Erm, can SpaceX solve the issue that the speed-of-light is pretty damn slow?
Geostationary Orbit is 35,000km above the Earth. Light "only" travels at 300,000km per second. That's a minimum latency of ~246 ms per packet, once you go round-trip from Earth -> Satellite -> Earth again.
Remember that starting up a TCP connection is Syn -> Syn-Ack -> Ack, which means a minimum latency of 750ms before a TCP connection is established. You're well into seconds+ before you can view Google's homepage. I guess this part can be sped-up with a smarter satellite.
Anything above 200ms is damn near unplayable for video games IMO.
That's the minimum latency according to current laws of physics. If you lower the orbit below Geostationary, then life starts to get extremely complicated for the people down on the ground. You can't just point your dish in a particular direction in the sky, because the satellite would be moving.
If you had a neighborhood completely clear of trees, maybe you could program a mobile radar dish to rotate with the moving satellites as they move across the sky (Subsynchronous orbit). But this doesn't seem too applicable to most people's home situations.
In principle, low-orbit satellites should be lower latency than copper or fiber over long distance. The speed of light in vacuum being faster than in solids. In addition a satellite network could offer a more direct path (short distance) than intercontinental cables for many locations, further increasing performance.
> SpaceX wants to launch 4,425 satellites into low-Earth orbits, with altitudes ranging from 715 miles to 823 miles. [0]
Latency won't be an issue. Can't find any information on their plan to solve the second problem - but since they've announced the service already, I've got to believe they've come up with workable solutions.
That's why they plan to launch over 4k satellites into LEO: while each satellite only covers a small area, together they blanket the surface with coverage. Further latency savings are had by having them all communicate with each other with lasers, preventing awkward and unnecessary back-and-forths between ground and satellite in many cases.
Geostationary Orbit is 35,000km above the Earth. Light "only" travels at 300,000km per second. That's a minimum latency of ~246 ms per packet, once you go round-trip from Earth -> Satellite -> Earth again.
Remember that starting up a TCP connection is Syn -> Syn-Ack -> Ack, which means a minimum latency of 750ms before a TCP connection is established. You're well into seconds+ before you can view Google's homepage. I guess this part can be sped-up with a smarter satellite.
Anything above 200ms is damn near unplayable for video games IMO.
That's the minimum latency according to current laws of physics. If you lower the orbit below Geostationary, then life starts to get extremely complicated for the people down on the ground. You can't just point your dish in a particular direction in the sky, because the satellite would be moving.
If you had a neighborhood completely clear of trees, maybe you could program a mobile radar dish to rotate with the moving satellites as they move across the sky (Subsynchronous orbit). But this doesn't seem too applicable to most people's home situations.