. Now, with a half decent mobile router setup along with decent signal or with directional antennas, one can get easily get a couple of hundred Mbps on 4G-LTE and well over 500Mbps on 5G sub-6GHz and over 1Gbps on mmWave for about half the monthly cost of StarLink, let alone the $600 startup cost of the hardware+service. With congestion service cost could go up, and there's no good data at this time once millions of users get online at once how will that affect throughput, so we shall see in the coming years.
Reliability...
As far as reliability, terrestrial based cellular service will always be more dependable. With satellite service there are just way more points of fault, including uplink/downlink, space junk knocking out satellites, weather factors (wind, rain, snow), sun busts, and of course the phase of the moon (well maybe not that last one lol).
The fun news...
Of course it could always be used as a picnic table too with its flat surface and a built-in "microwave oven". Once you're done picnicking, just hang it on a wall as a dart-board. For extra fun, one could use the thousands of StarLink satellites in low orbit as skeet shooting targets. Get that shotgun out! Poww-Poww!! ;D
