Telecommunications

China military must be able to destroy Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites if they threaten national security: scientists Not sure that this is relevant yet, but some considerations about Starlink's role in the Ukraine war...

That's pure propaganda. "Starlink threat"... is this about its possible role in enabling field command and control of the defenders in a "hypothetical" invasion of Taiwan? If so, I think there will be worse things to worry about, like a war with the United States.

Anyway, Starlink is highly resilient to ASAT disruption, if only because there are literally thousands of satellites. It's more expensive to launch an ASAT missile to blow one up than it is to launch another fifty into orbit. If China wants to initiate a Kessler Syndrome, that's its own business.

The Ukraine war has also given SpaceX a unique opportunity to harden Starlink against both jamming and hacking. If China starts pulling the same thing, it may find itself flailing. Honestly, its best weapon to defeat the system might be its ability to shut down Tesla's operations in the country. "Don't intervene or we seize your factories," is a much stronger ultimatum than, "We will blow up thousands of satellites and make low Earth orbit unusable by anyone for the next decade."

Edited by Fighteer on May 27th 2022 at 10:16:18 AM

Double-post: Elon Musk and SpaceX tweeted that Starlink is now approved for operation in The Philippines, Nigeria, and Mozambique. The latter are the first African nations to receive service, making it officially available on all continents.

Edited by Fighteer on May 27th 2022 at 2:24:24 PM

Is it operating in Antartica, or do you mean all properly inhabited continents?

That's what SpaceX said, so either someone goofed or they have some test stations operating there.

The latter is plausible, since the Antarctic research stations would certainly like to have more internet bandwidth (especially consistent bandwidth) than what they currently have having to rely on the occasional satellite that just so happens to go polar for like 45 minutes a day.

Edited by megarockman on May 29th 2022 at 9:38:25 AM

In the second chapter of Tim Dodd's latest interview with Elon Musk (link is to the timestamp), we learned a lot about the Starlink v2 satellites that are designed to be transported by Starship. They are nearly three times more massive than v1.x satellites and significantly larger, to the point where they wouldn't even fit inside a Falcon 9 fairing. Musk did not provide exact specifications about their bandwidth capabilities.

SpaceX is intimately linking Starlink v2 to Starship. Each depends on the success of the other.

Not sure if I can post this particular news video from New York regarding the pay phones taken off the streets.

Found it interesting. Have used some in Asia, but mostly with phone cards.

Honestly I'm surprised they've lasted this long.

I as well. Cell phones are everywhere now.

CleanTechnica: People Are Starting To Receive Starlink RV Terminals, & They’re Efficient

This article talks about an early user experience with Starlink's RV service, which allows you to take a portable terminal to any location within the coverage area of the satellites and receive high-speed Internet. The terminal is easy to set up, only draws about 30 watts of power, and takes about 15 minutes to establish a connection. It does require 120 V current, though, so you can't just plug it into your car battery without an inverter.

A YouTuber cited in the article was able to set up a portable solar station to power the terminal and get 100-200 Mbps down/15-20 up service even in the most remote locations.

It can also be subscribed to on a pay-as-you-go basis, so if you only travel twice a year, you only have to pay for those months during which you use the terminal.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 2nd 2022 at 2:06:29 PM

Space Intel Report: French regulator OKs SpaceX Starlink operations after getting an earful from Eutelsat, Orange, Inmarsat, CNES, Viasat

The article is paywalled but its content is being widely shared around Twitter. French regulator Arcep has approved Starlink for a ten-year operating license after the initial license was voided by France's administrative court on procedural grounds, stating that there was not an adequate public comment period.

Unsurprisingly, many of the comments came from competing satellite operators.

CNBC: FCC authorizes SpaceX to provide mobile Starlink internet service to boats, planes and trucks

By "mobile", this means "in motion". Until now, Starlink has been available in fixed locations, such as homes, and on recreational vehicles while standing still, but not while vehicles are moving. This FCC clearance paves the way for the service to be in full (non-experimental) use in the latter situation. We already know that two airlines are planning to offer Starlink internet to passengers while in the air and that there is substantial interest from ships. SpaceX is also actively using Starlink on its rockets and drone ships.

SpaceX is now offering Starlink service to maritime users. You will pay $10,000 for two "high-performance terminals" that are hardened to survive ocean conditions and $5,000 per month for service.

When asked about the price, Elon Musk said that SpaceX used to pay $150,000 per month for inferior service on its fleet. He also noted that Starlink has been in use for several months on SpaceX's drone ships that rockets land on. We've seen the results of this in much more stable video feeds from those landings.

Edit: Here's a document (PDF) from SpaceX on the transformational nature of Starlink maritime services. I should note that when Musk stated $150K as the monthly price point for the fleet, that was added up over ten vessels. The equivalent would be about $50K/month for Starlink service with 4x uplink speed, 50x downlink speed, 20x lower latency, and higher stability over VSAT (geostationary) service.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 8th 2022 at 11:35:21 AM

Drive Tesla Canada: OneWeb throws support behind SpaceX in the fight over 12GHz spectrum, also PCMag: OneWeb Backs SpaceX in Fight With Dish Over Starlink 5G Interference

Dish Network is currently fighting with SpaceX, and now OneWeb, over accusations that its 5G wireless infrastructure will cause intolerable interference in the 12 GHz spectrum that both of the latter's low Earth orbit satellite Internet constellations utilize.

Dish contests the private studies commissioned by both operators. SpaceX, in turn, has urged its customers to bombard the FCC with comments in support of its case. OneWeb has joined SpaceX in filing a protest with the FCC against Dish's claim to be able to do whatever it likes in that spectrum.

