"T-Mobile users will be able to use messaging, MMS and certain messaging apps, from remote points across the lower 48 states, Alaska, Puerto Rico and Hawaii and even some remote points in the water.
Eventually, the service will work with voice, Sievert said. T-Mobile plans to include the service in its most popular mobile plans but did not disclose specific pricing.
Musk said the service will work with Starlink’s second generation satellites, which have very large antennae and will be able to transmit directly to a cell or mobile phone.
The service won’t require mobile users to get a new phone. Musk said in or after a natural disaster, even if all the cell towers are taken out, the planned service should work."
Interesting. Is there no distance limit? I don't know how 5G works, but in 2G there was a limit of about 30km, since that's as much as the timing advance would allow for (sending the signal early so that it arrives in its timeslot despite the speed-of-light delay).
I'm also pretty out of date, but I believe in LTE (4G) the max distance was closer to 100km, with the timing advance controlled in the radio protocol. As I understand it, the 5G radio protocol should be fairly similar to 4G, it wasn't completely reinvented for once.
Based on my read of the summary of a couple Mbps per cell and focusing more on low bandwidth services like texting makes me suspect they're right at the limits of what the tech will allow. Since they're advertising compatibility with existing hardware, makes me suspect there is an extension somewhere in the standards that allows the timing window to be increased, or maybe there's some clever hackery going on, like only scheduling every other timing window and cutting bandwidth in half.
Which might work on the uplink, but on the downlink I think it's more complicated to support something like paging, where the UE is mostly idle, and only wakes up occasionally, that things don't get out of sync with the moving satellite.
There's a system using LTE to backhaul Internet traffic from planes (WiFi in cabin, with a LTE to the ground), working with larger cells of up to ~900 km from memory, but it doesn't use standard LTE for example. It uses a modified variant made to support the possibly larger propagation delay coming with larger cells.
For 5G (NR), the max cell size has been increased and depends on the OFDM subcarrier spacing. For a 15 kHz SC, same as LTE, the max cell size is 300 km. This value is halved each time the SC doubles.
There's work on-going to extend NR to non-terrestrial networks. I don't know where it stands right now, but it'll likely add larger cells support. But it's not there yet for sure.
I'd think that the distance limit for _terrestrial_ mobile networks comes from the guard interval of the OFDM modulation [1]. I.e. on longer distances the time-offset between different different reception paths (due to reflections) of the signal becomes so long that you cannot compensate those with just a complex gain-factor of the OFDM vectors.
AFAIR LTE (4G) even uses different guard intervals depending on rural vs. city setting because that time-offset is larger in rural areas (less base station density).
I would not expect those problems to be relevant for satellite communication as ground<->satellite does not suffer much of the multi-path signal propagation of terrestrial systems. (IIRC DVB-c sat-TV broadcasts did not even use OFDM, at least not for the older "v1" DVB-c standard).
Nitpick: You probably mean DVB-S (and S2, S2X..) rather than DVB-C, and you're correct that they don't employ OFDM (they're just a straightforward single wideband channel mostly employing variations on phase-shift keying), and aren't particularly concerned with multipath interference.
In 2G GSM there was this limit, because GSM used very strictly managed timeslots for each call. If a phone was too far away, its signal would arrive out of bounds of the timeslot and this was the reason. The protocol didn't have any compensation built in.
However 3G and onwards were based on CDMA tech (which was the competing 2G tech to GSM), which is very different. CDMA doesn't have strictly managed cells, but rather the basestation picks the signals out of a cacaphony (very simplified). So the same issue doesn't apply.
2G was much more static than CDMA, it had a strict capacity of a number of calls per cell. But the range (up to this 30km) was pretty good because when a phone transmitted the air was clear. CDMA cells used to 'breathe': Have much lower reach during busy times (because weak signals could no longer be identified) so gaps could drop in the network. ON the other hand, 2G got busy with a fixed capacity.
2G did have prioritisation though when the network was full. If you called 112 (the international emergency number) it would kick someone else off to make space for you.
All bets are on centralized and/or proprietary ones that can afford to pay for the privilege. I have been saying from day one that Starlink is well poised to end net neutrality.
Net neutrality is not a good thing in and of itself. It is one value among many.
If you're a firefighter trying to call for assistance from base camp, you don't care about net neutrality. You want your emergency phone call to have priority over everything else. You want the net to be extremely non-neutral.
On the general internet, where bandwidth is plentiful, net neutrality can keep certain pathological things from being a thing. On a specialized network where bandwidth is very scarce, it can be the cause of pathology.
Good enough for what? If you have SMS where you didn't before you're still equally free to not use it. Personally I like the idea of always having a simple channel for emergencies.
Then this isn't the solution for them. You keep assuming this is an internet service when it's not. Internet protocols are massively inefficient and have latency constraints that would choke narrow channels while offering almost no utility. This will be a modified SMS service, not a not an IRC service. Don't like it? Go buy an actual satphone with a data plan.
They don't have a responsibility to help you stay anonymous if they don't promise it. Follow your logic and we wouldn't have remote schooling or medical services over HF radio either. It extends the capabilities of normal phones to provide a feature we didn't have before, so you can't expect the capabilities of full fat, dedicated hardware. It's better than nothing, so why complain? You want net neutrality for a non-Internet service?
A major use case is in emergency situations or catastrophes when no classical cell service is available. If you are hoping to message someone to rescue you, I don't think anonymity is your concern.
Unless you are a journalist or a dissident and need to relay information that will save human lives, but cannot risk exposing your identity, location, or the message content to anyone but the recipients.
At the event they addressed this, and said they would work with anyone, and that the real issue is making sure that the data is correctly identified as messages and not generic data. This apparently would require back-end work between T-Mobile and the messaging app to identify the data in some way.
This is a net neutrality killer any way you look at it as whitelisting apps in any way will by design mean blocking legitimate privacy focused messaging solutions that do not have fixed IP addresses or identifiable traffic patterns.
I somehow doubt for instance they would have a way to allow a federated and often self-hosted messaging protocol like Matrix over an anonymization networking layer like Tor, which is the only chat solution I use.
Breaking net neutrality even a little bit has consequences like creating network effects further favoring centralized solutions forcing vulnerable people like journalists, dissidents, female healthcare seekers, etc, to take on a lot more risk.
If SpaceX has bandwidth limitations they should cap everyone to dialup speeds and keep it neutral.
If they insist on breaking net neutrality, people like me will be forced to do stupid nonsense like piping arbitrary TCP/IP as base64 blobs via chatbots over some whitelisted app like Whatsapp. Or masquerade traffic as port 53 DNS queries like dnstunnel.
Protocol/app whitelisting will most discriminate against those with low technical ability.
How? Net neutrality applies to the internet. You could run a private mobile network and allow or disallow anything you want on it. The reason it's bandwidth limited is probably because they're using dedicated SMS/MMS channels, as was field tested and proven earlier. T-mobile will likely write or allow modified chat apps that use these channels. So there's nothing to indicate this would be a limited Internet service. And if you didn't want it your options would be no worse than they are now.
I believe they have some sort of similar solution in place for free messaging on in-flight wifi. Having a look at how they've done that might give a better idea for what this will look like than speculation.
Still, it's a hard problem. They want to prioritise connectivity on an extremely low bit-rate channel that covers an extremely large geographic region. Messaging apps needs to be a part of that connectivity solution, but you can't have one user making the entire cell unusable by everybody else. I don't know if there is a 'net neutral' way to do that, but would love to hear your ideas.
I think it is quite simple. Just apply net neutrality rules to this like any other internet connection.
If they can afford to support whitelisted messengers at a very limited data rate of 1k/s then they can afford to simply give people 1k/s of neutral internet access to use to communicate whatever data they feel is high value enough to fit over those constraints using any protocol they wish.
We already have internet access over HAM radio via net44. Highly bandwidth restrictive because of physics, but you can get a permanent IP assigned to your callsign and use whatever software you want with your tiny bandwidth pipe even in the middle of the ocean.
I don't think the speed of text messaging allows for many other meaningful data types. Someone encoding video into the GSM-7 format used by SMS will still consume more data than the typical person typing and sending text messages (which is what, 140 bytes each way per minute on average?).
There is also the difference between free and paid. Sure, if you're paying, you should be able to do whatever you want at the advertised speed and data limits. But for a free feature, I think it's alright to limit to SMS and other texting apps (already done on inflight wifi and it works just fine).
