
FCC Authorizes SpaceX to Provide Broadband Satellite Services - runesoerensen
https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-authorizes-spacex-provide-broadband-satellite-services
======
tbabb
Here's one way I could see this killing Comcast, even in major cities:

As a homeowner, you by a small box which lives under the eave of your roof.
The box has high-bandwidth, low-latency satellite uplink to SpaceX which gives
you your internet.

The same box _also_ has a terrestrial wireless repeater which serves the local
neighborhood. Internet is available through your "tower" to neighbors and
passers-by. You and SpaceX split the revenue from the traffic.

Basically, it's like a solar roof, but for internet. Photons/bits rain down
from space onto your roof, and you sell the energy/bandwidth back to the local
area for a price that amortizes your investment.

In areas very poorly served by internet, or with very poor broadband choices,
there could be an especially strong financial incentive to be the guy on your
block with a SpaceX repeater.

It would certainly scale a lot better than every house having an uplink--
customer connections are instead concentrated into micro-regional nodes. If
there's a node in your area, you buy internet from them. If there's no node
around, you invest in becoming one.

This could drastically decentralize and cheapen internet across the globe, if
done right. It could be _extremely_ disruptive to telecoms, and profitable for
SpaceX.

~~~
walrus01
this model already exists (google "WISP micro pop"). One of the primary
problems with doing this at a large scale is that the bandwidth via satellite
will not be that great, compared to what's possible with current terrestrial
technology. the second is that the micro POP needs some kind of serious
battery backup and a way to meet five nines or better reliability. you can't
start hanging downstream customers off of the rooftop radio system on some
random person's house unless you can be absolutely certain that the main
uplink won't be unplugged by somebody's kid messing around with a power-over-
ethernet injector underneath a desk.

one of the challenges with a wisp micro POP approach for current last mile FCC
part 15 unlicensed band operators is that you need to (a) keep the equipment
powered independently of whatever the POP-host customer might be messing
around with inside of their house, and (b) provide a good sized UPS for it,
and (c) ensure that the POP stays in place and contractually "survives" the
original resident moving out, either new tenants or new homeowner. The (c)
part requires a fairly long and ironclad commercial lease agreement that
becomes attached to the property title, which is not something either ISPs or
homeowners take lightly.

~~~
gsich
Why 5-9s? I doubt any home connection has this, let alone the satellite.

~~~
walrus01
An ISP serving from 5 to 30 downstream customers needs the micro pop to be up
and online at least five nines, if not, something has gone terribly wrong.

~~~
gsich
doubt

------
bpd1069
This is monumental - I claim every major advance in communication technology
immediately precedes a major progress for society.

This will make the 'Internet' truly global and ubiquitous.

So excited for the developing world.

~~~
madushan1000
I'm from a third world country(Sri Lanka) and we already have really cheap LTE
access, the connection I'm using right now(on my phone) gives me something
like 1GB/1.5USD at average 4MBPS. What sucks is the speed and reliability,
speed always fluctuate and even though most of the island is now covered by
3G, LTE is not a given. It has been improving a lot though because we have
relatively good competition between mobile ISPs(something like 10 providers
all island) and more than a quarter of the population has smartphones and
demanding bandwidth.

~~~
Fanmade
I'm from a third world country(Germany) and we don't have cheap LTE access. I
pay more than 40€/month (about 50 USD) for 4GB of LTE and I got my contract
for half of what it would normally cost. The reception is very poor and I
barely ever see the LTE popping up on my phone, most times it's just 3G. And
that's in the ex-capitol of Germany. If I visit my parents, which live barely
a 45 minute drive outside of the city, I got no phone reception at all (not
even emergency calls). My provider (Vodafone) claims to have the best coverage
of Germany. Wired internet is very spotty, too. There are still a lot of parts
within the cities, where you barely get a downstream of 1 Mbit/s. So yes, when
I say that Germany is a "third world country", I mean it (at least regarding
the internet coverage). I'm a web developer (my wife is an admin) and when we
searched for a new home, we've had to turn down a lot of offers, because the
houses/flats didn't have a proper internet connection. Now we're getting our
internet though cable but because the cables are to old, we can't get TV over
cable at the same time.

