
SpaceX Starlink is now its own ASN and present at the Seattle Internet Exchange - walrus01
https://www.peeringdb.com/net/18747
======
modeless
They just launched the next batch of Starlink satellites minutes ago:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4xBFHjkUvw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4xBFHjkUvw).
The 60-satellite train should be visible in the sky over the SF bay area
around 9:35 tomorrow night:
[https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink](https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink)

Random FAQ about Starlink below:

The combination of low latency (20-40ms) and high bandwidth (100+Mbps) has
never been available in satellite internet before.

A public beta may start later this year for some users in the northern US,
around the 14th launch. Today is the 7th launch of v1 satellites. SpaceX is
hoping to do more than two launches per month but haven't reached that pace
yet.

The ground stations look like this:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/gkkm9c/starli...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/gkkm9c/starlink_base_station_photos_from_the_location_of/)
The user antennas can be seen in that picture; they are the smaller circular
things on black sticks. They are flat phased array antennas, and don't need to
be precisely pointed like satellite dishes do. They are about the size of an
extra-large pizza, so you won't be able to get a Starlink phone.

The user antennas are likely to be quite expensive at first (several thousand
dollars). Cost reduction of the user antennas is the biggest hurdle Starlink
currently faces. Nobody knows yet how much SpaceX will charge for the antenna
or service.

Starlink can't support a high density of users, so it will not be an
alternative to ISPs in cities. Rural and mobile use are the important
applications. The US military is doing trials with it. Cell tower backhaul may
also be a possibility.

Starlink V1 doesn't have cross-satellite links, so the satellites can only
provide service while over a ground station. There will be hundreds of ground
stations in North America; no information about other regions yet. Starlink V2
is planned to have laser links between satellites, which will enable 100%
global coverage 24/7, though local regulations are likely to prevent SpaceX
from providing service in many places.

Because the speed of light in a vacuum is 30% faster than in optical fiber,
the latency of Starlink over long distances has the potential to be lower than
any other option once laser links are available.

Each launch of 60 Starlink satellites has nearly as much solar panel area as
the International Space Station. Once SpaceX's Starship is operational they
should be able to launch several hundred satellites at once instead of just
60.

Starlink's only current competitor, OneWeb, just filed for bankruptcy after
only launching a handful of satellites, and is fishing for acquisition offers.
Amazon is also planning something called Project Kuiper but not much is known
about it.

Starlink V2 will have 30,000 satellites, requiring hundreds of launches. Even
once the initial fleet is launched, SpaceX will still need to maintain the
constellation with many launches per year indefinitely.

SpaceX's FCC application has many interesting details:
[https://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=...](https://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=2378669)

~~~
dahfizz
> Because the speed of light in a vacuum is 30% faster than in optical fiber,
> the latency of Starlink over long distances has the potential to be lower
> than any other option once laser links are available.

Not to mention the dramatic reduction of hops. My route from the USA east
coast to the university of Melbourne in Australia[1] is 30 hops reported by
traceroute, with at least as many switches in the way. You could make the same
link with only a few satellites.

[1]www.ie.unimelb.edu.au

EDIT: 30 is actually just the default max hops in traceroute, its really 32
hops from me to Melbourne.

~~~
throwaway9d0291
I'm in Switzerland and have 25 hops, which can be broken into:

\- 1-7: Hops within my ISP's in-country network (~4ms total latency)

\- 8-10: Hops within my ISP's in-Europe network (~28ms total latency)

\- 11: London -> New York (~93ms total latency)

\- 12: New York -> Los Angeles (~160ms total latency)

\- 13: Transfer in LA from my ISP to AARNet (about the same latency)

\- 14: LA to somewhere in NSW (guessing Sydney, 305ms total latency)

\- 15-25: Routing within AARNet and Unimelb (319ms total latency)