Why not just limit to SMS? Because travelers' home carriers might levy roaming charges on SMS, and WhatsApp / Telegram / iMessage is already de facto in most of the world.
This is exactly why net neutrality rules were a bad idea, because of insane proposals like this that would kill legitimate innovation. If you are lost in the woods without a cell signal, you don't want someone downloading a podcast episode at 1k/s sucking up all the bandwidth.
Maybe they are downloading a low res video demonstrating an emergency field medicine procedure to save a life far from hospitals. Maybe they are a journalist or a whistleblower uploading a picture that may change the outcome of a war.
A central party trying to decide what data is most important is going to be wrong when it counts most.
If a single user is monopolizing all bandwidth and a new user joins, throttle the existing user in half to make room.
There might also need to be a way to signal a need for emergency bandwidth, 911 style, that can give you priority access for a short time window, with the option for a carrier to cut off your device IMEI entirely if it is used too frequently.
In practice though they want to offer bursty throughput. For example, if you want to allow sending photos in messages, but not videos, you don't want to send a photo at 1k/s. It's not a trivial problem.
This is probably just a temporary solution to give everyone SMS capability after the fact - why would you assume this is permanent? Obviously the goal is to get everyone global internet. What happens at that point will determine net neutrality but that is far off into the future.
"I would expect our pricing for this service to be the un-carrier's favorite price: we expect, on our most popular plans, for this service to be included for free"
Edit: Downvotes are happening for some reason. "most likely" and "I would expect" mean basically the same thing unless we're playing grammar police.
The entire point of my above post was to deny the fact that they "did not disclose specific pricing". That was the part that was incorrect that I was correcting, as shown in the long form direct quote.
> "most likely" and "I would expect" mean basically the same thing
And so does just saying the claim with no qualifiers. Of course when you’re making a claim you’re expressing that you expect it to be the case with high likelihood. That’s what making a claim is.
The direct quote is more descriptive as it claims "we expect" instead of "most likely". The quote implies that it's based on preliminary cost data and could change, while "most likely" almost sounds like it's based on a dice roll and is vague about exactly what is contributing to the uncertainty of the statement. He chose his words carefully.
If it could talk directly with mobile phones it's a game changer.
But I don't understand how it could be physically possible without phased array and satellite tracking for a phone to transmit anything back to satellite. If achieved, even a few bytes per minute would already be big.
You could also just have the recipient in the first part of the message block so that the devices that aren't the recipient either just ignore the message or can't decode it.
My biggest question is how do you send a signal to a satellite with your mobile phone. And they're even saying without additional hardware which makes it even more difficult.
Or are they just hoping that there would be no obstructions from your device and the satellite, no roof and a good sunny weather?
Although my knowledge is lacking, my understanding is that 2G has good range at the expense of low data rate. But I have a feeling that many modern phones no longer support 2G, since (at least here in Slovenia, Europe) many providers have over the years lowered or totally removed the number of 2G towers.
> Musk said the service will work with Starlink’s second generation satellites, which have very large antennae and will be able to transmit directly to a cell or mobile phone.
This has far greater implications than dead zones, yacht's (or) Oil rigs; 'Telecommunication during natural disasters'!
With increasing number of extreme weather events, Our conventional telecommunication systems(especially base stations) cannot stand a chance against natural(man made?) disasters. Yet, Apart from few nerd group projects like disaster.radio I see no real work in building disaster resilient telecommunication network.
P.S. If you live in India, Especially in south-western India and are interested in https://disaster.radio project for your region then give me a ping. I've been trying to get it started for ages.
Now you have Apple’s event in a couple weeks themed “Far Out” with space pictures.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Apple announced something similar, possibly with Globalstar instead.
Of course, Apple’s solution will likely only work with iMessage. So of course Musk comes out first, with the “we are doing it too, but it will work with any phone.”
This conversation is a frequent annoyance for me. I’m tired of asking folks if they have Apple or Signal available just to send a photo. MMS is unreliable and opaque to most folks it seems since pictures never seem to get through if they’re on android.
Same is true for android to android - it does a much higher quality non MMS. Unfortunately neither Google nor Apple will open up their damn protocol to the other.
There are no android clients that can do it besides google messages. Google also has their own version of RCS that only works messages to messages. Carriers also have a version of RCS but its not quite the same.
Apple could and should totally adopt the carrier version of RCS though. And it would be great if Google would let apps like Textra in too
iMessages aren't converted to SMS on Apple's servers side. It's a fallback on the phone's side. When you're on a WiFi but with no cell coverage, you can send an iMessage but can't send an SMS.
But, for such a satellite phone service, Apple totally could make a SMS to iMessage gateway, or even just a web interface where non-apple users could log in and see that someone had sent them an iMessage.
Obviously Apple will make the process as painful as possible to encourage buying iPhone.
This isn’t entirely true. If you have WiFi calling enabled, you can also send SMS over WiFi if the carrier supports it. I use this extensively when traveling internationally.
it's not really an android phone or an apple phone though - good satellite reception (as opposed to initial middling reception) is going to mean phones with radios meant for satellites and antenna that are designed to look up (and track) and not just sideways.
5 years from now you'll be choosing a particular android or apple phone because its good for satellite, just like you choose a particular one today because it's small, or fast, or has a good camera
Let me clarify. Musk claimed 6 years ago [1] that shipping Teslas would be capable of Level 5 autonomy. While Tesla’s markets their feature as “full self driving” it’s a far cry from even level 3 afaik.
It’s kind of sad people fall for this. It also has lethal consequences as people assume it can do things it very well can’t (cruise control+ is really what the feature is). It’s a very obvious grift and SEC and FTC regulators have apparently been asleep at the wheel to enforce it. Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a shareholder lawsuit at some point. Certainly if the stock collapses once someone beats Tesla to level 5.
Yep, if there's one thing that the AI "community" has done, it's over promise and under deliver. Tesla was a lot more fortunate than some others, being an automotive company first, and an AI company at best 4th (after battery, charging network).
He's been saying repeatedly that "it's going to be fully self driving next year" for the past 6 years now. At what point for you does that change from "overly optimistic prediction that didn't pan out" to "he's likely lying through his teeth"?
The unsettling duality that Tesla fans will accept is that somehow Musk is both an unrivaled genius AND he's consistently betting incorrectly on Tesla's timeline for L5. When other self-driving experts in the field indicate full L5 for the industry is probably a decade or so away (optimistically), I'm not keen to believe that Musk is just blinded by pure optimism for 6 years running.
They're ready to launch their test satellite in the next few weeks and are already building the capabilities for the next satellites in the constellation. I'm watching them carefully as it looks like they're going to be able to do it.
The current once are not, they are a technology level behind what even Starlink v1 is. Maybe some future OneWeb will be able to do it, but not for a long time.
If you are right, T-Mobile's effort to get Apple onboard with making the necessary changes to separate iMessage payload from regular cell data on these special low-bandwidth space-cells could be a challenge.
Not really. Apple gives T-Mobile the hostnames/IP addresses they use for iMessage, and T-Mobile configures their APN to only allow connections to those addresses. There's a lot that happens on the backend for cell data to work that consumers don't see.
That isn't anything special. Every smartphone can send SMS over wifi. You need to connect to the in-flight wifi to use the service. The router on the plane has a hole in the firewall that allows unpaid users to access the specific HTTP server to send and receive SMS messages. Absolutely nothing special about it.
Eventually this would be no different: Starlink can provide (firewalled) data service to iPhones to support messaging apps.
Speculation is that initially there would be a small number of satellites periodically passing overhead, leading to the 30 minute send/receive times, and likely not supporting non-SMS messaging apps well.
I wasn’t looking at this from a technical perspective, more of a business/finance/operations perspective.
This is Apple we are talking about. They wouldn’t make this play without some form of vendor lock-in. They will probably choose to lock in based on hardware (“must have iPhone 14 for this capability!”) — but I wouldn’t be surprised to see them lock in on the software side as well.
If I were Tim Cook, I might play both sides. “Bandwidth is limited, so for now, this will only work with iMessage.” This gives them room to open it up later for more good PR, and allows them to test the reaction of having it only work with their proprietary software.
I have no insider knowledge here. I follow this space closely due to co-owning an independent repair business that primarily works on Apple products.
The value-add now is that you keep and iPhone so you have iMessage. You stay blue bubble etc.
The value add of satellite is that you have service on a mountain (or a plane?). The value is that most androids won’t have that (a musk-maybe-one-day project aside).