Sorry, needed to get that out. I'm a little frustrated here, because I have
been in several poor countries (Africa, Thailand, Moldowa) and they've all had
a way better internet coverage than Germany.

~~~
swiley
>I'm from a third world country(Germany)

I was under the impression that "third world" was supposed to be defined as "a
country that was not on the axis or allied side during all of World War 2."
Your use of the term directly contradicts this definition.

~~~
schiffern
I was under the impression that it was irony. ;)

Also it was the Cold War, not WWII.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World)

>The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that
remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Communist Bloc.

------
ArlenBales
As a hiker who likes to spend many nights camping out in the remote
wilderness, this will be a blessing but also a curse. I'll be able to stay
connected to family and friends, and have emergency services and information
available if necessary, but at the same time I'll have Hacker News and Reddit
distractions - but inevitably this is the way the future will be, so it's time
to get used to it.

At least when going on a cruise I won't have to pay for their shitty expensive
satellite Internet.

~~~
natethinks
This is where I would love my old Samsung's "ultra power saving" mode. Nothing
but calls and texting on a black and white screen. Almost a week of battery
life.

~~~
fwgwgwgch
What phone is that?

~~~
GordonS
My S7 had it, and so does my S8. Very cool feature that I haven't seen in
other phones.

------
clay_the_ripper
Please tell me that this means Comcast will go out of business. Oh man. The
excitement I would feel at watching them go down...

~~~
walrus01
Satellite can be amazing tech. But it's still not going to be the best viable
option for high bandwidth connections in medium to large sized cities. As
companies like centurylink build GPON and 10GPON based FTTH networks (example:
Capitol, Hill, Seattle) it's quite possible to do 900 x 900 Mbps symmetric,
though slightly oversubscribed, residential connections.

DOCSIS3.1 over old copper coax cable, with enough RF channel bonding, can also
do 300 to 900 Mbps downstream, again slightly oversubscribed. With much less
upstream because the RF channels are usually allocated asymmetrically at a
ratio of 10:1 or thereabouts.

This is by no means going to hurt Comcast. Comcast (and similar companies like
Wave, RCN, Charter, Shaw, etc) are building DOCSIS3.1 and also overbuilding
their own networks with fiber. They have the established right of way through
major cities, both on pole and underground, and can incrementally build a
FTTN/FTTdP architecture with existing copper, and will eventually overbuild
everything with singlemode fiber to the customer.

What this _will be revolutionary for_ is small towns, remote/rural areas. In
the US as an example the market for ISP last mile connections that is
presently served by either WISPs, or in places where no WISP exists, two-way
Ku/Ka-band VSAT terminals (HughesNet, ViaSat, etc). The capacity constrains on
traditional geostationary consumer grade VSAT services result in terrible
things (TDMA oversubscription that pushes latency to 1150ms during peak
hours), and things like 20GB/month transfer quotas. That's for a typical
$100/month, 24 or 36-month term with the latest generation of Viasat's
services.

For polar regions this will be a big deal because they are presently almost
entirely dependent on geostationary C and Ku-band satellite capacity.

On ships: Very relevant and has the potential to capture a ton of market from
Inmarsat's I-4 and I-5 series satellites and tech, and Iridium's upcoming
maritime products. With a sufficient number (thousands!) of polar orbit
satellites it can cover mid ocean areas very effectively.

~~~
jperras
> The capacity constrains on traditional geostationary consumer grade VSAT
> services result in terrible things (TDMA oversubscription that pushes
> latency to 1150ms during peak hours), and things like 20GB/month transfer
> quotas. That's for a typical $100/month, 24 or 36-month term with the latest
> generation of Viasat's services.

I live in a rural town. This is most definitely the status quo, and your
description might actually be rosier than what happens in reality. It's quite
a stark difference compared to the +100Mbps fiber connection that you can get
about 60 minutes away in the city.

