
Satellite Internet gets a fresh look, cash infusion - evilsimon
http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/satellite-internet-gets-a-fresh-look-cash-infusion-1.2594345
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sathackr
I don't think anything wireless(besides free space optics) will ever be able
to match the bandwidth of fiber. There just isn't enough radio spectrum
available. Using currently available COTS equipment you can easily push
100+gb/s over a single fiber. Such capacity isn't feasible even for
terrestrial based wireless at this time.

That being said, I hope one of these projects takes off. Most of the
undeveloped world would benefit greatly from even just 5mb/s of internet.

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on_
> I don't think anything wireless(besides free space optics) will ever be able
> to match the bandwidth of fiber.

This isn't really the goal of the project. SpaceX needs to create a com link
with Mars. Also, it can cheaply laucnch sattelites so it will be able to
connect the world via satelite uplink. The goal isn't to beat wired networks
but provide redundancy and in some cases primary connections.

SpaceX is betting on itself achieving reusability which will lower costs from
~$60M to a marginal cost of something like ~$600K. As a byproduct of the
cellphone wars nanosats have become insanely cheap due to commoditization and
miniturization of hardware. Making this more feasible

The reason they are doing this is to establish communications between earth &
mars. Even a 50mbps connection could bring huge swathes of the world online
and create a race for infrastructure to compete.

So if we could get 1-5gbps connections terrestriallydue to some market
penetration and competition, it would bringlots of people online. The goal of
the project is lofty, but would provide a lot of positive things.

Downsides: * personal satelites and the proliferation of spying. * space
debris could lock us out of orbit. * space debris/launch failures could cause
issues. * something like radiation or an unexpected externality could make
this non-feasible. * we could literally create skynet.

I am pumped on it though, and those reasons, along with the many others I have
assuredly missed make me really really excited to see this happen. We need a
secondary network anyway and terrestrial speeds won't improve without
competition so I would roll the dice on skynet for that.

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sathackr
I was mostly addressing the comment that the signal could bounce from
satellite to satellite 'effectively faster than fiber.'

datenwolf did the math and answered it in greater detail than I.

Didn't Iridium try to do this a while back? Launch a constellation of LEO
satellites to provide low latency data and cell communications? Hopefully the
reduced launch and operation costs expected will give these current projects
more success.

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apercu
Iridium is currently doing this - they should begin launching a new LEO
constellation later this year.

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earlz
The bad thing about satellite that makes it unsuitable for many use cases will
always remain to be latency, not speed or availability. 1.5 second ping is
perfectly usable for web browsing, but it is painful for many other
workflows.. And there's no current way with our technology we can "fix" this
problem. It boils down to speed of light issues.

I for one am still hoping we'll eventually get quantum internet that goes
through the earth rather than around it.

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stingraycharles
I'm using sattelite internet from Cambodia (WiMax). Ping to 8.8.8.8 is around
8ms, and I pay $25 a month for 4mbit. Relability is better than the ADSL or
Fiber options over here, due to countries like these being absolutely horrible
at wiring cables.

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throwaway7767
WiMAX is not delivered over satellites, it uses ground-based basestations.

The lowest latency satellite systems, using LEO orbit satellites, are around
40ms roundtrip.

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stingraycharles
I stand corrected -- after some Googling, I now realize it's more like 4G/LTE
than anything else. Thanks for clearing that up!

