[HN Gopher] Amazon has acquired Facebook's satellite internet team
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon has acquired Facebook's satellite internet team
Author : alexrustic
Score : 183 points
Date : 2021-07-14 14:13 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.engadget.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.engadget.com)
| cheche07 wrote:
| Amazon War: fight with dollaroni$$$
| miguelrochefort wrote:
| It's amazing how big these tech companies are getting:
|
| https://miguelrochefort.com/blog/tech-giant/
| yaitsyaboi wrote:
| Fascinating blog post. Satellite internet seems just as
| valuable to FB as Amzn I wonder why they'd spin it off when
| they have so many other projects that are less useful
| thenightcrawler wrote:
| This makes it sound like a trade.
| thenightcrawler wrote:
| This makes it sound like a sports team trarde.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Imagine Walmart at the height of their retail power, but they
| also control the infrastructure running a huge portion of the
| internet, several media properties, and are working on creating a
| new ISP - that's Amazon. We're heading into a world where the
| likes of Standard Oil will look like a quaint "lifestyle
| business" compared to the FAANG giants.
| skissane wrote:
| They are creating an ISP, but how successful is it going to be?
| The clear leader in satellite Internet constellations is SpaceX
| Starlink, and Kuiper compares poorly to what Starlink offers.
| SpaceX is going to have a bigger constellation. SpaceX already
| has a bigger constellation - over 1600 satellites in orbit,
| compared to zero launched yet for Kuiper. SpaceX has a huge
| advantage in having their own launch vehicles (Falcon 9, with
| Starship under development). Amazon has to rely on third party
| launch providers, and it isn't willing to choose SpaceX (SpaceX
| COO Gwynne Shotwell has said they are happy to launch
| competitors' constellations, but obviously Amazon doesn't want
| to fund its main competitor). For now it has chosen ULA, but
| ULA costs significantly more than SpaceX, and with Starship the
| gap is going to become even bigger. Amazon's other major option
| is Blue Origin - which, although owned by Bezos, is not an
| Amazon company - but while Blue Origin's launch system New
| Glenn is competitive on paper with SpaceX's (being in between
| Falcon 9 and Starship in capability), its maiden launch
| probably isn't until 2023 at the earliest. I think it is likely
| that Starship will be launching Starlink satellites before New
| Glenn is launching Kuiper.
| iooi wrote:
| Rockefeller's wealth was ~420 billion (inflation adjusted) at
| its peak. That's significantly more than Bezos and Gates
| combined. So no, Standard Oil won't look like a lifestyle
| business compared to FAANG giants. You can make a point without
| using hyperbole.
|
| > also control the infrastructure running a huge portion of the
| internet
|
| AWS has less market share than Microsoft. The Cloud is a pretty
| competitive space.
|
| > are working on creating a new ISP
|
| This is great, look what Google Fiber did to fiber availability
| in the US. More competition is great in this space.
|
| I find it ironic that you're complaining about FAANGs in the
| context of ISPs, who control literal monopolies in several
| regions.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| "Rockefeller's wealth was ~420 billion (inflation adjusted)
| at its peak."
|
| Dumb question. Why do people use inflation? Like Rockefeller
| would take the cash and put in a %2.5 account for 100 years?
| He probably would have put it in an investment at minimum
| gaining %7-10 account for 100 years - giving him multiple
| trillions.
| gopalv wrote:
| > Why do people use inflation?
|
| Because it is very hard to think about the currency values
| in terms of purchasing power.
|
| Inflation is the lowest metric in that count, but reflects
| a somewhat uniform drop in purchasing power (per dollar)
| across the whole market.
|
| My friend's mom told me her mortgage for a Bay Area house
| was 75$ a month, the two cars parked in front were worth
| more than a 2 bed house when she got the cars.
|
| So it was much cheaper to buy a house, but much more
| expensive to get a car and I can't even have a ballpark
| figure for what a gigabyte of computer memory would have
| cost in 1971.