~~~
walrus01
yes... From a US consumer perspective, although I work in two way satellite
but not in consumer-facing stuff, I've experienced it in places in Idaho where
a whole town's population is 150 people.

There are some "middle of the night" lows in traffic use where a few of the
consumer VSAT operators offer quota-free traffic. Can be used with bittorrent
clients that support time-based scheduling and automatic pausing such as to
download a few episodes of your favorite TV show between 0100 and 0445 every
morning.

But during peak evening hours, for human-interactive use like web browsing,
it's generally going to be a miserable experience.

------
vvanders
Reading the full document[1] is really interesting. Lots of details about the
potential technical problems, timelines and a couple requests to deny the
application.

[1]
[https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/201...](https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2018/db0329/FCC-18-38A1.pdf)

~~~
walrus01
Oneweb and Telesat intend to build LEO polar orbit satellite networks that
are, architecturally, very similar. Their objections are mostly about
interference and spectrum use. If all three projects come to fruition and
actually build thousands of satellites and launch them, we could be looking at
not just spacex's 4,000+ satellite in polar LEO, but several thousand more
from oneweb and telesat as well.

------
hinkley
Background section from one of the attachments to that announcement:

On November 15, 2016, SpaceX filed an application requesting authority for its
proposed NGSO FSS satellite system, comprising 4,425 satellites in 83 orbital
planes, at an approximate altitude of 1,110 to 1,325 kilometers. In this
application, SpaceX proposes to operate in the 10.7-12.7 GHz, 13.85-14.5 GHz,
17.8-18.6 GHz, 18.8-19.3 GHz, 27.5-29.1 GHz, and 29.5-30 GHz bands. SpaceX
also requests waivers of certain Commission rules.

~~~
joering2
Out of curiosity, dont they have to ask other bodies like European Union or
other countries for permission as well? Those satellites wont fly over usa
only, which is fcc oversight.

Also reversing my question - if they would get denied, could they form company
in EU and still shoot satellites from there based on EU permission?

Just curiosity of a hacker in me pushes out these questions ;)

~~~
walrus01
It is not entirely impossible to have satellites where the legal owner is
incorporated somewhere for regulatory purposes. There are a few geostationary,
traditional style C/Ku-band transponder capacity satellites which are owned by
companies in the Isle of Man. Huge numbers of satellites are owned by a
Luxembourg based company (SES), one of the top-4 largest satellite operators
worldwide, not because they particularly love Luxembourg so much, but because
it has regulatory and tax advantages. The majority of SES' earth stations and
facilities are not located in Luxembourg.

------
zapita
What will the latency be like? My understanding is that these satellites will
be in lower orbit, allowing for shorter round-trips... But how much shorter
exactly? And how would that translate to real-world latency? Presumably there
would be multiple hops involved in traversing the SpaceX network?

~~~
hinkley
Geosynchronous orbit is 35k kilometers up, which a calculator tells me is 119
light milliseconds from the surface.

Iridium satellites were the first set of satellites I could find numbers for
that made any kind of relevant example. They orbited at 781 kilometers, or 2.6
light milliseconds away. Over 45 times closer.

~~~
walrus01
okay... so i work in two way satellite and will expand a bit on what this
looks like in real world practice, with currently available technology and
satellite architectures.

geostationary orbit dedicated (1:1) transponder capacity, in real world use
with large earth stations and SCPC modems, has latency of around 485ms to
490ms for a return trip ping. That's a figure from remote earth station
(example: Nauru) to the other end of a link (example: Singapore).

119 x 4 = 476 ms

add anywhere from 10ms to 20ms for a combination of modem Tx encoding,
framing, adding FEC, and then the reverse on the Rx side.

example:

nauru router with a 1000BaseLX link into a satellite modem generates one ICMP
ping

nauru --> satellite -->

satellite --> singapore

singapore modem does decode, passes IP traffic to a router or something else
that can answer ICMP

singapore --> satellite

satellite --> nauru

nauru satellite modem decodes, passes traffic to router

~~~
hinkley
I was very careful not to draw any conclusion besides "closer" because this is
not my wheelhouse.