Central to the protests is the claim that the wireless base stations that Dish wants to install will have such high signal strength that they will completely drown out satellite transmissions on the same frequency band within a wide radius. If this occurs, they say, as much as seventy percent of the land area they cover will become unusable for their customers.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 15th 2022 at 9:37:48 AM

Isn't one person bumping a thread over and over against the rules of this forum?

In the case of OTC, sometimes a topic is so specialized that only a few people are interested in it. When that happens, one person may do the majority of the posting. As long as it is relevant and not bumping just for the sake of bumping, I don't see a serious issue. The alternative is that the thread drops to page 2 or 3 and dies completely.

It's not like it's disrupting an ongoing conversation. If there's something you would like to talk about with respect to telecommunications, please feel free to post.

Of course, if I'm merely talking to myself here, then maybe it's best to let the topic die.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 15th 2022 at 9:57:32 AM

SpaceNews: Eutelsat and OneWeb discussing multi-orbit merger plan

This is currently mostly speculation, as Eutelsat denies that there is an active merger agreement, but it looks like the company is in discussions with OneWeb about the possibility of wholly acquiring its business.

Eutelsat is one of the investors in OneWeb that rescued it from bankruptcy in 2019. According to the article, the company's board rejected a hostile takeover bid last September.

The goal of the merger would be to bolster Eutelsat's flagging satellite Internet business, which has been struggling in competition with SES. It currently operates geostationary satellites and would add OneWeb's LEO satellites to its portfolio.

OneWeb has been unable to complete its constellation since the breakdown of relations between Europe and Russia over the latter's invasion of Ukraine. A planned launch aboard a Soyuz rocket earlier this year was scrapped. The company has since negotiated a deal to launch satellites on SpaceX's Falcon 9, an ironic outcome since SpaceX is also a competitor with its Starlink constellation.

I want to see if the cultural side of telecommunications is germane to this thread's scope. To that end I linked a recent video from YouTuber ColdFusion about a nascent movement that rejects smartphones and returns to feature phones (also dubbed dumb phones), the benefits of such and also certain challenges.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jul 28th 2022 at 9:22:33 AM

Aren't such movements of all times? There's always some people who want to return to a simpler way of life in some shape or form.

As for me, I could do without a smartphone were it not for the fact that you really need it as an auxiliary system for other things, like 2FA. It also makes a handy chat platform, at least.

Smartphones for life for me. I can't imagine not having all my social media, streaming video, email, payment, and 2FA apps on a single device.

I’ve seen the idea IRL for kids and it’s struck me as rather sound. It’s easy enough to imagine a situation where you’d want a child (especially a young one) to have a communication devise, but not full unsupervised access to the internet.

But for adults, I can’t see the appeal, beyond maybe durability.

Cost?

I can see the appeal for adults (In part because I watched the video I linked :P). Costs (and battery life) aside. It is already mentioned that some people would want to return to a simpler time and going low tech means you would save time (to an extent), sanity and money by eschewing things such as...

• Social Media
• Gacha Games (and MTX in general)
• Online shopping in general (including stuff like Doordash)
• and advertisements

That said it is possible to have a smartphone and not use those services specifically, but it does require certain mindsets and discipline that not everyone would have (myself included as a player of both Arknights and F/GO).

There is also the privacy angle as well. Data harvesting has exponentially increased due to the former two types of apps (especially social media).

However there is the matter of QR code only services that make a device that can read them necessary, among other incentives to push smartphones, but that could be solved by either regulations (forcing companies to provide analog equivalents), doing the research at home (this is about eschewing smartphones specifically, not the internet in general) or by dumb phones adding the relevant tech to this without "getting smart" as it were (in this case by adding a QR reader and restricted internet access. Like a mobile intranet in a sense)

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jul 28th 2022 at 12:50:46 PM

SpaceX and T-Mobile have just jointly announced a new feature of Starlink. Starting with the launch of version 2 satellites next year, they will include a cellular antenna allowing mobile phone users to receive basic service almost anywhere in the world. "No more dead zones" is the promise.

The announcement video was held at SpaceX's launch site at Starbase, Texas. The critical element is that the service will work with most existing cell phones. Carriers will have to support it, of course. T-Mobile's CEO said that it will be included at no additional charge with "the most popular plans".

This will not support video streaming, gaming, or anything crazy like that, but it will allow voice calls and messaging, which can be life-saving if you're away from land-based cellular coverage.

Your phone "won't know the difference". It will search for networks and find the Starlink one available to use. There's a lot of technology that goes into accounting for the Doppler shift of a "cell tower" moving at 17,500 km/h, but they're solving it.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 25th 2022 at 8:42:36 AM

CNBC: SpaceX rolls out Starlink aviation product for satellite internet to private jets

You can get a Starlink antenna for your private jet now. It's $150,000 for the hardware needed to connect a jet to Starlink (installation is up to the customer) and service costs between $12,500 and $25,000 per month. It operates around the globe. The antenna is a flat panel that is installed on top of an aircraft and can deliver 350 Mbps data rates with as low as 20 ms latency and no cap.

There is no long-term contract required and a lifetime warranty to the hardware as long as you are subscribed. SpaceX has been working with the FAA and other regulators to qualify the hardware for this use. It is currently conducting in-flight testing in commercial aircraft, with Hawaiian Airlines and JSX as initial customers.

SpaceX is positioning Starlink Aviation as a competitor to Gogo, but analysts suggest that the latter is in no danger of immediately losing market share given the relative pricing of the services. Gogo uses a combination of cellular and satellite signals to connect business aircraft and has at least 80 percent share of the current market.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 19th 2022 at 3:20:08 PM