So most of the latency looks to be attributed to large hops across oceans
rather than internal switching. Even if you could narrow it down to London ->
NY -> LA -> NSW you'd have 277ms.

~~~
lorenzhs
From my university network in Germany, I seem to get a direct London → Perth
link and a total latency of 278ms. I couldn't find any information about a
direct fiber between London and Australia, though there is one from London to
Singapore, and AARNet seems to have presence in Singapore. My guess would be
that there is some switching below the IP layer going on in Singapore as
described by dicknuckle in a sibling comment.

    
    
         9  cr-fra2-be11.x-win.dfn.de (188.1.144.222)  15.360 ms  15.385 ms dfn.mx1.fra.de.geant.net (62.40.124.217)  15.021 ms
        10  ae7.mx1.ams.nl.geant.net (62.40.98.186)  21.806 ms dfn.mx1.fra.de.geant.net (62.40.124.217)  15.244 ms ae7.mx1.ams.nl.geant.net (62.40.98.186)  21.707 ms
        11  ae9.mx1.lon.uk.geant.net (62.40.98.129)  29.059 ms ae7.mx1.ams.nl.geant.net (62.40.98.186)  21.805 ms ae9.mx1.lon.uk.geant.net (62.40.98.129)  28.933 ms
        12  138.44.226.6 (138.44.226.6)  196.613 ms ae9.mx1.lon.uk.geant.net (62.40.98.129)  29.074 ms  29.156 ms
        13  138.44.226.6 (138.44.226.6)  196.807 ms et-7-3-0.pe1.wmlb.vic.aarnet.net.au (113.197.15.28)  277.463 ms 138.44.226.6 (138.44.226.6)  196.778 ms
        14  138.44.64.73 (138.44.64.73)  277.544 ms et-7-3-0.pe1.wmlb.vic.aarnet.net.au (113.197.15.28)  277.629 ms *

~~~
throwaway9d0291
I don't think it's Perth, the address has ".vic." in the name, which implies
that the router in question is located in Victoria.

My guess is that there's a private network involved.

If you use AARNet's looking glass [0] it shows that its route to GEANT's
London router goes through Singapore.

[0]: [https://lg.aarnet.edu.au/cgi-bin/lg](https://lg.aarnet.edu.au/cgi-
bin/lg)

~~~
lorenzhs
Yeah you're right, "pe1" shows up in many of their hostnames with different
states in the name. And their looking glass shows a bunch of hops within
Australia, none of which show up when I do a traceroute.

~~~
allarm
PE means provider edge. CE - customer edge.

------
jessriedel
Could someone explain the technical notability beyond what can be inferred
from the Wikipedia page?

> An autonomous system (AS) is a collection of connected Internet Protocol
> (IP) routing prefixes under the control of one or more network operators on
> behalf of a single administrative entity or domain that presents a common,
> clearly defined routing policy to the internet.

> Originally the definition required control by a single entity, typically an
> Internet service provider (ISP) or a very large organization with
> independent connections to multiple networks.... The newer definition
> ...came into use because multiple organizations can run Border Gateway
> Protocol (BGP) using private AS numbers to an ISP that connects all those
> organizations to the internet. Even though there may be multiple autonomous
> systems supported by the ISP, the internet only sees the routing policy of
> the ISP. That ISP must have an officially registered autonomous system
> number (ASN).

> A unique ASN is allocated to each AS for use in BGP routing. ASNs are
> important because the ASN uniquely identifies each network on the Internet.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_(Internet)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_\(Internet\))

~~~
inopinatus
It’s the ISP equivalent of setting up stall at a wholesale market.

To exchange traffic, providers advertise the IP ranges they can route.

The starter pack for this consists of an AS number (which is fundamentally
just a nominal integer identifier for your organisation), an interconnect
(either to an internet exchange or a transit provider), and some address space
to call your own.

The notability is commercial: StarLink is ready, or at least preparing, to
negotiate peering with other providers. That’s a whole other ball game, c.f
[http://drpeering.net/white-papers/Art-Of-Peering-The-
Peering...](http://drpeering.net/white-papers/Art-Of-Peering-The-Peering-
Playbook.html).

There’s also a social angle. I’ve seen folks wearing their ASN like an agency
windcheater. Network engineers are tribal.

~~~
Melting_Harps
> The notability is commercial: StarLink is ready, or at least preparing, to
> negotiate peering with other providers. That’s a whole other ball game, c.f
> [http://drpeering.net/white-papers/Art-Of-Peering-The-
> Peering...](http://drpeering.net/white-papers/Art-Of-Peering-The-
> Peering...).

Can you delve into the possible business models (not military)_ and commercial
applications if this remains?