Some of the low cost wireless broadband projects have proposed the use of a
ground station fairly nearby as the upstream network provider but I haven't
the fuzziest what SpaceX has planned.

In your opinion what fraction of the overall delays in the network are
attributable to the diameter of the orbit (great circle distance and ground-
to-satellite distance) instead of the limitations of the hardware?

~~~
walrus01
delays in geostationary orbit based systems are limited by basically two
things... one is the distance, assuming dedicated 1:1 capacity. From a
consumer internet user perspective the other delays are oversubscription and
TDMA timeslice related. Consumer grade VSAT-based internet services
(hughnesnet, viasat, etc) that you can buy for a cabin in a far rural part of
Idaho are oversubscribed at a 16:1, 32:1 or greater ratio. So the RTT latency
will be anywhere from 495ms in the middle of the night up to 1250ms during
peak evening hours. This is a network architecture limitation/capacity
limitation at layers 2 and 3, not so much about the physical distance that the
RF has to travel.

The SpaceX system will likely operate somewhat similarly to o3b, which has a
number of backbone link earth stations around the earth, adjacent to major
fiber IX points. They don't want to endlessly pass data satellite-to-
satellite-to-satellite because that will reduce the overall throughput and
capacity of the system. Within a single moving spot beam I bet they are
designing the system to pass data satellite-to-satellite if necessary. Or as
few hops as possible. Once again using a rural Idaho example, at any given
time a satellite or an adjacent pair of satellites in two orbital planes might
"see" both a rural cabin CPE, and also a larger earth station/trunk link
located next to terrestrial fiber in Boise. The goal is to get the traffic
from the CPE to Boise in a few hops as possible. Ideally in a single "bent
pipe" relay architecture.

~~~
hinkley
I’m still not sure if you answered my question but thank you for
participating. We don’t often get people with real experience in satcom.

I’ve never had to understand satellite physics beyond explaining to a director
why he needed terrestrial internet to solve his telecommunications problem.
They get the Grace Hopper explanation (aka the speed of light says data can
only move this far per nanosecond)

------
gingernaut
What the implications are for countries that severely restrict and monitor
internet access? Would Chinese citizens be able to sign up for this service?
Would SpaceX comply with foreign governments asking to ban connections or new
customers from their countries?

~~~
the-pigeon
It would be subject to local wireless spectrum control.

So like for your example it would have to sell to Chinese customers illegally
if it wasn't going to comply with their censorship regulations. Which the
Chinese government could then do a lot to fight.

So basically no, satellite internet is unlikely to have any impact on
censorship.

~~~
seiferteric
Here's a wild idea... They could disable transmit in these areas, but allow
reception. Someone in a hostile area with access to an antenna could send one
way messages up with useful info.

~~~
hyperpallium
Good idea, but just as easy to detect (send a message).

------
sneak
The last fifteen years I have been lamenting the fact that we happen to be
living in that tiny slice of history between the internet being invented and
the internet being everywhere, having to deal with things like “long distance”
and “no service” and underhanded last mile monopolies.

I could not be more excited about this.

~~~
tspike
Conversely, I am happy to have existed during the tiny slice of history
between the internet being invented and governments and corporations figuring
out how useful it is and controlling it for their own purposes.

~~~
jacquesm
And that period, alas, was all too brief.

------
runesoerensen
Also discussed when the application was filed
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12973223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12973223)

------
Consultant32452
I wonder if you'll be able to get a device small enough for this to replace
satellite telephony. I enjoy backpacking and would like to get a sat-phone for
emergencies, but it's kind of cost prohibitive.

------
Jabbles
Could a SpaceX constellation provide lower latency than undersea fiber? If the
satellites can communicate to each other would the speed of signalling through
a vacuum/air (~30% greater than fiber) outweigh any other steps?

If so, maybe SpaceX should get into HFT/arbitrage between global markets?

------
LeoPanthera
Do they have to get a license from every country in which they intend to
operate?