It’s way more likely they’ll make it exclusively available on high end phones. Thats a way more obvious play for apple.
iMessage seems like an odd choice to single out for lock in though. This is a whole network, I doubt it will be integrated directly with services. There’s not any precedent for anyone else doing that (besides maybe Facebook with their phones). Despite the fears about net neutrality.
Apple's a corporation like any other, and they're not above a little bit of vendor lock-in. Plus, given the low data rates this will support, this can only support a limited subset of Internet access.
> I wasn’t looking at this from a technical perspective, more of a business/finance/operations perspective.
I understand, but an iMessages¹-only Messages² is a non-starter at Apple because it causes complexity and customer confusion, two things that Apple is stellar³ at minimizing.
> If you try to send a SMS, it just won’t go through—-same as it would today.
I may be confused about the scenario then, because this does work for me. Specifically, when I turn off my cellular radio (I'm a T-Mobile customer) I can still send and receive messages to people not using iDevices.
> Because that’s the scenario they’re talking about, where nothing sends because you have no signal whatsoever.
Right, but the point of an iPhone that can talk to satellites that I'll generally always have at least a low-bitrate IP connection? Because with that, I can text iDevice and Android users alike.
I find this completely false, messaging anyone on a non-iPhone (from my iPhone) is a complete disaster. Pictures / texts randomly fail to send, videos turn to 12 pixel noise, it’s so bad that an entire generation of people have friend groups that apple / android only because communication between the two phones is so bad.
> I find this completely false, messaging anyone on a non-iPhone (from my iPhone) is a complete disaster.
You should complain to your carrier. I'm on at least 5 different active text chains at any given time (family, friend groups, school parents) with a mix of devices, and it all works fine.
> …videos turn to 12 pixel noise…
That's an MMS limitation. If you regularly send videos, you'll want to use WhatsApp or some other non-standards-based messaging app.
Hopefully they never will. Nothing I’ve read about RCS in the last two months has convinced me it is anything other than a security and spam hole waiting to happen. If there’s to be an inter-operable standard between Apple and Android, I think it has to be Apple and Google-driven rather than something that makes the carriers happy. Anything at all to reduce their role to dumb IP-carrying pipes is aces in my books.
Apple phones are a lot less ubiquitous than general cell phones. Anything with an antenna and a (e)SIM card can get access to the T-mobile network, so what Apple is providing might be nice but I can't see how they compete at the level SpaceX can. And the global regulatory approvals needed will be a problem for everyone.
Spend some time in an affluent neighborhood in a large metro area and I think you'll realize that isn't true. I sure don't know any Tribeca or Pacific Heights residents with Androids.
iPhones are the plurality. If you have a few random people together in the US there’s a good chance one of them in an iPhone. Pretty sure that’s what they meant.
They could put-compete if they can create an iPhone with extra powerful antennas or other hardware. Like they always do- own the full stack to allow it to work better.
It was somewhat off the cuff and meant to encapsulate the idea that you can improve the ability of the phone to connect with the satellite. That isn’t possible if you don’t design the phone.
You could potentially control the situation enough where a user can enable “satellite mode” which uses extra power for sending messages. It’d affect battery life, and need to be manually enabled, but it’d enable better connections in emergencies.
You could try to improve directional antennas and some sort of aiming system with the screen.
Lots of things that maybe could happen when you control the client side instead of just the satellite side.
Apple, as far as I know, does not own spectrum. Therefore I doubt it is an Apple thing. More likely an AT&T or Verizon thing. And the service works on the iPhone.
* Everywhere in the US and US territories including ocean waters you will get T-Mobile service through Starlink satellites, no additional hardware needed (for the person owning the cell phone anyway)
* Beta service starting end of 2023
* Included for free with most T-Mobile plans other than the cheapest plans
* More limited features may be added earlier, i.e. texting or emergency calling
* Total available bandwidth will be 2-4 megabits per cell zone so this is not intended to be a replacement for conventional cell service but a way to provide service to completely or almost completely unpopulated areas of the US
* T-Mobile wants to encourage other carriers in other countries to give up similar mid-band bandwidth (what T-Mobile is giving to SpaceX) and to any carriers who do, T-Mobile will offer reciprocal roaming where anyone from those countries visiting the US will also be able to use this service and T-Mobile will do the same for T-Mobile customers visiting in those other countries.
One unclear point: It supposedly depends on gen2/v2 satellites which depend on launching Starship, but there was a comment that they may launch a "v2 mini" on Falcon 9 and it was unclear if those will also support the hardware for T-Mobile service.
> Included for free with most T-Mobile plans other than the cheapest plans
This is big. Only concerning part seems to be the large antenna required on the satellites, which would probably incur some extra scrutiny by regulators, but IMO the benefits of something like this far exceed the downsides.
A combination of orbital debris and astronomy issues. A big antenna means it's more likely to be hit by other satellites, and it'll be brighter.
There's a good chance this might mean these are limited to the ~350 KM shells, which will deorbit faster (limiting debris risk), and will go into sunset sooner.
The concerns are difficult to dispute because they’re “not even wrong”. There are no specific claims that can be disputed.
Serious astronomers don’t just look at a photo with bright dots and get confused because some of them are satellites. A few predictable bright pixels are the least of their concerns.
What the... is that what's possible with 5G? Amazing, and even days ago I was thinking of satellite smartphone internet as something scifi because of (clearly incorrect!) complicated antenna requirements.
So baseline, a modern cell phone can connect to a tower about 45 miles away. Stsrlink satellites orbir about 10 times out from that. They are solving this problem by some very clever phased array technology to be deployed on the satellites themselves, because when it comes to radio, you can often solve the problem of signal reception by boosting either the transmitter or the receiver side of the story.
This is how we've kept in touch with the Voyagers all this time. The Voyager radio technology is getting no better, but the technology we can throw at it from a ground station has been out-stripping the loss due to distance and degradation (or at least approximately keeping pace).
Also 10x may not be representative since the 45 miles to a cell tower is all through atmosphere but Starlink is 400 miles up, so there's only 5-10 miles of atmosphere at any noticeable density.
microwaves go about 10% further than the horizon, barring any tropospheric ducting - which cell towers shouldn't, in general.
The issue you have with long distances is multipath, which can throw off the complex timing required to have multiple users in realtime on a single radio.
I've heard that US spy satellites used to eavesdrop on soviet telephone calls transmitted between line-of-sight ground-based microwave relay towers. The relay towers used directional microwave antenna aimed at each other, but satellites in space could pick up those signals.
This [1] may help but I'm wholely unfamiliar with the field. A guy at Defcon did a talk about how HAM radio in Florida allocates their bandwidth and goes into the nitty details of propegation.
Line of sight (1/r^2) often has lower attenuation than urban propagation (1/r^3 to 1/r^4), so it’s often easier to hit a LEO satellite than a terrestrial tower.
4G/LTE was commonly quoted as 3km range for rural installations (using the 2GHz bands). 5G added 700MHz and 800MHz bands that are quoted as 10-20km achievable range. For typical cell tower heights 20km is about the range where they would sink behind the horizon, so that might be the practical limit here.
Starlink satellites are about 330km up, so one order of magnitude further. But they also have basically unobstructed line of sight (if you are under blue sky). Compared to the normal conditions a cell phone has to deal with that might get you a substantial improvement. I think it's plausible that at least some existing phones can do it, with the tiny bandwidth you would expect from a poor signal.
330km is only when the satellite is directly overhead. Starlink's coverage is typically given on the assumption that the satellites may be as low as 25 degrees above the horizon, and at that elevation, the straight-line distance is more like 700km if my math is right.
GPS is a thing, so I can imagine that a phone would be able to receive satellite signals pretty easily. But for transmission, I can't imagine this working without having your phone put a ton of power into sending a powerful enough signal, perhaps more so than how much power you need to passively receive GPS signals in the absence of traditional cell towers?
It sounds like the data rate is incredibly low. That allows for a lot of signal margin. GPS receivers are sensitive to something like -165dBm.
It's probably harder for the satellite to hear from the phone. Especially at a lower frequency like 700Mhz, a phone's tiny antenna is going to be a rather inefficient transmitter. Maybe 5g technology helps by allowing the phone to do some rudimentary beam forming using multiple antennas?