Starlink is seriously this biggest mystery to me about SpaceX's over all
trajectory, I find it fascinating but ,my mind doens't conjure up many more
thoughts than they'll either be an ISP or work with ISPs to reach a currently
unavailable demographic, the nuts and bolts of how are entirely lost on me as
I realistically don't understand the Industry.

~~~
inopinatus
There's a tongue-in-cheek view that Elon Musk is a lonely alien just trying to
get home. His Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic is on the blink, so creating a privately-
operated interplanetary transportation programme from first principles was the
next best plan.

Alternatively, view these interests (grid-scale batteries, solar panels,
underground excavation, autonomous vehicles (cars, rockets, spacecraft),
hyperloops, benevolent AGI, low-latency satellite internet &c &c) as essential
infrastructure technologies for derisking survival on Mars and even beyond,
thereby increasing the likelihood that the humans will survive even the gross
mismanagement of their current planet, or a passing Vogon Constructor Fleet,
by metastasising across Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha.

Which is to say, that:

> SpaceX's overall trajectory

is a Hohmann transfer orbit, or a nice hot cup of tea.

~~~
RobertoG
>>"There's a tongue-in-cheek view that Elon Musk is a lonely alien just trying
to get home. "

That's exactly the plot of this movie:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Fell_to_Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Fell_to_Earth)

------
gpm
> Registered on 5 Sep 2018 (21 months old)

From this:
[https://bgp.tools/as/14593#asinfo](https://bgp.tools/as/14593#asinfo)

Is the new part here that they are advertising prefixes?

~~~
throw0101a
Perhaps. Some interesting peers as well:

* [https://bgpview.io/asn/14593#peers-v4](https://bgpview.io/asn/14593#peers-v4)

Singapore? Any netengs here that can interpret the chicken entrails?

~~~
nerdbaggy
They have an open peering policy so anybody can peer with them
[https://www.peeringdb.com/net/18747](https://www.peeringdb.com/net/18747)

------
l00sed
I've reached some geostationary and orbiting weather satellites with Software-
Defined Radio (SDR) in the past. I'd love to try and snag some signals from
these... Anyone know of a more formal scientific write-up on these to find the
frequency/modulation?

~~~
l00sed
It seems that all the frequencies are 10GHz+ which is way past the range of
most readily-available SDR dongles... Probably not feasible ATM.

~~~
xxpor
You can semi-easily get transverters for those frequencies.

~~~
ckocagil
Also 10 GHz is possible with some knowledge and effort. See the hams on
Youtube reaching QO-100.

------
WarOnPrivacy
ASN has one /24 (IPv4)
[https://bgp.he.net/AS14593#_prefixes](https://bgp.he.net/AS14593#_prefixes)

~~~
gpm
/24 has 7 addresses that return pings from nmap -sn, all have about the same
ping as the previous hop on the traceroute so my ping probably isn't reaching
space.

~~~
CameronNemo
They probably only publicly route the ground stations.

------
ghostpepper
For those of us unfamiliar with BGP and/or peering protocols, does this mean
there are routable starlink networks? Are these routes being advertised?

~~~
dsr_
It means that they are interconnected with the Internet. Whether that's six
laptops and a server closet or a ground-to-space link is up to them.

------
q3k
Connectivity (upstreams and peers) per bgp.tools:
[https://bgp.tools/as/14593#connectivity](https://bgp.tools/as/14593#connectivity)

Nothing too fancy for now. Two tiny, I assume test, prefixes (one v4, one v6)
that aren't even verified by IRR/RPKI. Happy to see, however, that they peer
openly (at least for now).

------
Softcadbury
Something bothers me for a long time, how can Starlink be allowed be China or
other countries with high internet censorship ?

~~~
AnssiH
I don't think they are currently planning to provide services in such
countries.

~~~
chaos_a
Wouldn't it be possible for someone to fake their location and sign up
anyways? Or does starlink require the knowledge of your exact location to
operate?

~~~
fastball
In order to access Starlink you'll need a phased-array antenna, so yes, they
will know exactly where you are.

~~~
8bitsrule
A flat box decorated to blend with the shingles it's resting on might be
invisible for a long time.

~~~
fastball
I meant that you are directly communicating with moving satellites, so they
can fairly trivially triangulate anyone using the service.

But yes, they will also have your shipping address, as they are producing the
ground antennas in-house.

------
shockinglytrue
This isn't the first route leading straight to satellites. I forget the name
of the provider, but there is at least one big allocation where whatever
you're sending to it is basically coming straight back down as radio.