~~~
celticninja
No, you need to get authorisation to launch a payload based on where your
company is headquartered.

~~~
avtar
I'm assuming the parent was asking if licenses are required to provide service
to people in other countries.

~~~
celticninja
The linked site is for the FCC giving them permission to launch and operate
the service. They may need individual licenses to operate in each country but
I answered in the context of the submitted post. This article

[https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/03/california-startup-
accuse...](https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/03/california-startup-accused-of-
launching-unauthorised-satellites-into-orbit-report/)

Also provides more context, this company launched from outside the US but as a
US company they needed authorization from the FCC for the payload and
operating.

------
tyingq
Would probably fix the now somewhat "limited by cost constraints" inflight
WiFi for airlines. Lots of capital to switch over though. And perhaps more
complicated tracking/pointing. Smaller, less wind resistance, and so less fuel
burn cost though.

~~~
geerlingguy
And long-term contracts. I remember hearing GoGo signed on for an exclusive 10
year contract with airlines who use them, with no plans to upgrade bandwidth
during that time.

~~~
tyingq
The Gogo deals require consumer pricing that is revenue positive too. The
airlines that chose their own unbranded satellite can subsidize prices if they
want. And, of course, Gogo doesn't work over the ocean or other large water
bodies, unpopulated areas, etc.

Though the gogo antennas are simple and way less capital expenditure, faa
certification time, and aircraft downtime for installation.

~~~
dawnerd
Gogo works over water on their new(ish) 2ku band installations. Two years ago
I flew to Hawaii on one of the first Delta flights outfitted and got some
pretty good speeds (and oddly enough it was free because of "limited
connectivity").

Also pro-tip, if you have T-mobile you can use Gogo for free. There's a small
upgrade fee to make it work the entire duration of the flight. It's intended
to be mobile only but I'm sure some people here can figure a way around that
;)

~~~
tyingq
Well, yes, but Ku band means all the benefits of the simple antenna are gone.

Do they try to enforce "mobile only" solely with a MAC prefix database?

~~~
dawnerd
>Do they try to enforce "mobile only" solely with a MAC prefix database?

Nope, way simpler than that. Just a simple user agent check. Although recently
they've made some changes that make it harder, but just loading up the iphone
simulator gets around it.

Now watch someone from Gogo see this and fix the loophole.

------
karlkloss
I'm sure that radio astronomers will be thrilled. 4425 additional jamming
transmitters.

------
jagger27
Has SpaceX indicated that this network is meant to cover every home and
business directly or connect to a hub to distribute locally?

In terms of democratization, space to the home with commodity hardware is such
a game changer it's not even funny. My napkin math says that latencies across
the Earth (like NYC to Melbourne) would beat existing fiber.

~~~
walrus01
Both, I think. I would be surprised if there is not a higher-bandwidth,
larger, more expensive high gain rooftop CPE which can be used by a small
ISP/WISP in a remote area. They would use that for their uplink to the
internet and then distribute access locally via point to multipoint 5 GHz
radio systems, GPON fiber, whatever is feasible.

~~~
kbaker
Also, remote LTE towers could provide cellular connectivity anywhere.

~~~
walrus01
yes, fixed wireless LTE (baicells, other competing LTE based products for
WISPs), or traditionalmobile wireless... Whatever local methods are possible
to distribute service from an islanded ISP's local 'core' routers. As an
example an ISP in a town in Nunavut that was previously dependent on C-band
geostationary satellite capacity.