I'm not an expert, but I believe a receiving radio can make note of the relative phase of the incoming signal across all antennas, and then simply transmit its signal with the same phase offsets. This can happen incredibly quickly on the time scale of milliseconds, and so the typical device really isn't moving that quickly to matter.
I believe modern wifi has periodic "sounding packets" specifically designed for devices to robustly measure that sort of information for beam forming and multiple spatial streams.
This is all roughly right except that when you say "incredibly quickly on the time scale of milliseconds" it's often actually microseconds.
This sort of work is done either in custom hardware or FPGAs - that's the only way you can precisely control the phase offset of signals (and measure it). They can respond very quickly.
There are cell phone sized thingies that can send text messages to iridium's constellation, which is (as I understand it) way further away than starlink. I use one while backpacking.
I'd be super excited to get the same capability in a standard cell phone.
The Iridium orbit heights are not much higher (781 km vs. 550 km). You can always trade bandwidth for increased sensitivity. The most extreme example is GPS. Your phone can receive it from 20000 km away with a tiny antenna, but the data rate is only 50 bits per second.
It works because the satellites will have a HUGE antenna, 5m by 5m. And to enable the launching of this many big satellites, SpaceX will launch (most of them) on Starship.
FWIW, 5G isn’t really to “thank” for increased range. LTE was widely deployed on the 700Mhz band in the early 2010s and line of sight range could easily exceed 10 miles for useable data.
Yeah that's not how it works. You can't just "put the complicated antenna on the satellite, instead of on the phone" and declare this problem solved. If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.
I'm declaring shenanigans right now on Elon's pitch but what else is new. It makes me sad that this thread is full of (probably) SWEs in a complete froth who took this at face value with little understanding of how antennas work. No, your existing phone will not be able to work on this service, full stop.
The issue is not getting signal from the satellite to your phone. That's the easy part - after all, your phone receives GPS signals. Satellites have powerful transmitters and high-gain antennas. Even GPS which is considered extremely low-power has a TX power of around 20-25 watts and EIRP is probably an order of magnitude higher after the antenna (probably enough to turn your eyeballs into Easter eggs if you were standing in front of it). The issue is going the other way. For messaging to work, your phone needs a two-way connection. Your current iPhone/Android handset is simply not designed for satellite communication.
"But muh Garmin inReach" ..... have you stared at one and wondered "why can't my iPhone do this"? First, the antenna is the size of a thumb, it looks like a helical antenna to me, which would make sense given that most satellite communications uses something called "circular polarization" to combat things like the Faraday effect. This requires an antenna specifically designed for it. Your iPhone doesn't have one, which means more signal loss. Iridium phones look similar - very Michael Douglas in Wall Street industrial design. Satellite phones and communicators are designed to direct most of the energy upwards towards the sky. Your existing phone does not so you are losing most of the energy in an omnidirectional pattern. Even things like 406 MHz emergency beacons send extremely short message bursts - just a few bytes - the link budget needed to sustain an IP connection (uplink) with an existing handset just isn't there.
So I'm expecting Elon to deliver on the magical complicated-super-antenna that works with your existing mobile handset right around the same time he gives us his FSD Cybertruck. Which is to say, never.
This isn't a Starlink/SpaceX scheme. Non-terrestrial networks are being worked into the 3GPP specifications and highlight the same handset difficulties that need to be addressed. It's not the phone currently in your pocket that does this but might be fine on the phone you get in the next few years.
> It's not the phone currently in your pocket that does this but might be fine on the phone you get in the next few years.
I don't think anyone's questioning this - yet there's people here rage-posting the ludicrous assertion that the very handset in your pocket right now will work with Starlink unmodified. This is what I have an issue with. More FSD-style overpromising and underdelivering all over again.
They did go a bit hard on the existing phone's bit, tmobile guy at least used the word "aspiration" when mentioning it. I somehow doubt it, but maybe phone radio implementations are very forward looking on the standards?
In any case, late '23 never means '23. So maybe actual useful service in '25-'26 when the network, phones and sats are all ready.
>"circular polarization" to combat things like the Faraday effect
Another factor is that the antenna on a satellite can be in a pretty arbitrary rotation compared to the receiver on the ground. Circular polarization doesn't care about orientation. Further discussion here: https://ham.stackexchange.com/questions/12414/antenna-polari...
>Satellite phones and communicators are designed to direct most of the energy upwards towards the sky. Your existing phone does not
Recent iphones run 2x2 MIMO on mmWave and 4x4 MIMO on LTE. They should be able to do a fair bit of beamforming.
Can you show your calculations for this? From the sound of it the Starlink antenna is going to be a 25 m^2 phased array antenna, which I believe would have impressive gain.
Because (existing) Starlink is for home internet where people want good bandwidth? e.g. 100Mbps per household vs the stated plans for this which is 2-4Mbps per cell region.
And because existing Starlink satellites don't have giant phased array antennas on them.
It’s $10 per month for my Garmin InReach which gives you emergency comms and let’s you upgrade to unlimited SMS and some other stuff for $60. I use it a lot and it’s very reasonable. Runs on Iridium.
I have a Garmin InReach too, but to say it’s “satellite phone internet” is a stretch. You can send little blips of data. There’s no phone service. Nor is there any internet service.
If you read the T-Mobile announcement, that’s exactly what you’ll get. Not saying it’s not great but I think people
have the misconception that they’ll have usable satellite internet which is really not happening due to physics.
This is extremely low bandwidth and intended for sending extremely high latency text chats. Elon said in the presentation that it could be as much as 30 mins between hitting send and the message going through.
This competes with existing stuff from existing satellite providers.
It’s really really cool, and doesn’t need to be full on smartphone satellite internet to fulfill that coolness!
Anecdotally, 5G is significantly better at line of sight at significant distances than previous technology. While sailing 40+ miles offshore this summer, I've gotten 5G on deck, with decent upload performance using my iPhone, when in years previous I didn't get coverage much beyond 12 miles anywhere around where I sail, despite there being tall buildings with cell towers on them with a 30+ mile horizon for at least 2 decades. I use ATT, but super excited for this cell service anywhere future, will be switching to T-Mobile SIM for my dev phone.
I’m booking a cruise on which they’re asking $200 for five days of data. This would be helpful if we were too far off shore to get reception to avoid such high fees. Starlink itself currently offers service to ships at a cost of $5000/mo. plus $10,000 for the hardware. This could save a lot of money where a simple mobile data plan would suffice.
I took a cruise last week where they wanted 25$ a day per device for internet. I took a little battery powered 4G dongle to leave on the balcony to give our room wifi which worked quite well even when land was barely in sight. Of course the land had to be on our side of the ship.
I watched the announcement. Knowing Musk, I'll believe it when I see it, but it sounds promising. Apparently the G2 Starlink satellites will be equipped with large antennas to support cellular users on the existing spectrum.
Self-driving cars have proven harder than expected, but given the rest of Musk's tale, I wouldn't bet against him. SpaceX is already launching satellites, and Starlink is already providing service. T-mobile owns the frequencies for it, it's "just" a matter of building the satellites and putting them into space. If the claim were more outlandish, it would be harder to buy, but the technology is eminently doable.
Self driving is one of the hardest, if not the hardest software problems ever to be solved. I think people underestimate just how challenging the problem is. Must says a lot of stupid stuff but in reality he has delivered on the vast majority of it, though as he says it's not always in the time frame he expects.
I remain skeptical Tesla is anywhere near let-the-driver-sleep self driving (except perhaps in tunnels), but I’m very glad they’re trying to do it, and do it at scale for consumer cars, not just company-owned hyper-sensored vehicles that cost as much as a house.
Literally every company working on the problem a decade ago was over-optimistic, but many pursued a strategy that would keep the technology only for company-owned vehicles, which I find less satisfactory. The whole point of personal cars is independence. We already have buses and transit vans if we want mass transit. If you want self-driving to actually save all the lives it supposedly could, it has to be scalable to everyone.
Musk is terminally optimistic on AI generally, including paranoia about AGI. I don’t expect let-the-driver-sleep self driving for a good 10 years, but it’ll be never if no one tries. The technology does not advance by itself.
People are already sleeping while the Tesla drives, albeit illegally. Highway driving it seems to do really well, around town though sleeping seems way off.
People underestimate it all the time, just because you don't doesn't mean other don't. If you read any forum they talk about how it should have been solved by now.
Wouldn't something like Westworld road system easier? Basically, almost all the cars are self-driven, and it's more like a public transit than anything. Essentially, a closed system. (Easier in the technical sense, not the implementation (politics, ...)).