~~~
walrus01
All of the major geostationary telecom satellite owners (intelsat, eutelsat,
SES, etc) operate their own ASes and IP networks. Nothing quite leads
"straight" to a satellite, but you can definitely look at the prefixes
announced by a company like Intelsat and try to make intelligent guesses as to
which earth station it correlates with.

for instance: [https://bgp.he.net/AS12684](https://bgp.he.net/AS12684)

------
nerdbaggy
SpaceX also has a /20 announced by Google. Looking at the RDNS it’s for SEA,
LAX, SJC, ORD, LGA
[https://bgp.he.net/search?search%5Bsearch%5D=spacex&commit=S...](https://bgp.he.net/search?search%5Bsearch%5D=spacex&commit=Search)

------
nerdbaggy
Looking at their RDNS it looks like they will be using CGNAT. But that makes
sense, it seems like a tough time to get IPv4 in bulk required for an ISP

~~~
derekp7
Aren't most cellular networks CGNAT? I know my T-Mobile phone is (for IPv4),
with native IPv6. I'd like to see more consumer internet be IPv6 first, with a
weaker IPv4 to help speed along adoption of v6.

~~~
nerdbaggy
Yeah most cell carriers are, but from where I’m at most ISP aren’t yet

~~~
est31
Usually the encumbent/older ISPs still have IPs from the age where they being
handed more freely, so they have more than enough to give every customer their
own public IP while the challengers have fewer IPs and have to resort to
carrier grade NAT. Smartphone plans usually get carrier grade NAT even at the
older ISPs.

------
caogecym
Kudos to SpaceX for potential lower latency internet service.

But I'm concerned about the light pollution caused by Starlink satellites at
night: [https://www.unilad.co.uk/science/spacex-to-test-starlink-
sun...](https://www.unilad.co.uk/science/spacex-to-test-starlink-sun-visor-to-
reduce-brightness-of-satellite/). If they don't fix it, it would look awful
for people who prefer a clean sky. And an average people wouldn't have a mean
to mitigate that - it's not like a drone flying on top of your roof and you
can shoot it down, it's a set of satellites thousands miles away.

And if the parts of those satellites broke down, I wonder how much SpaceX
itself could do to fix them. If the broken satellites end up a space garbage,
that reminds me of the film scene in Gravity. This is a problem we already
have today, contributed by all aerospace institutions. I guess people are
treating it just like any other garbage around us: if it doesn't show in my
eye, it's not my problem.

But it's a harder problem than things like metal garbage on the ground, the
latter you could recycle, but I don't know if people really recycle a
satellite.

~~~
sacred_numbers
Regarding light pollution: It's not as bad as it seems, since the satellites
really only show up while they are raising their orbits, and usually only
during dusk and dawn. Once they're in their final orbit you can't really see
them. Also, SpaceX are working on the problem. They are testing a sun screen
that will block light from reflecting towards Earth while being far enough
away from the satellite to prevent overheating.

Regarding space junk: These satellites are in low orbits, so if the satellite
breaks it will just re-enter the atmosphere and get burned up within a few
months or so. I believe they also have a deployable drag device to
intentionally de-orbit the satellites at their end of life, or if there's a
problem with the satellite.

------
avmich
> Geographic scope: North America

Is "global" not appropriate here?

~~~
cryptoz
IIRC they are offering service only to northern parts of North America to
begin. The network is sparse right now and I think the plan is to start with
Canada.

~~~
anoncareer0212
its increasingly feeling like we won't make it...cross-satellite link is out,
so we're basically back to Iridium (read: DSL) speeds, meanwhile the company
burns cash like crazy and needs to fundraise every 8 months. hearing it needs
to be spun off to get funded separately

but then again I've been hearing that for awhile. Push come to shove moment
seemed to be when the FCC said to stop bs'ing about theoratical network speeds
in applications for rural broadband grants, I still don't understand how that
got submitted..lawyers...