When I say 'islanded' ISP I mean an ISP that has no access to terrestrial
point to point microwave, or fiber, to reach any sort of upstreams or major IX
points. Either physically islanded (such as an ISP on the island of Nauru) or
somewhere in a terestrial location, but logically islanded because it would
cost at minimum several million dollars to build PTP microwave or fiber to the
nearest medium sized city. One example might be any of the communities on
Hudson Bay which are fly-in access only.

In previous discussions of the spaceX system, I have mentioned o3b as an
example of a new, clean sheet of paper design satellite network that people
should familiarize themselves with. The ordinary internet user will rarely if
ever see an o3b terminal, since it is at minimum about $45,000 in hardware
costs and is a pair of 1.8 meter motorized, multiple axis tracking antennas,
modems, BUC + SSPA, etc. o3b is intended for high capacity trunk links to
replace a setup like a 6.3 meter Ku-band antenna and dedicated geostationary
transponder KHz.

Satellite architecture wise one of the interesting things of the spaceX plan
is that the satellites will be in polar orbits (orbital inclinations anywhere
from 82 to 105 degrees, not sure exactly). Whereas o3b orbits its satellites
at low inclinations around the equator, meaning that their effective coverage
area reaches from +/\- 45 degrees latitude only.

------
aphextron
I’m curious to what layer SpaceX will allow application developers access to.
If there is to be any hope of having cryptographically secure communications
using this network, it will be essential that the whole stack is open source.
Putting blind faith in SpaceX seems foolish.

~~~
walrus01
satellite (earth station) systems engineer here: I highly doubt that there
will be access at anything other than layer 3. The CPE will have a 1000BaseT
port on it, when you connect to it, it'll hand out a DHCP v4 and v6 IP address
on it. Maybe if you pay an extra $15 per month you can get a single static v4
address. I am very doubtful that it will be possible for an individual end
user with a rooftop terminal to get access to "the network" at what would
correspond to layer 2 in the OSI model.

It is possible that a more expensive service tier offering might provide L2
ethernet fabric virtual wire adjacency. Similar to the general idea of an VPLS
/ EoMPLS virtual wire tunnel, where whatever you plug into one end will see
the single MAC address (or set of MAC addresses) of your other equipment on
the other end. But this will be a managed service and not something that you
can build arbitrarily.

~~~
fwgwgwgch
Thank you. You're the only "hacker" here among evangelicals and dreamers.
Thanks for your informative comments on "hacker" news.

~~~
walrus01
Without evangelicals and dreamers major new ISP infrastructure wouldn't get
built. But it has to run into practical realities of what a network will look
at all the way down the OSI model stack. People want gigabit FTTH to every
home in the USA but the construction costs could be $5,000 per house on
average.

~~~
cossray
I followed this closely and thank you for pointing out the cost implications
per house connection. While that's a significant amount in the USA,it's far
monstrous in the developing countries/rural areas;which from this forum are
touted as the major targets of the SpaceX system. Do you see a way of reducing
this cost that can practically serve a rural town in, for example, Africa?
(I'm from East Africa and trying to make sense of what this new development
means for local ISPs)

~~~
walrus01
If you have a town/city of population 2,500 to 20,000 that has very poor
internet connectivity in general at present, this will probably be most useful
in its larger version to bring one relatively high capacity DIA/IP link (like
150 Mbps downstream x 50 Mbps upstream) to a single central location, as an
ISP POP in the town, and then local distribution throughout a US county-sized
area by point-to-point and point-to-multipoint terrestrial microwave in the
2.4, 3.5, 3.65, 5.2 and 5.8 GHz bands. Possibly with some use of low-cost
equipment in the traditional licensed (6, 11, 18, 23) GHz bands, unlicensed 24
GHz band PTP, 60 and 80 GHz, etc.

~~~
cossray
Much appreciation for this feedback. I definitely need to dig further, but
your comments are painting quite a discernable image of what the system means
from an end user POV. We still got almost 5 years to its realization but
something worth keeping tabs on.

------
raganesh
Satellite internet service should provide major operational cash flow for
SpaceX. That too on recurring basis.