Even if that were easier, there’s basically no way to get there without full self driving capable of working around human drivers. The reason why cars are convenient is due to the existing road network, and any deployment of self driving cars is going to have to function on existing road. If you tried to segregate the system, you would have to close some of the existing roads but this would mess with regular people and result in a very small network of pure self driving roads.
Just a couple days ago they announced that they will also be using Falcon 9 to launch the new Gen2 Starlink satellites, instead of the original plan to launch all of them using the still-in-development Starship. So it seems like Musk is pretty committed to doing this in a reasonable timeline, with smaller technology risk.
SpaceX will need to get FCC/ITU approval for the G2 satellites. T-Mobile is seeking agreements with international carriers. I think those are probably required for the proposed system to be viable. Spectrum management bureaucracies in other countries, and opposition from competitors will slow things down. It will require a lot of money to get worldwide operating agreements in place, and some of the money will be bribes to the right people.
Yes, I expect this to be one of many announcements going forward, with Amazon Kuiper and OneWeb coming into the party -- eventually. However, SpaceX has the advantage of vertical integration (they launch their own rockets) which substantially helps with costs.
Also the benefit of time. Kuiper hasn't launched anything yet, and all their launchers are still in development - BOs own rocket New Glenn, Arianne 6, and ULA Vulcan. Vulcan probably isn't too far off, 2023, but they will need time to ramp up production. It'll also be a lot more expensive than for SpaceX.
Amazon will probably have to heavily subsidize Kuiper.
I reckon they hope the market is big enough for multiple providers.
Musk has had some failures (FSD, battery replacement, solar roof, satellite laser communication), but also notable successes (supercharger network, landing a rocket).
While this particular idea seems theoretically possible, as far as I know there haven't really been proper tests of it yet. So I could imagine it theoretically working, but being really bad (which may honestly be enough).
There's probably a reason Apple seems to be doing hardware adjustments for their satellite communication.
Not sure how battery replacement is a failure? They got some money to do it, decided it was not worth doing, so they didn't. I mean that's not really a technological failure, but simple a good business choice.
>Musk has had some failures (FSD, battery replacement, solar roof, satellite laser communication), but also notable successes (supercharger network, landing a rocket).
Yeah, of all the projects of Musk's to be skeptical of, this one seems the most plausible and mundane.
I'm not sure what software was present on this random Lyft I took a couple months ago, but I was seated in the front, watching Tesla's infotainment screen the entire ride, which on one side was displaying a sort of wireframe (not the right word, but they weren't realistic drawings) of objects in front of and around the car as we were driving.
I was alarmed to see how often pedestrians, and even cars passing while waiting at a traffic light, would just randomly wink out of existence while still in the car's path, or nearby. Sometimes it would show cars parked at the curb to the sides, and other times nothing, even with our car being the same distance away. And yet somehow at one point it consistently displayed a traffic cone that was on the sidewalk against a building. Didn't really give me much confidence in Tesla's self-driving software if the object detection bits can't even get that right. But again, I don't know what software was running on that car, may not have been the latest-and-greatest.
I don't think I'd trust even the FSD beta to drive my car 95% of the time. Or 1%, even.
The display is not a great indicator of what the car "sees". Ideally the display would reassure the passenger, but you could totally solve self driving without solving this UX problem.
It's a beta so you shouldn't trust it. I'm just saying, I've driven thousands of miles and 95% of the time no issues. The other 5% I almost always know where it will have issues and manually take over before it even gets into a bad situation. A lot of these bad situations I think are easy fixes that will be resolved with future updates. I agree the object recognition is a bit jumpy, but it hasn't really affected the driving afaik, and I'm sure over time that will stabilize. It is really cool Tesla shows you exactly what the car sees. In other self-driving systems the user usually has no idea what the car is seeing. Tesla could do that as well, but this way it is much more honest. I'm looking forward to getting the latest release which is able to recognize the 3d model of unknown objects and avoid them.
>I've driven thousands of miles and 95% of the time no issues. The other 5% I almost always know where it will have issues and manually take over before it even gets into a bad situation.
This is not Full Self Driving, or remotely close to it. Having to take over for any tricky situation is antithetical to FSD's purpose. Besides the fact that "thousands of miles" is a microscopic scale of driving. That's a vacation for some people.
>A lot of these bad situations I think are easy fixes
Ah yes, easy fixes. Just have to catalog all the "bad" situations!
Really? I'd say it's 95% there if the car is fully self driving 95% of the time.
Taking over for tricky situations alerts Tesla to those situations and allows them to rank and fix the issue.
1,000's of miles might be nothing, but then multiply it by the tens of thousands of drivers using it everyday and yes Tesla basically is aware of all the tricky situations and is working to resolve them.
I really don't understand people like you who criticize companies trying to push things forward. At least they're trying, why be so unsupportive?
Are you a developer? Everyone knows the last 10% takes 90% of the time.
Though in this case I would say the remaining problems in FSD become exponentially more difficult the closer to 100%.
Why am I critical? Because Elon Musk reminds me of bad bosses and product managers in my career. They act like PT Barnum to the public and throw tantrums internally.
I also strongly dislike Musk's rejection of Kanban and Toyota Production System principles.
After all, Musk was fired as CEO by the PayPal board after Engineering mutinied against his ill-advised plan to migrate to .net and Windows.
Err the best engineers in the world work for him and want to work for him. Engineers run his companies. They’re given crazy ambitious goals and the resources to go do it. Engineers love challenges and making the impossible possible. Robots, fast cars, and rockets.
You keep saying things like that, but from your comment history you seem to be a huge Musk fan, so color me dubious. So what data do you have on 1) the best engineers and 2) their preference for Musk as boss?
Yet more tantrum like behavior with Twitter and Tesla return-to-office has definitely soured many of my colleagues recently.
That sounds like it was probably the standard Tesla display, rather than the FSD Beta display? My understanding is that it's a very different system. But yeah, the standard display has pretty laughable object persistence.
I was interested in FSD but autopilot is so shitty and unreliable it has convinced me to not buy the upgrade. If they want to sell an expensive upgrade from autopilot to FSD they need to make the autopilot flawless at its job.
Self driving cars are indeed still not there. But the right question to ask about those is who has the highest chance of getting those working first? There are a few companies working on this problem. Tesla is by far the biggest of those companies and they are throwing some serious money at the problem. It's not a safe bet to make but the odds are still pretty decent that they might get there before anyone else does. Their strategy for this seems pretty sound. But obviously it's taking longer than they hoped. A much less safe bet to make would be betting it will never happen.
As for SpaceX, their reputation for getting things done is rock solid right now. If they manage to get starship going, that will be a major leap in launching capabilities. But even just getting the star link network operational, or delivering people to the space station have been enormous accomplishments already.
The only thing that's remarkable about this announcement is how unremarkable it is relative to Elon Musk's other accomplishments. It's a radio on a satellite that connects to a phone. Doesn't sound like rocket science. I'm sure the antennas etc. are amazing but that is essentially commodity technology that he's simply launching to orbit. Doing that cheap enough that stuff like this makes sense to even consider doing is the true accomplishment.
Curious that the Apple event next month is themed "Far Out" with space imagery. I imagine this is the modems that were widely reported last year as being part of the 13/14 SOCs
I think this is very interesting and a smart move for Starlink to improve profitability options in the long term.
The rule of thumb for Apple Event invitation themes is to just assume they mean nothing—or that they’re just screwing around with people who like to read them like tea leaves.
The technology has already been demonstrated in a similar form by Lynk. The large gen2 satellites have already been built, and you can see the deployed fitted into the Starship prototype in Texas, which is planning an orbital flight test shortly (low single digit months is the desired plan, but don’t get too excited until the static fire tests have been completed on both the booster and the upperstage). They have several other Starships being built as we speak, you can watch them on livestreams on YouTube right now, and these will be the ones that start deploying the new satellites (the first Starship will not enter a permanent orbit as they want to ensure that if there’s a problem with Starship it doesn’t stay in orbit as debris… like Shuttle External Tanks, it’ll splash down in another ocean).
Garmin inReach but works on any phone and a bit more bandwidth so not restricted to emergency messages. Also free with most T-Mobile plans (inReach is currently expensive, but may drop in response if that isn't a capacity only issue).