FCC smacking us (article is more than a little generous towards us, thank Ajit
Pai's reputation I guess): [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/05/elon-
musks-promi...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/05/elon-musks-
promise-of-low-latency-broadband-meets-skepticism-at-fcc/)

Gwynne saying we might spin it off:
[https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21126540/spacex-
starlink-i...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21126540/spacex-starlink-
internet-space-mega-constellation-ipo-spinoff-gwynne-shotwell)

~~~
zaroth
> _FCC smacking us (article is more than a little generous towards us, thank
> Ajit Pai 's reputation I guess)_

This is the FCC protecting incumbent service providers on the basis that
Starlink isn't already widely deployed. They are not claiming that they have
any kind of technical analysis that Starlink will not in fact be low-latency
(the threshold is a full 100ms, so not incredibly strict). They are claiming
that simply because they do not _already offer the service_ they will get
lumped in with the high latency geo-stationary sat link providers;

 _" In the absence of a real world example of a non-geostationary orbit
satellite network offering mass market fixed service to residential consumers
that is able to meet our 100ms round trip latency requirements, Commission
staff could not conclude that such an applicant is reasonably capable of
meeting the Commission's low latency requirements, and so we foreclose such
applications."_

Frankly it's very sad, because the $16 billion in rural broadband grants are
the _perfect_ application for Starlink.

The funds are distributed by "multi-round, descending clock auction where
bidders will indicate in each round whether they will bid to provide service
to an area at a given performance tier and latency. The auction will end after
the aggregate support amount of all bids is less than or equal to the total
budget and there is no longer competition for support in any area." [1]

I think if Starlink was allowed to bid as both a "low-latency" and "high
performance" tiers, then at the pricing level they would likely have come in
under, they would have wiped the floor with the competition and won a lion's
share of that funding. So the FCC appears to be trying to keep them out of the
most lucrative tiers to protect the incumbent approach of extremely expensive
rural fiber deployments.

IMO a much smarter approach would have been to require some sort of
_performance bond_ from every applicant that they will successfully achieve
the service levels they are bidding on. It's not like Comcast or Verizon
haven't won massive subsidies in the past and then failed to deliver. The
approach the FCC is taking (not surprisingly) just limits innovation and
wastes taxpayer dollars. Actually in this case the dollars come from customer
service fees, but they are effectively taxes.

[1] -
[https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-364457A1.pdf](https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-364457A1.pdf)

~~~
reitzensteinm
I agree a performance bond would be best, with enough teeth that the worst
case forces SpaceX to give every cent back or go bankrupt. Same with Comcast
et al.

But you're unnecessarily ascribing malice. SpaceX has made some big promises,
and if it delivers it deserves to hoover up basically all of that money.

But until the network is real, customers can sign up, and it's just a matter
of scaling, a rational actor attempting to genuinely forward the interests of
the country may well decide it poses too much risk.

------
kitteh
Looking at their prefix right now I see them behind Hurricane Electric
prepended 3 times. They ought to filter/sever that out give HEs "we treat
peers as customers" offensive routing policy. Unless that's what they want :/

~~~
Jonnax
What do you mean by "we treat peers as customers"?

~~~
est31
That they don't offer peering for free but charge for it. The idea of peering
is that both sides gain from it as they reduce the traffic routed through
middlemen like level3. So you both go to internet exchanges like DE-CIX, and
pay a basic fee that you may participate in the exchange but you get all the
connectivity to other ISPs from that exchange. But some ISPs don't do that and
require you to peer in one of their own datacenters, requiring you to pay
_them_ money. You are now their customer instead of a partner. A big German
partially government owned ISP did this for a while until they finally gave up
a few years ago.

~~~
welterde
HE doesn't charge for peering though. The complaint was that HE was leaking
peer routes to other peers per default, which is normally only done if you are
a customer (which can be nice if you want this, but can lead to sub-optimal
routing if you don't want this).

------
siavosh
Does anyone know the next most prolific/frequent commercial launcher after
SpaceX and what their annual average is? The frequency of their launches seem
completely nuts.

~~~
Rebelgecko
Its one if those things where you could probably game the metrics to justify
half a dozen different answers. For example ISRO doesn't have many launches,
but they do a lot of rideshares so I wouldn't be surprised if they're #1 or #2
in terms of individual satellites launched last year.

It also depends a lot on what you consider a commercial launcher. In recent
history, the Chinese Long March rockets have been dominating the numbers game
(around 25 launches last year, vs around 20 Soyuz and 15 Falcon 9s). But the
Long March family is a lot more diverse than most rocket families, so they're
probably not #1 if you're comparing specific configurations. You also probably
don't want to count rockets that missed space and ended up in the middle of a
village, which hurts China's totals.

~~~
__m
Or we admit that they have more launches

------
breitling
Ok I have a naive question I think someone here can answer: how long do these
satellites stay in orbit? Don't they need a boost every now and then to
maintain the momentum? Is that boost built in?