Rocket launches generate revenue once per launch and for the foreseeable
future, there will only a limited number launches per year.

Very good move by SpaceX.

~~~
lev99
Can you please explain why recurring revenue is significantly better for a
rocket company?

My understanding is Falcon 9 launches are limited by manufacturing and launch
pad limitations and not market demand. Launching satellites take away from
both of those, so he clearly thinks the direct to consumer business is worth
it.

~~~
raganesh
Recurring revenue - launch the satellite constellation once and generate
monthly subscription revenue potentially running into billions of dollars a
month.

Manufacturing limitations & launch pad availability, once they are resolved
(along with launcher reuse) will lead to a point where there is not enough
demand to fill the launch roster. This internal demand will help them fill it
up.

~~~
lev99
I always hoped ISS resupply and mars transport would work as reoccurring
revenue.

This is probably a great use if he has extra rockets and launch pad time, but
it seems a bit of a side project compared to manned space travel.

~~~
drawkbox
This venture goes hand in hand with the goal of manned space travel and going
to the Moon/Mars, explorers are going to need an internet uplink on either and
this allows it to be separate from just large spacecraft providing that.

------
cornholio
We have ourselves an international trade war concerning satelite spectrum. FCC
rejects the idea of "first-come-first-served" and supports mechanism that
allow equal spectrum sharing among applicants in the same licensing round. But
it can only do so overhead USA. SpaceX competitors, like OneWeb, contend that
SpaceX should be forced to subject to ITU Coordination, that currently assigns
use of the spectrum based on ITU filling date priority.

This argument will certainly be applied in other countries with less concerned
regulators, so we will have a complex patchwork of rules from one country to
the next and the satellites will have to switch bands repeatedly in a single
orbit. The ability to block a competitor from operating in certain territories
has massive commercial and geopolitical implications:

=========

ITU Coordination. In its Petition to Deny, Telesat observes that international
coordination will be required between the SpaceX system and its own NGSO FSS
system. Telesat argues that, at minimum, any grant to SpaceX should be
conditioned upon compliance with this international obligation. In response,
SpaceX argues in support of the Commission’s avoidance of in-line interference
regime, which, it asserts, yields more efficient spectrum sharing results than
a regime based solely upon ITU priority. We recently declined to adopt
Telesat’s proposal to tie coordination obligations and licensing conditions
directly to ITU filing dates by awarding priority according to those dates,
and accordingly deny Telesat’s petition in so far as it reiterates Telesat’s
ITU filing date priority proposal. We include a condition requiring SpaceX,
like all other NGSO FSS operators, to comply with the spectrum sharing
requirements specified in section 25.261 of the Commission’s rules with
respect to any other NGSO system licensed or granted U.S. market access
pursuant to the processing rounds in which SpaceX participated. We recently
adopted changes to section 25.261 that replaced the avoidance of in-line
interference methodology for triggering spectrum division (absent
coordination) with a default spectrum splitting sharing mechanism that is
triggered when the change in system noise temperature caused by interference,
or ΔT/T, exceeds a threshold of 6 percent. However, we note that outside the
United States (i.e., when communications to or from the U.S. territory are not
involved) the coexistence between SpaceX’s operations and operations of a
system that received a grant for access to the U.S. market are governed only
by the ITU Radio Regulations as well as the regulations of the country where
the earth station is located and are not subject to section 25.261.

------
karmicthreat
This is going to be great for industrial M2M service. A whole lot of
industrial plants (food or other) are out in the middle of nowhere even in the
US. Places were you just can't get cell service.

------
ryanmarsh
Did anyone else find Jessica Rosenworcel's statement at the end of the
memorandum to be unprofessional?

I don't often read FCC rulings but her language seems breathless, unfactual,
and unprofessional.

 _coming together to pioneer a wide range of cool satellite services_

Cool?

 _No one imagined commercial tourism taking hold, no one believed crowd-funded
satellites were possible, and no one could have conceived of the sheer
popularity of space entrepreneurship_

No one?

