
SpaceX is set to launch its first two test satellites on Sunday - SirLJ
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/17/spacex-testing-its-own-satellite-broadband-internet-network.html
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gfodor
Consider:

\- SpaceX, the company building the network, is the same company who can
deliver the payloads.

\- SpaceX is the only company who has re-usable rockets.

It's hard to argue that from an economics perspective this isn't an insane
leapfrog type of event, assuming they can gather the necessary in-house chops
to deliver good telecom service. Talk about an economic moat -- to compete on
margin you'd first have to become a rocket company. And not just a rocket
company but one who has technology to re-use rockets, which likely is a ways
away from becoming replicated, nevermind commoditized to the point where it
evaporates from costs.

And of course, presumably running a satellite network that is an order of
magnitude larger than the nearest competitor in space right now is going to
throw off a ton of opportunities to develop the know-how and technology to do
so, that will further deepen the moat. It may turn out that the rocket program
itself needs to develop specific capabilities to support the needs of the
telecom network, which would further cement payload delivery to space as a
necessary in-house service for a telecom network.

An an analogy, once Amazon starts delivering your packages and owns the entire
delivery chain, I think we'll see a similar dynamic. Their service will be
optimized off of the general case and holistically integrated into the entire
supply chain, and to compete with Amazon on margin will mean you have to
create UPS first.

~~~
mikhailt
Everything they do has an impact on their end goal/master plan, Mars.

They need to send thousands of ships to colonize Mars. This global sat
internet service will require them to deploy tens of thousands of micro-sats
to provide global internet. The revenue generated by said service will provide
them the funding to build the said ships for Mars.

Oh and of course, the eventual solar system internet.

~~~
Dylan16807
> solar system internet

What exactly are you picturing here? Because of light-speed considerations
you'd have semi-isolated networks at each major body, and bodies connected
with special high-power high-latency links. And those links might as well be
direct, only needing a handful of dishes.

Is there a reason to scatter little relay satellites all over the middle of
nowhere? Or do anything else that needs many many rocket launches?

~~~
stcredzero
_What exactly are you picturing here? Because of light-speed considerations
you 'd have semi-isolated networks at each major body, and bodies connected
with special high-power high-latency links._

Late 21st century FidoNet. Late 21st century USENET?

~~~
phkahler
And mirroring of sites like Wikipedia, YouTube, and social media.
Interplanetary email (with video attachments too).

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kilroy123
They just announced it's being pushed back to Wednesday.

[https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/964937069901447168](https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/964937069901447168)

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thaumaturgy
I've been hotspotting with Verizon for my primary internet connection since
January 1. I'm currently paying $100/mo for their "unlimited" plan, which gets
me 600kbps, or approximately the slowest viable tier of terrestrial DSL for
which people usually pay in the neighborhood of $20 a month.

If I want to pay $10 more, I can get "beyond unlimited", with 4G hotspotting
-- but only for the first 15GB, and then after that it's back to 600kbps
again.

I'm canceling Netflix shortly because it's a miserable experience on this
connection.

I'll be signing up the day Starlink becomes available and dropping Verizon to
the cheapest plan they offer. Even if it's a little more expensive than what
I'm currently paying, it'll be worth it just to give the middle finger to
these bastards.

Heck, might even have a celebratory barbecue.

~~~
eigenman
I've been using a hotspot from the Calyx Institute
[https://www.calyxinstitute.org/](https://www.calyxinstitute.org/) as my sole
internet connection for the past year and a half. It's a nonprofit which
offers an "unlimited" hotspot on the Sprint network for $500/year. I get
16.3Mbps down and 3.96Mbps up (per Google) and streaming video works just
fine. You might want to check that out instead.

~~~
thaumaturgy
This looks pretty fantastic, and the coverage map
([https://coverage.sprint.com/IMPACT.jsp?#!/](https://coverage.sprint.com/IMPACT.jsp?#!/))
looks like it handles most of the places I've been skulking about.

Thanks!

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alex_young
Maybe this will finally provide some competition for high speed in the US?

~~~
number6
Or germany

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jagger27
Could this sort of network make it easier for other satellites to connect to a
network? Does a space-to-space laser link that uses SpaceX's network to worm
its way to some ground station use simpler/lighter/lower power hardware than a
dedicated radio air-to-ground link?

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kjksf
I think that this will a glorious side-effect of effectively ensuring net
neutrality without waiting for politicians to change the law.

And in general increasing the competition in a way that Comcast and others
wont be able to block by buying politicians (see buying FCC or buying the laws
that prohibit city-owned fiber).

I'll switch to Starlink just to stick it to Comcast.

Comcast magically dropped prices and upped service in areas where it had
competition from Google Fiber but Google Fiber is too slow and too expensive
to build.

I wonder how will Comcast react facing a competitor who can build out a
competing network in 2 short years to serve all areas Comcast is available
(and more).

Will they be crushed by massive defections or merely have to drastically lower
the prices and improve the service?

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jagger27
Is it possible at the proposed orbital height that global latencies could end
up being lower than fiber? Have they specifically mentioned satellite-to-
satellite links?

For a worst case example, take New York City and Perth, Australia (rough
antipodes). Would the orbital infrastructure allow for the only ground
connections to be the end points? How many hops would be necessary?

Space comms are just so damn exciting to me. No atmosphere to mess with your
lasers, no fiber optics to limit you to 2/3 light speed, no watery weather to
contend with...

~~~
jandrese
I doubt it. The problem is the ground stations. Even if the satellites have
routing like Iridium they have to come back down to Earth in just a handful of
locations, which are probably thousands of miles from your destination.

For a point of conparison Iridium also operates from relatively low orbits but
has latency that is only barely usable for voice. Iridium only has one
civilian ground station so your calls have to be relayed from there.

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tankenmate
I just had a quick check on Google but no luck; has anyone calculated
Starlink's intended cross section bandwidth?

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inamberclad
I'm assuming SpaceX is building the satelites too? Haven't heard anything
about that.

~~~
greglindahl
SpaceX seems to be pursuing their usual "let's bring stuff in-house as much as
possible" strategy.

If you think about it, no existing supplier can produce enough gear for this
satellite constellation, so either SpaceX is paying a supplier to build an
assembly line, or SpaceX can pay the supplier for tech and build a SpaceX
assembly line.

~~~
infogulch
Plus existing suppliers manufacture under very different constraints than what
SpaceX needs. They're launching many more satellites than typical and at
greatly reduced payload cost than usual.

E.g. they're using cheaper terrestrial solar panels and cheaper redundant
commodity electronic components. The economics change when you don't have to
pay an arm and a leg for every ounce you send to space.

~~~
foxyv
Yeah, you kinda got the impression that things were changing when Iridium was
launching a 5 billion dollar satellite on a 50 million dollar rocket.

~~~
greglindahl
IridiumNEXT started with a budget of $2.1 billion for satellites and $800mm
for launches.

[http://spaceflight101.com/spacecraft/iridium-
next/](http://spaceflight101.com/spacecraft/iridium-next/)

That's not that different of a ratio from a GEO comsat that costs $200mm and
has a $65mm launch.

I haven't run the numbers for OneWeb.

