On Sun, 25 Sep 2022 23:52:17 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
<
jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
On Sunday, September 25, 2022 at 4:08:22 PM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Sun, 25 Sep 2022 12:27:25 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
<jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
Be that as it may, the reason that this decision was made, according to the >> >article, was that people in the rural U.S. would have to buy a $600 satellite
dish in order to get broadband service from Starlink.
That is news to me; I thought that the whole reason for Starlink having all >> >those satellites up there in low orbits, as opposed to just a few in geostationary
orbit, was to make it a lot like Iridium.
You need a dish to get enough bandwidth to offer broadband. It's a
small dish (and not even a dish, just a little antenna the size of a
sheet of paper). You need all of the satellites because you need to be
in low-Earth orbit, and it takes a lot to ensure everyplace on Earth
is covered all the time.
Ah. The dish is 8 inches or less in diameter. But it still costs $600; however,
an Iridium phone wasn't cheap either.
It certainly is true you need a lot of satellites to cover the whole Earth if >you're in low-Earth orbit, and that was also true of Iridium. But there have >been "satellite Internet" services offered that used geostationary satellites. >However, these may not have met the need that Starlink is intended to;
I think the geostationary satellites were only downlinks, to allow a high-latency
broadband connection... and the uplink was through cell phone technology.
And Starlink is intended to provide Internet to places where there is no cell >phone Internet, not merely to speed it up.
John Savard
The "dish" is a planar, phased-array antenna. The system consists of
the antenna (which is motorized and self-aligning) and a
router/control system that is at the other end of the cable.
There are at least two consumer satellite Internet services that have
been around for a long time, Hughes and Exede. Each operates a handful
of geostationary satellites. Each charges several hundred dollars for
the antenna and electronics, although they normally wrap this into a
monthly rental fee as opposed to an up front charge. Because of the
distance to the satellites, a much larger dish is required (about 24
inches) and alignment is critical, meaning they need to be
professionally installed (typically with a separate fee). The distance
and limited total bandwidth restricts service to a maximum of about 10
Mbps down and a couple up, and has very high latency pushing a
second... meaning that the services don't work well for two-way video
(like Zoom meetings) or for IP phone service. They also have very low
data caps, on the order of 10 GB per month, which means you're not
going to watch very much streamed content. For this you pay on the
order of $80 per month.
The Starlink system costs $110 per month, and delivers between 50 and
150 Mbps down and typically 10-20 Mbps up. Because the satellites are
in low-Earth orbit, the latency is only about 30 ms. There is no data
cap. I was able to switch from my $80/month telephone land line to a
$10/month IP phone service, so I'm spending less with Starlink than I
was with Exede, and getting massively better performance.
I've read technical reports that the Starlink satellites should be
accessible with cell phone like devices that carry cell phone like
prices. The smaller antenna simply translates to a lower data rate. As
the satellite constellation grows, I expect we'll see such devices
offered, both as an alternative or supplement to cell phones in
developed countries with holes in their cellular coverage, as well as
to people in developing countries that have limited or no cellular
coverage. Such devices will serve a very large market and offer a few
Mbps, which is all that most people really need most of the time.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)