|
| So, inflation adjustment is at best a rough proxy for
| purchasing power at current costs.
| lhball wrote:
| Even if you factor in investment returns you're not getting
| the full picture IMO unless you take into account price
| increases over time as well.
|
| A common refrain is that Carnegie Hall only cost $1M
| ($29,581,868.13 when adjusted for inflation) to build, so
| why do we still credit its founder with their name?
| Shouldn't we rename it in honor of someone who's
| contributed more to the Hall?
|
| What this doesn't take into account is what it would cost
| to _build_ a new Carnegie Hall today. Labor is far more
| expensive (highest $/hr ever in 2019 if I'm not mistaken
| [1]) today and so are building materials [2].
|
| So it's true he'd see compounding returns from investing,
| but to do what they did back then would cost significantly
| more today. IE, their dollars took them further back then.
|
| Also, worth noting Rockefeller donated 6% of his salary to
| charity every pay check every single year of his life, not
| just when he could "afford" it [3]. So if you take into
| account the _missed_ compound returns of those charitable
| contributions, you can start to get a sense for just
| otherworldly their charitable efforts were.
|
| Not trying to say these guys were angels. And yet, as rich
| as they were, I think too often that overshadows the
| gargantuan contributions to charity they made.
|
| [1](https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2018/02/are-wages-
| increasing...) [2](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-
| states/consumer-price-in...) [3](https://www.philanthropyro
| undtable.org/almanac/people/hall-o...)
| nicoburns wrote:
| > And yet, as rich as they were, I think too often that
| overshadows the gargantuan contributions to charity they
| made.
|
| Is it really such a great thing to give away money you
| don't need. IMO tha should be the absolute minimum
| baseline expectation for someone who controls so much
| wealth.
| canadianwriter wrote:
| Because it helps the average person get a sense of scale -
| instead of saying '100 million, but that's 5 times ore
| than....' you just do the inflated number and people get a
| better sense of scale.
| jhgb wrote:
| Presumably to compare purchasing power. Your investment
| idea actually distorts the comparison since it involves
| additional labor and wealth creation.
| ysavir wrote:
| I don't know why people are downvoting this. I want to say
| thank you for taking the time and asking a question, and
| for actively making an effort to understand something
| better. I hope the downvotes don't dissuade you (or anyone
| else) from asking questions in the future.
| naveen99 wrote:
| I prefer fraction of total global wealth as the units. it's
| hard to get good estimates though.
| majormajor wrote:
| It's because the question isn't "how much money would
| Rockefeller have now if he'd time traveled while his
| investments sat there," it's "how much did he have relative
| to today's wealthy" and the easiest comparison point we
| have there is to inflation-adjust and compare that to our
| existing mental feeling for "how rich is Bezos."
| brtkdotse wrote:
| Because the point is to give an apples-to-apples comparison
| of the value represented. It's not Rockefeller's fortune
| and it's growth that's interesting but rather how many Big
| Macs his fortune could buy in 1921 vs how much that many
| Big Macs would cost in 2021.
| cma wrote:
| But they were comparing Amazon to STD oil, not Bezos
| (diluted in divorce) to Rockefeller. Rockefeller owned a
| full third, Bezos 11%, Gates 1% (but similar foundation
| setup to Rockefeller maybe, and at one point was 49% or
| something, but of a much smaller MS than today).
| phscguy wrote:
| Well actually, Standard Oil peak market cap was about $1
| trillion. Rockefeller owned about 25% of this. The rest of
| Rockefeller's wealth came from the rise in share values post-
| split. Standard Oil at it's peak actually had lower market
| cap than any of Apple(2.5T), Google(1.7T), Amazon(1.9T),
| Microsoft(2.1T) have today, and is about on par with Facebook
| (1T).
|
| FAANG is huge and market caps already greatly exceed that of
| the old-school monopolies.
| tomarr wrote:
| It is fair to say this is quite distorted by the impact of
| very low interest rates on expectations of future profits
| though, which is a key component in the share price.