~~~
savrajsingh
Yes. They have built-in thrusters to maintain their orbit. If they stop
working or get retired their orbit decays and they burn up in the atmosphere.
See the 'ion propulsion systems' graphics at starlink.com.

------
coderholic
They're only announcing a single /24 currently:
[https://ipinfo.io/AS14593](https://ipinfo.io/AS14593)

------
abinaya_rl
Excellent report. I'm wondering the tech used in Google’s Loon balloon
internet service and this Starlink is different? Does both are using a similar
tech?

~~~
shaklee3
No, different frequencies and antennas.

------
kitteh
One IPv4 and one IPv6 prefix - no RPKI ROAs signed :(

------
kgersen
"Last Updated: 2019-02-21"

what's new ?

------
aledthemathguy
if a human from just 300 years ago would see this post - he would def think we
are aliens.

~~~
Skunkleton
You could probably convince humans from 100 years ago.

------
ConnorLeet
Little bit off topic question

Is there a public API or a database ASN ownership? Contact information would
be nice also...

~~~
mike_d
Please don't. Yes there is a database of contacts, but the people on the other
end only want to hear from you if you also run an ASN.

------
laurensr
We have a GeoIP challenge up ahead :-)
[https://xkcd.com/713/](https://xkcd.com/713/)

------
miohtama
Is this Interplanetary File System (IPFS)? /Sarcasm 50%

~~~
wmf
No, you're thinking of Marslink. Starlink is just for Earth.

~~~
Invictus0
It's a shame EarthLink was already taken.

~~~
theossuary
Better to pick a name with room for growth. Especially if Elon actually
achieves the goals he's set out.

~~~
marktangotango
Galaxyclusterlink - even more room for growth!

~~~
netsec_burn
Or something short and sweet, like Synapse. Fully uniting the global village.

~~~
iso1631
Which globe?

------
ggmartins
We didn't fix the pollution of the ocean now we have to worry about the
pollution of the space.

~~~
aherz
These satellites have de-orbit plans after they've served their lifetime use.

~~~
Rebelgecko
If even 1% of Starlink satellites crap out before their planned EOL, there
could be hundreds or thousands of them left in orbit for hundreds of years
after the constellation is inactive

~~~
reanimated
It's not correct. They orbit low enough that unresponsive Starlink satellite
will fall out within a coupe of years.

~~~
Rebelgecko
No way. Orbital decay times increase more or less exponentially, and once you
get above the thermopause (which moves around from 500-1000km based upon
terrestrial and space weather conditions), atmospheric drag becomes
practically 0.

SpaceX is upfront about this in their FCC filings:

"The natural orbital decay of a satellite at 1,150 km requires hundreds of
years to enter the Earth’s atmosphere"

~~~
kanox
All current satellites are in 550 km orbits. They had plans to also launch in
1150 km orbits but they made some FCC filings requesting to reduce the
altitude.

~~~
Rebelgecko
That's great news, I hadn't heard that they requested to lower everything to
550km (fcc filing here for the curious: [https://fcc.report/IBFS/SAT-
MOD-20200417-00037/2274315](https://fcc.report/IBFS/SAT-
MOD-20200417-00037/2274315))

------
MintelIE
Really hope Elon charges by the GB, I don’t want to subsidize all the Netflix
watchers.

~~~
LeoPanthera
The "cells" (which move) are relatively small, so you won't be sharing with
many people at any point in time.

~~~
topspin
> you won't be sharing with many people at any point in time.

That depends of the density of subscribers. Starlink is only feasible (at
least with stable, high performance...) for low density areas. The stated
market for Starlink is "the 3% to 4% of the hardest to reach customers for
telcos." Almost no one reading this is part of that market.

~~~
blizzarac
How about China or North Korean will they be able to operate there and
sidestep the firewalls?

~~~
topspin
SpaceX has good reasons to be compliant with the policies of sovereign
nations; Starlink relies on shared spectrum and orbits a shared planet. I
expect SpaceX will diligently observe the disparate policies of all nations.
Note that the purpose of Starlink is to fund major SpaceX initiatives,
particularly the Mars mission. It isn't an egalitarian exercise and squabbles
with China or its client states are not a source of revenue.

There is no opportunity for clandestine use either; the ground station is a
transceiver. Transceivers are relatively easy to detect when they transmit.