Seems like it requires Starship to launch unless I heard it wrong? Its too big for Falcon 9. Starship is still not space ready so it seems like it really depends on that program moving forward before we see these satellites in space. Given Musk's track record, I expect probably a year extra delay before it finally is opened to users. He did mention that they will probably produce a mini version of the satellite if Starship is delayed too much. Would they need to develop this mini satellite?
I would bet money there will be some availability of the service by 2023, when they said it'd be available.
I know the meme is that Musk's track record is to delay, but Starlink has been regularly underestimated and has kept pace pretty successfully. Much more than industry insiders expected.
Why do people keep comparing to Theranos when Starlink is already being used by hundreds of thousands of people? Starlink exists. In fact, SpaceX/Starlink now operates more satellites in Low Earth Orbit than every other country and business in the world, combined. Theranos had no proven track record.
I don't know where you're getting "4000ish non starlink satellites". This seems to be the current number at the start of the year inclusive of starlink. It's growing fast!
I think you damage your own credibility more than Musk's by saying things like this. He's delivered on electric cars and reusable rockets. It's fair to say promises more than he delivers, but he delivers an awful lot.
If someone said "I'm the fastest man alive! I can run at the speed of sound!" And then they went out and ran at 30% the speed of sound I think it would make sense to say "That was an amazing try. You're not at the speed of sound, or even that close to it, but you're definitely the fastest man alive and that is amazing running." I don't think it would make sense to call this person a fraud.
The problem with the logic is that he’s commercializing the over-promises. Investors are buying his stock based on those missed promises. People are buying cars based on that too and are being let down.
Underdelivery is par for literally every human institution on earth.
The federal government underdelivers. Corporations by default underdeliver. Grad students underdeliver. Football teams underdeliver.
Every single institution on earth more ambitious than lawncare services makes lofty ambitious goals and then achieve maybe 20% of them. Musk is the same, but the difference is that his 20% are orders of magnitude more ambitious than anyone else, so 20% delivery is still world-changing.
He's actually a pretty incredible engineer who was been making important engineering decisions daily for 20 years. Decisions that make or break products and companies.
He never studied to be an engineer. He doesn't have his name on any designs or inventions within his companies. He isn't an engineer. A lot of claims have been made that he also hasn't actually coded anything that's been used.
The guy is a liar, look it up.
Go on youtube and search "elon musk debunked". There are lots of videos with sources showing how elon is a fraud.
Elon has a degree in physics. You think you can only work as an engineer if the word 'engineer' is the degree you have? Many engineers have degrees in physics among other foundational sciences - math, chemistry, etc... They make for especially good engineers.
He has a bachelor of arts in physics. He isn't an engineer. There are actual qualifications to being an engineer and he doesn't have those. He came up from his dad's unethical mining company. His code has never been used because it "was garbage".
If elon musk is an engineer, what has he engineered that has his name on it?
Please point me in the direction that shows that elon has the certifications and education to call himself an engineer.
Musk has a lot of people fooled that he's a genius, and he even lied about having asbergers, on top of everything else he has lied about.
There actually aren't any official qualifications to be an engineer unless you are talking about 'licensed engineers' of which only 20% of all engineers are. Please correct me if I'm wrong and post the official qualifications.
That being said, a physics degree is more than enough to work in most engineering positions. Elon being the leader is probably the most important part of the SpaceX and Tesla engineering teams and shares the credit with everyone else when a good product ships.
I've had people tell me that a kid building things with LEGO bricks is an engineer, so that means Musk is an engineer, too. Apologists will stretch the definition of an engineer in order to claim that Musk is an engineer, as well. It's often stretched so thin that pretty much anyone who built anything would be qualified as an engineer using the definition that also qualifies Musk as one, too.
Many engineers have degrees in physics. It's a perfectly legitimate degree to have for an engineering position. There is no stretch of the definition whatsoever.
A person whose title is 'RF Communication Systems Engineer' and has a physics degree is an engineer.
A person whose title is 'Chief Engineer' and has a physics degree is also an engineer aka Elon therefore he is an engineer.
This is ridiculous debate given Elon leads thousands of engineers daily and given his success there's no doubt that he is making good engineering decisions daily because he is a good engineer.
Software engineers aren't actually engineers because they have degrees in computer science. Especially the kids who don't go to college and start their own companies giving themselves software engineering titles. Giving yourself the title automatically disqualifies you from being an engineer no matter all the things you accomplish.
Given there is no official definition and the definition is subjective, you pretty much can't win this argument.
> I think you damage your own credibility more than Musk's by saying things like this.
Why are you making it about this commenter? They are not wrong. Unless you can answer this next question:
> He's delivered on electric cars and reusable rockets. It's fair to say promises more than he delivers, but he delivers an awful lot.
So where are the 1 million robo-taxis driving around at Level 5 FSD ready for release in 2020 then?
There is a reason why he is very clever at playing the pied piper and manipulating his customers like crash dummies to buy his FSD contraption to run each other down whilst increasing the price of a broken product.
That alone highlights the scam he is running with FSD which is a shame since that it damages his credibility and with the repeated failed claims and predictions of FSD not materializing, he is making himself a magnificent example of a great con artist with Tesla.
Ardent Musk critics look at FSD, see a scam, and conclude that Musk is a scammer and everything he does is a scam.
Ardent Musk fanboys look at the rockets, see them actually work, and conclude that Musk is legit in everything he does.
Personally I think Musk's ventures are a mix of scam and legitimate. His rockets are real, but I don't believe for a minute they'll ever send a colony to Mars. His cars are real, but anybody who bought one hoping it would make passive income as a robotaxi got burned. Musk ventures are like going to a circus; the lions are probably real, the mermaid exhibit isn't, and the "world's strongest man" is certainly strong, but not the world's strongest.
Well, my criticism is specifically and only with FSD.
There was no mention of me calling SpaceX, Tesla cars, etc a scam. You can support and purchase a Tesla but also be critical of the claims about FSD and leave out SpaceX, Starlink, etc.
I'm pretty happy with FSD beta, drives itself 95% of the time and I can easily see them figuring out the other 5%. People like you said landing rockets wasn't possible either. Where are they now?
Conveniently ignoring all the evidence of success?
I wish I could charlatan my way into thousands of satellites in space, a rocket that flies into space weekly and a car company changing the flow of the entire industry.
Sounds pretty good for a mere charlatan.
This is like the old argument about faking the moon landings. By the time you add up all the things you'd need to fake/people you'd need to buy off in order to make it bullet proof, you end up with it being actually cheaper to actually fly to the moon.
Most of us here would dream of being that effective. He's a jerk though, that's the part the world could do without and with him now firmly in the Trump camp we'll see what kind of long term misery will come from that.
I can't stand it when immigrants into a country become champions for the anti-immigration party, it's the moral equivalent of kicking the door shut behind you.
> with him now firmly in the Trump camp we'll see what kind of long term misery will come from that.
[citation needed]. I guess you missed the news of Trump completely lambasting Elon? Trump is no friend of Elon. Nor is Elon a friend of Trump. Elon is a centrist, not far right.
To add, Elon actually accepted an advisory position for Trump when he became President, but quit less than 6 months in after voicing his disagreement on leaving the Paris Agreement. [1]
That’s exactly the opposite of being in the Trump camp.
While I see the great potential in this technology, the collateral damage is the loss of places where one can truly disconnect.
I just got back from 4 days camping at a remote mountain lake with zero phone coverage, and it’s one of the most incredible ways to fully recharge and step away from the day to day treadmill of the modern world. When we loose the possibility to completely disconnect, I at least, will feel a loss of the true wilderness.
I’m not debating the usefulness of this or saying it shouldn’t happen. Having cell service everywhere will undoubtedly save lives, but it’s not without a price in loosing true wildernesses
Not to be snarky, phones do have an “off” button. There is no reason we can’t have a little disconnectedness anywhere we choose. Ie: the problem isn’t the connection, it’s the expectation that just because there is a connection there is also a need to respond.
I've been backpacking since I was in kindergarten and this comment has made me more angry than just about anything on this website.
Your phone has a power button. Use it.
You have not lost access to nature, and stop inventing a totally BS self aggrandizing narrative out of nowhere. Nature is fine. Humans are fine. We have not fallen from Eden. You can turn the phone off and I promise reality still works the same as far as strolling through the forest.
1) Camera: iPhones are about the best lightweight camera I’m willing to purchase
2) Navigation: Offline maps with details like slope angle are critical when traveling in the backcountry in winter. Yes I use paper maps too, but some things are much easier digital.