| flutas wrote:
| >AWS has less market share than Microsoft. The Cloud is a
| pretty competitive space.
|
| They didn't say a "majority" though, they just said a huge
| portion.
|
| In the context of the internet and how many devices are out
| there, I think he would absolutely be right in saying "a huge
| portion."
| vxNsr wrote:
| > _AWS has less market share than Microsoft. The Cloud is a
| pretty competitive space._
|
| According to gartner[0] AWS has over double Azure's market
| share by revenue.
|
| What metric are you using for your stat?
|
| [0] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-
| releases/2021-06-2...
| amelius wrote:
| This is basic infrastructure/utility and should be run by the
| government (with companies as contractors).
| rpmisms wrote:
| Yes. It should absolutely become less agile, over-regulated,
| more expensive, and less convenient.
| amelius wrote:
| Don't forget that government institutions invented the
| internet, then companies messed it up.
| dominojab wrote:
| i disagree , government is prone to corruption when it
| envolves contractors, also a private company has way more
| interest in running things as efficiently as possible , that
| being said there should be very nicely tailored rules and
| regulations in which companies participate or at least make
| suggestions.
| k__ wrote:
| Doesn't Biden plan to go big on anti trust laws?
|
| Some stuff I read sounded rather bleak for the likes of FAANG.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Politicians' plans and politicians' accomplishments tend to
| be vastly different things.
| dan_quixote wrote:
| We're starting to get some political alignment on anti-
| trust against Amazon at least. Though one party seems
| motivated by worker/consumer right, the other by
| retaliation for Bezos' ownership of WaPo.
| paxys wrote:
| Considering Bezos is hardly involved with Amazon anymore
| it'll be hard to tie WaPo into its antitrust case.
| dave5104 wrote:
| Do they need to tie WaPo into whatever antitrust may hit
| Amazon? As long as it's hurting Jeff Bezos, I'm sure some
| will be happy about it.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I fully expect Amazon's lobbying arms to be able to
| exploit that sort of ideological split.
| fallingknife wrote:
| It would be very easy for Bezos to divest WaPo or tilt
| its coverage more conservative to buy off an anti-trust
| issue.
| [deleted]
| Pokepokalypse wrote:
| lol.
|
| So; how did antitrust work out for Bell? Not too terribly
| bad, in the long run. (Though there were huge benefits for us
| consumers. . . )
| majormajor wrote:
| The various Standard Oil split results had some nice
| successes, too.
|
| Honestly I'm not sure of the main corporate opposition to
| anti-trust other than ego and/or laziness. It'll force the
| resulting business to get even better. If you got your
| position by being the best, you can still be the best in
| the new world.
| adrr wrote:
| Walmart sells a lot more stuff than Amazon. People over
| estimate the size of Amazon and total retail sales.
| yaitsyaboi wrote:
| Amazon has higher retail sales than Walmart?
| neolog wrote:
| That question mark is confusing
| TchoBeer wrote:
| I'm not confused by it, though I'm a native English
| speaker and live in an English speaking country and spend
| most of my internet time on English speaking internet, so
| maybe that's why
| [deleted]
| pastrami_panda wrote:
| If you have to ask what it symbolizes - it doesn't
| thedogeye wrote:
| Yes, Amazon does more retail sales than Walmart. Their
| "revenue" is only 15% on all third party sales, which are
| now more than half of total sales on the platform. They
| don't report on total sales on the platform on purpose to
| avoid drawing attention to the fact that they are bigger
| than Walmart.
| dmoy wrote:
| I think amazon may have higher total sales on its platform,
| but like 60% of their sales are actually sold by other
| marketplace sellers, not Amazon.
|
| Walmart meanwhile does also have a marketplace, but I think
| still sells the overwhelming majority of their stuff direct
| in their physical stores.
|
| Remember Walmart has revenue of like 600 billion a year or
| something crazy.
| adrr wrote:
| Shopify for comparison is almost half the size of Amazon
| Marketplace but on trajectory to match it in the next two
| years.