Lastly, her statement is rambling. Especially the last two paragraphs.

------
cft
Will it work inside cars without a special antenna?

~~~
tyingq
From one of their early FAQ docs:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/7zqm2c/starlink_f...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/7zqm2c/starlink_faq/)

 _" What kind of antenna does it use? It will use a flat Phased Array antenna
about the size of a pizza box or laptop computer and expected to cost between
$100 and $300. You will need line of sight to the open sky, mounted on your
roof or anywhere outside. The antenna handles both upload and download and is
capable of gigabit speeds."_

~~~
cft
So this is for stationary internet only, not for mobile.

~~~
Dylan16807
No reason it couldn't be made to work on vehicles.

~~~
tyingq
Yes, but a bit beyond what's needed for Xmradio/Sirius. A laptop sized antenna
isn't an easy 3rd party install.

------
slr555
I wonder how the total bandwidth of the system will compare to BGAN which is
pretty darn costly compared to LTE. Terminals would also have to be more
reasonable to expand past the media/energy customers that BGAN tilts towards.

~~~
stephen_g
BGAN is very limited - you only get a few hundred kbps... This will likely be
more like O3B, which can do gigabit (if you pay for it, and of course the
total bandwidth is limited and shared so speeds would drop significantly if
they had high take-up).

So this will definitely be far higher than BGAN, but from what I'm reading
here people have far too high expectations if they're in a populated area...
Definitely this could be an absolute game-changer for rural areas, but for
densely populated cities you're going to have a better time with fixed line.

------
pascalxus
This sounds like a HUGE win! Anybody know what time frame we can expect for
being able to sign up for such a service and what they will be offering? I
hate At&T and comcast with a passion.

------
walrus01
I am looking forward to seeing the test lab results for the rooftop CPE.

------
hyperpallium
Will break first world broadband monopolies, force prices down, and perhaps
destroy the terrestrial industry - from a profit POV.

Balloon net in conjunction, to act as towers?

~~~
sschueller
By creating a new super monopoly called Tesla? One entity in control of the
entire internet?

------
paul7986
What is the big advancement here compared to say Hughes Satellite Internet
that is slower then DSL?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Lower latency and much higher data rates.

~~~
shaklee3
You're comparing current satellite technology to something that is scheduled
to come out in about 3 to 4 years. That's not very fair considering that there
are many other geosynchronous high-bandwidth satellites scheduled to come out
before SpaceX is ready.

~~~
lev99
LOE will always provide faster latency than Geosynchronous orbit.

I suspect that total bandwidth will go to the person with the most satellites,
and LEO has much cheaper launches than GeoSync.

Geosynchronous orbit is more than 15 times farther away. That is why the
communication will be quicker, and why the launches are cheaper.

~~~
shaklee3
I specifically said high bandwidth since the latency is obviously better with
leo. I don't know what you are implying by much cheaper launches. They need
many, many more launches to hit the same capacity/coverage as a geo satellite.
One launch may be cheaper, but SpaceX will need dozens.

~~~
greglindahl
You're correct about coverage -- 3 GEO sats can cover most of the planet --
but not about capacity, which kinda scales with satellite mass, and benefits
from being closer (less power needed per bit.)

~~~
shaklee3
That is not correct. You have satellites of roughly the same mass over the
last decade that are adding more and more capacity. You also do not benefit
from being closer.

~~~
greglindahl
Why yes, I'd noticed high throughput satellites. And being closer means you
can use less electricity on the satellite for the same signal-to-noise ratio,
so yes, it is a benefit that comes from physics.

------
caryando
What is China going to do when their citizens have access to the Internet via
these Satellites?

~~~
wongarsu
The same thing they do today with VPNs: outlaw it, put reasonable restrictions
in place, accept that some amount will slip through (or heavily police it and
hand out lots of jail time, depending on local situation, political climate
etc.)

------
VadimSheen
Great News!

------
kgc
Cancelling Comcast now...