3) I don’t want to leave it in the car to get stolen.
And about airplane mode. Yes “disconnecting is a choice”, but if the internet is just the flip of a button away, I’ve found I’m not able to keep that button off.
Whenever I travel I tel myself I’m free to not reply to people on time. Especially anyone who doesn’t know the itinerary.
“Sorry I was on a plane then”. “You texted me right as I was checking into hotel- got distracted while replying and forgot to send”. “Couldn’t answer the phone - was at a restaurant and answering the phone is rude”.
Didn’t take long before the lies became true and I would forget to reply when I see the message.
You have the power to make it your reality. If the issue is replying to people, give yourself small permissions to not be punctual. If someone dies, you’ll still know immediately… but that work memo may have arrived why you were on a plane ;). If your issue is that you can’t stop scrolling through twitter or HN then i don’t know. Take more exciting vacations? Rarely when I travel would I rather be scrolling endlessly (except maybe while in line places).
> And about airplane mode. Yes “disconnecting is a choice”, but if the internet is just the flip of a button away, I’ve found I’m not able to keep that button off.
> And about airplane mode. Yes “disconnecting is a choice”, but if the internet is just the flip of a button away, I’ve found I’m not able to keep that button off.
So we should all be denied a new potentially life-saving technology, because of your own self control issues?
Also, take the SIM out (assuming you don't use an ESIM), give it to your spouse or put it at the bottom of your backpack as others suggested, or leave it at home/in your car. Emergency calls will still work.
> but if the internet is just the flip of a button away, I’ve found I’m not able to keep that button off.
That's a human problem with a human - not technical - solution. You need to find a way to resist temptation. I promise you'll be better for it in more areas than you realize.
In my experience for backpacking photography a used DSLR is definitely the best choice. You can go an entire week on a single battery if you don't use the LCD too much.
I hear you on offline maps though. Back in the day I paid the Tom Tom tax when going to Europe because $100 for offline maps was ultimately better than trying to figure out a roaming plan or local sim.
I agree with you. For me, at least, there’s something to be said about the expectation of being reachable: if you happen to be somewhere remote without any service at all, there’s simply no way for someone to reach you. If you go somewhere everyone knows has service and just turn off your phone, you are perceived to be actively ignoring people.
Others on this thread are discussing the safety aspects, and I don’t disagree that there’s some value there–I like to go out solo in the backcountry, and lead trips with groups of inexperienced people, so I own a satellite phone for that purpose. That said, only a few people have the number for it, everyone else knows that when I’m out there, I’m offline. Even if others had the number, it only sends texts, and very slowly, so it’s not a true connection to the real world, just a lifeline.
I used to feel the same way about getting on a plane. Flaky as airplane wifi can be, it’s no longer the disconnect it once was.
if you want to not have cell service while you are camping then you can just leave your phone at home. i'm sure that the benefits brought to people who are saved from being bitten by a poisonous snakes or fall down the side of a mountain will outweigh your moderate discomfort brought about by your lack of self control.
This may not actually be true. The number of people currently dying from those things due to lack of coverage is tiny, while a vastly greater number get substantial QoL improvements from the disconnect.
By that logic, why stop at not connecting the back country to the internet? We should be actively disconnecting the cities. So many more people to be saved!
Seriously, this is a social problem brought about by new technologies – and these are rarely solved by shunning technology.
“True wilderness” has not existed for a long time. Even your “remote mountain lake” area is not “true wilderness”. You probably drove or flew to the area to camp. Human influence is everywhere. Our footprint has changed the various landscapes whether for better or worse.
This will shake up a lot of things in the sattelite market.
It will take a lot of marketshare from satellite trackers like inreach.
Also living in a remote area, and being familiar with the existing tracking solutions for transport this could be a lot cheaper per asset. Also remote sensor locations. Anything low bitrate.
The bigger thing would be availability. I have an inreach and use it probably bi-weekly, however most people cannot justify the 400$ device and subscription, this would be included
It's going to be quite a while before Starlink and the other new solutions will be certified for safety of life, government/military use etc.
For example, Iridium only got GMDSS/SOLAS certified in 2020 – before that, Inmarsat was the only approved maritime (two-way) satellite safety provider for several decades.
Yeah but the US gov is VERY interested in Starlink now after seeing how effective it has been in Ukraine (and how quick to deploy). Pretty likely they're going to shift to the winning horse.
Getting regulatory approval for the spectrum is one of the hardest problems, the hardest non-technical one. T-Mobile agreeing to allocate some of their spectrum to SpaceX is something that will probably happen with other carriers later down the line. AT&T and Verizon in the US are probably going to explore similar moves if the T-Mobile plan works well (IIRC, Verizon has plans for something with Amazon Kuiper). Wouldn't be surprised to see AST SpaceMobile as a target of M&A if they have something that works.
Most telcos like to have two or more vendors and almost all large terrestrial networks are built with equipment from at least two vendors.
If space based cellular service is viable with good adoption. History says operators will want at least two providers because having only one vendor is risky.
The market seems to be big enough for multiple providers. AST will definitely be providing services to Rakuten in Japan and thus many more clients through their Symphony offerings
AST seems to be heading into a cost of capital war with Elon Musk - not a great position to be in. They have been telling investors for years that direct to cell was some secret sauce of theirs and that appears to be BS.
Accommodating the doppler effect is non-trivial, Lynk has demonstrated it with its own satellite but doesn't exactly have the orbital presence of Starlink:
How exactly does that work? Cell phones have such small antennas and put out a relatively weak (and omnidirectional) signal. I think the phone would have trouble receiving the satellite's transmissions and vice versa.
Big antennas (25 square meters?) which are highly directional go along way to improve the link budget. The main lobe is focused on a pet small area of land. My guess is they will also use the lowest bitrate modulation/coding for additional improvement to the link budget. I think LTE goes down to QPSK 1/12, which supports demodulation down to about -7 SNR? Something around there.
Massive phased array that could potentially support multiple spot coverage. You still need a bunch of satellites to ensure continuous coverage unlike GEO birds that can cover a whole continent so it will be awhile until you can get worldwide (or nearly worldwide) coverage. With a really fancy DSP box and enough bandwidth, you can account for Doppler. The speeds won't be great but it will certainly be good enough for voice and SMS.
Adding things like mesh networks, you could drop a small server rack and generator at any where in the world and create a robust cell network to cover disaster zones.
This is actually fascinating. T-Mobile doesn’t need a fiber or even cable buildout to a remote location, just power and the local clearances for a tower, they plop a Starlink antenna on the top and bam. Congestion will be a challenge but it will be way better than the current status quo.
Not if they use the regular frequencies. It'll require a pretty sensitive receiver though, no point in steering the beam if you don't know where the recipient is.
That isn't what this is, but they did mention maybe partnering for backhaul in the future (likely with similar tech and frequencies to the home internet, not the frequencies in this announcement).
This will be interesting, one advantage Verizon has had is more area coverage in many states. In Northern California I switched from Tmobile -> Verizon just for this reason. It has been much better. This is for stuff like on a random beach, at a camping spot or just driving around in hills in the North Bay. I've never noticed any difference in SF.
I thought competitors would never catch up, because tower buildout is so difficult. This has the potential to leapfrog over that. To me a reliable 2/3G experience everywhere would be superior to higher speeds in suburbs (if that's Verizon's benefit).
Also I miss the Tmobile travel experience, you just land and it works for free in many countries. I'd happily switch back.
> Also I miss the Tmobile travel experience, you just land and it works for free in many countries.
I wish T-mobile made this work both ways.
T-mobile USA customers get to chill on the network in any country, but if you’re a T-mobile NL or Germany or whatever customer, you don’t get free roaming anywhere outside of Europe.
How does the radio link budget work from the cell phone to the satellite? (I understand downlink can work with powerful tx at the satellite end but most cell phones transmitters are much lower power)
Ever since hearing about Starlink I wondered if SpaceX would eat the lunch of iridium and every other geosync satellite player. Seems like maybe it will happen.
I'm still baffled that I get better service in the middle of a lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness than on the shore. I tried T-Mobile for service, I tried Verizon, and I tried AT&T, and for whatever reason, I could run a decent speed test in the middle of many lakes, but not anywhere else.
Fresnel zones are weird. Radio waves don't always behave like line-of-sight would suggest. So out on the water, you might be farther from the tower as the crow flies, but there may be less interference, obstruction, multipath error, etc.