| jjeaff wrote:
| But that 15% that amazon takes (not counting the extra
| cut they take for Fulfilled by Amazon items) is larger
| than Walmart's average markup. So that isn't really an
| argument against their size.
| pinewurst wrote:
| Can you imagine working at FB, which despite its considerable
| ethical failings, is a decent employer from what I've seen and
| suddenly being told you're going to Amazon and need to start
| memorizing The Principles?
| Kiro wrote:
| Landing a job at either Facebook or Amazon is an unachievable
| dream for most people so I have a hard time to feel sorry for
| anyone here. In their position they can get any job they want.
| Xeronate wrote:
| What makes it unachievable? The process is very
| straightforward. Every friend of mine that wanted to work at
| FAANG has been able to and you really just need to spend a
| couple weeks/months practicing.
| josephh wrote:
| visa issue.
| vxNsr wrote:
| One of the more "hn" comments I've seen lately. Assuming
| every person in the world is an ivy league graduate, with a
| high IQ, and A+ coding talent is a little bit out of touch
| with reality.
| Xeronate wrote:
| I just don't think those are the requirements to get a
| job at FAANG. I went to a mid sized public school in the
| midwest that isn't even in the top 100 US schools, my IQ
| is definitely average, and I seriously didn't understand
| sorting algorithms when I first saw them in my intro to
| programming class. With time and practice anything is
| possible.
|
| And I want to echo a point filoleg made. You don't need
| to be the top 1%. It's not like Ivy League school
| acceptance where they are artificially throwing people
| out. FAANG is dying to hire. My team has been trying to
| hire multiple people for months and we have gotten
| exactly 0. Every hiring manager goes into interviews
| wanting to say yes and the requirements are extremely
| clear and manageable for anyone willing to put in the
| time.
| vxNsr wrote:
| My understanding is that for any given age the average IQ
| is 100. Are you seriously suggesting that you would score
| 100 on an IQ test? I highly doubt that considering that
| your manager is so motivated to hire but simply can't.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| I am an architect at a "prestigious" midwest consulting
| firm without a formal IT background. It would take me 6
| months of prep to pass a FAANG interview, and that's from a
| starting point of knowing virtually everything I don't
| know.
|
| AND I am only talking about the algorithm and behavioral
| parts of the interview and working on the assumption that I
| will pass any general questions on system design, ML, etc.
|
| Other than the CS degree, you are also make a 130+ IQ
| assumption here.
| Xeronate wrote:
| Even if it took 6 months, is that such a big deal for
| what is probably a large pay raise and potentially the
| opportunity to work on cooler and more impactful things
| with better coworkers? And for the record the idea that
| 130+ IQ is necessary is ridiculous. I can assure you I'm
| well below that.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| Point by point:
|
| 1. IQ is going to be in the 120-130 range for MIT and
| other FAANG target schools
| (https://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/occupations.aspx and
| factor in the GPA necessary and those correlations). If
| you are NOT from those schools, you are less competitive
| and have more to catch up on. Whatever you say, either
| you had a lot of study free time or your IQ is higher
| than you think, as IQ translates directly to learning
| speed, ESPECIALLAYA on computer-related tasks.
|
| 2. Big deal. For a young student out of school? No, it's
| the rational choice, though a lot of people out of
| school/college NEED to work to keep the bills paid. For
| older people - dedicating a good 3-4 hours a day is going
| to lead them to underperform at work (at least it would
| for me), so it's kind of a big risk.
|
| The pay increase is also "debatable", arguments like COL,
| vesting, decrease in quality of life due to commute,
| relatively-high (by non-FAANG) standards salary, taxes,
| etc come up. And that's without mentioning potential
| kids.
| void_mint wrote:
| "In my bubble it has been achievable so it must be
| achievable for everyone"
|
| There is a reason that most people do not work at FAANG.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| The process is straightforward to become an Olympian too,
| you still don't see people doing it every day. You can run
| every damn day if you want, but I'll bet dollars it would
| still be difficult to run a sub 3:00 marathon for most
| people.