Also, water specifically has good propagation characteristics. (Salt water is best, iirc.) At least, I think that's true for the longer wavelengths more typically used with HAM radio. I don't know if it holds for microwave-ish frequencies like cell phones would use.
Back in the day when we had a VHF/UHF TV antenna on the side of the house I noticed the quality varied with the tide. Our house were 15 meters or so above sea level and the TV tower were on the other side of the fjord. Some channels we could only watch during high tide.
The network techs at my telco tell me that Cell towers hate trees and that is why I have no service at my home except intermittently on the second floor since I live along a well-treed river at the edge of a coverage area.
It makes some sense to me, just as antenna folks jokingly call humans bags of water trees are ... bags of water with infinity tiny appendages that are constantly in motion in the slightest breeze.
Can they do that with existing T-Mobile's issued radio licenses?
If not, I assume there will be a ~1 year delay while the whole lot goes through FCC approvals and every competing company puts in complaints and lawsuits about how it's unfair...
So what I am learning out of this is: nation states (like the US) probably can already track cell phones from LEO as the tech is there - all you need is enough sats and a very large antenna.
There's some evidence[0] that Tesla will enable messaging in their cars using Starlink. This would be a bonus for me simply because I often times lose signal in my car near my house, and I'm near my house quite a bit.
This service requires Starlink v2 satellites, which require Starship to fly to orbit (regularly). An orbital test of Starship should take place this year, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s pushed for next year. And there’s a long way from an orbital test to frequently launching Starships with Starlink v2 satellites.
How will this work in terms of spectrum usage across countries? Will every country have to allocate the same frequencies as the carriers involved in the US? Will every phone have to support particular bands used in the US? A bit confused about how they anticipate tackling the hurdles here.
I imagine that the satellites can switch frequencies within a small margin as they commonly need to do that when faced with interference. They can already shut off when traveling over countries where they don't have broadcast permission. But yes, it seems like ~2GHz is what SpaceX/T-Mobile is using here, so they'd need approval around those frequencies or more antennas on the satellites for higher frequencies which doesn't make alot of economic sense. Also the penetration will get worse the higher in frequency they go.
The only thing I am thinking of is constant tracking anywhere in the world even outside cell range. My guess is the capability will be always on even in a powered off state. Some sort of faraday cage will be needed to stop it.
How many of you are not convinced that StarLink will launch a smart phone soon? Tesla has all the related tech and StarLink has the connectivity. I guess at this point, it's just a matter of time.
You notice a pattern there? A phone should be generalized; both the phones that you mentioned were narrowed down by its parent company to their own use cases. I guess maybe that's why they FAILED.
Now give me a crypto over this and route it only through satellites (put a crypto sat up there). Remove money controls from the hands of governments. That would be a crazy revolution.
They should be identical to the typical spurious emissions standard. Airplane mode is a common way to quickly test spurious emissions before spending tens of thousands on an external lab to certify your device. I'm sure there's some sort of RF magic you could use to get range with 25uW radiated, but it sounds difficult and unnecessary when no one actually uses airplane mode in regular life.
GPS satellites broadcast data, and the GPS receivers (e.g. your phone) only receive. That means that they are completely invisible to the satellites.
You are tracked on your phone because it is connected to the Internet somehow, so it can send your location. But with only a GPS receiver (my Garmin running watch for instance), you are completely invisible.
Everybody seems to focus on the RF free comment...
I was talking about towers and such.
But I really appreciate the comments.
If you have ever been in remote areas, and intrinsically 'felt' a disconnect from the tech world (meaning not near any major RF transducers) let me know...
because I have been super remote (arctic circle) etc a bunch and also remote jungle, and I feel a difference.
Perhaps placebo mental conditioning, but just curious if anyone else felt the same effect??
I assume they were referring to the "RF free zone" claim. Which is nonsense, since RF noise existed long before humans figured out how to generate it, from storms, or even the sun itself.
I think you might have a point w.r.t. tracking, but you brought up "RF free". There's next to nowhere on earth you can go to escape radio transmissions completely, except a faraday cage or maybe a deep mine. Besides GPS, there's been shortwave radio broadcasts bouncing all over the place for a century.
No capable satellites have been launched yet. The license necessary hasn't been granted (and you can be sure a lot of other companies will object to every detail).
This is using cell towers to relay to the satellites right? There were some companies trying to do direct cell to satellite and I didn't think it was feasible.
I thought existing Starlink needed a phased array antenna to get decent signal strength. How the hell is a cell phone radio going to reach a satellite?
This is definitely what I am interested in-- how existing cell HW can be picked up by their satellites. Even at low data rates for emergency SMS, etc. (caveat, I'm not a HW or radio engineer), this seems like an incredible feat if they can get it to work.
GPS is an 'incredible feat', that's advanced magic. This is many orders of magnitude more signal strength, even without beam steering. That said, it will still require a pretty sensitive receiver, but nothing on the order of what your cell phone already contains for GPS.
It's straight up, line of sight. The biggest issue will be water in the atmosphere. Compared to your average urban canyon it probably isn't all that bad.
Consider that HAMs routinely work insane distances with extremely little power LOS is relatively easy, especially if one side is a satellite with a beefy antenna for both transmission and reception. I'm more interested in the power budget than whether or not they can close the distance and what the effect is on the cell phone's battery life.
GPS receivers in a cell phone work at or under the noise floor, which to me is advanced magic. This will be way above that.
Line of sight will be needed for upload transmit, definitely. However, with sufficient power on the satelites it should be able to transmit loud enough at lower frequencies (better penetration) so it should be receivable inside of a phone pocket or underneath something shallow.
It will be interesting to see how well it performs inside structures. Is there any info on what kind of power those satellites can output or is that classified?
If they're just going to be using this for sending texts for now, the signal to noise ratio can be really bad and still work. I suppose they could also fall back on buffering until a satellite is in an optimal position if it can't send immediately -- texts should arrive quickly, but they don't have to be quite real-time.
That's my guess anyways, there might be some other tricks involved and it's an impressive thing to do at any rate.
If you're really out in a super remote location you might be the only person in your zone, but if you're camping with a dozen friends you'll all be splitting that 2-4 megabits.
Still tremendously impressive though, if they're able to pull it off.
This is indeed very nice if it is implemented. As for T-mobile, how about they commit to ipv6 on all of their LTE networks? Here in Poland they have a network sharing agreement with Orange which means they use the same infrastructure, but when I use Orange's APN I get an ipv6 address. With T-mobile only ipv4 and they have no plans to implement ipv6.
I pay $200/month for my family to use T-Mobile. Data barely works in my backyard--and I'm one city over from their headquarters. I've called them and I've Tweeted. They energetically tell me they're taking action and... nothing happens.
That is a good suggestion, thank you. Unfortunately when I’m out of the backyard it means I am doing a ton of work that doesn’t benefit by my carrying an extra device around
We’ll see. This will be interesting to see how it plays out. Both T-Mobile and SpaceX are capable companies but they always boast these grandiose plans that technically do what they say but turn out to be lackluster.
*EDIT* excluding the space exploration division of the company. I had a brain fart for a moment and forgot about its huge successes.
I was thinking more on the satellite internet portion which this would be concentrated on with T-Mobile most likely.
Okay, excluding the space agency portion. I honestly forgot about that for some reason. Because of the nature of the post, I was focused on the satellite internet part of the company. Which has been somewhat lackluster.
How about you just give me service in middle USA. I pre-ordered in 2021, you’re currently saying I have to wait until 2023. What gives? You’re launching over oceans, Europe, South America, why not Missouri or Indiana or Kentucky?
> I pre-ordered in 2021, you’re currently saying I have to wait until 2023. What gives?
The current network in Missouri and Indiana and Kentucky is saturated [1]. This will get better as they launch the next shell of satellites, and as they upgrade the satellites to v2 (more/better antennae, laser interlink). There can only be so many subscribers per "cell" on the map.
The satellites aren't geostationary. That satellite that's currently over your head will also travel over Europe, South America and even some oceans. Would be kind of a waste not to use it there too.
Building and shopping dishes at a loss is expensive and requires money to scale, signing roaming agreements that bring in cash with no customer service work or hardware manufacturing required is comparatively easy.
It's just another way for Musk to keep Spacex from going bankrupt. This will not work well for TMobile but SpaceX will get some money to stay afloat. Another Musk's scam.