|
| Working at FAANG is easily regarded as one of the higher
| end jobs in the SWE world (from comp and prestige) and does
| generally require you to be in the top % of people who know
| how to code. That much is fairly indisputable so
| unachievable is a good way to put it for most folks (even
| if they are into programming already)
| iooi wrote:
| I think this is half the problem when people interview at
| FAANGs -- they think it's like preparing for olympics and
| you truly have to be in the top 1%.
|
| It's really not. There's thousands and thousands of
| engineers, from mediocre to truly great. With the right
| preparation, a lot of it just comes down to getting lucky
| with who interviews, how they're feeling that day, etc --
| luck.
|
| You might find this interesting:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8RxkpUvxK0
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| I mean, you can say the SAME thing about getting into an
| Ivy League school. Your application and skillset is
| likely similar to THOUSANDs and yet still, you have to
| prepare like it is the Olympics AND have luck. No one
| lucks their way into FAANG, you still have to answer the
| questions well and contrary to much of the HN crowd,
| these are not easy questions for most folks EVEN after
| studying...
|
| You can't get in without both luck and preparation. That
| part I won't deny, but most exclusive things in life
| involve that bit of luck since everyone starts to hit the
| "threshold" of qualifications pretty fast
| filoleg wrote:
| >I mean, you can say the SAME thing about getting into an
| Ivy League school.
|
| No, you cannot say the same thing about Ivy League
| admissions, at least not at the current point in time.
| Ivy League has a massive supply of qualified candidates
| to fill the demand (aka the fixed number of seats they
| have) many many times over. Tech companies don't have
| that luxury. They have a lot of candidate supply, but the
| "qualified" candidate supply is much more difficult to
| come by.
|
| Ivy League admission officers admitted multiple times in
| public interviews and public statements that there are a
| lot of people that would qualify and succeed at those
| schools just fine, but the schools have very limited
| numbers of seats, so they have to have the bar be set
| higher and higher in order to accommodate truly the
| "best" (based on whatever metrics they use to determine
| the best).
|
| With FAANG? They are desperate to hire good engineers. As
| someone who interviewed candidates at one of them, for
| every single interview I went with the mindset that I
| want to hire that person, as long as they demonstrate
| they are competent enough to do the job. There is no such
| thing as "limited" number of spots (as it is with Ivy
| League admissions). If every single candidate we
| interview is qualified, we will hire every single one of
| them, we won't be artificially raising the bar just to
| accommodate a specific X number of people because we
| cannot fit more. We can. Of course, my specific team
| cannot hire 50 people, but if all 50 candidates are
| competent, we will try to set them up with one of our
| sister teams or any other team in the company that
| desperately needs engineers, and there are tons of those
| teams.
|
| The real problem is that a lot of those people we
| interview tend to not even be able to do fizzbuzz, and I
| am not exaggerating. I used to think that people said
| that statement as a joke back then, but after
| interviewing enough candidates, I realized that they
| weren't kidding.
|
| TL;DR: they aren't similar, because Ivy League has a
| fixed number of seats available, and even if every
| candidate is qualified, they can only accommodate a
| predetermined number of them, so they have to
| artificially raise the cutoff metrics. For every
| candidate my team interviews, we can easily hire every
| single one of them if they are competent, without
| artificially raising the bar just to have a fixed number
| of hires.
| void_mint wrote:
| > they think it's like preparing for olympics and you
| truly have to be in the top 1%.
|
| You have to be capable and interested in passing a FAANG
| interview. Presumably those that failed the FAANG
| interview process are either incapable or uninterested.
| My money says it's mostly the former.
|
| You have to pass-as what FAANG deems as the top 1%. Most
| people don't.
| sparrc wrote:
| perhaps they can dry their tears with hundred-dollar bills /s
| birdyrooster wrote:
| This is America and if you are upper or middle casted, then
| Amazon will give you better accommodations and compensation.
| It's comfy, don't worry about those people.
| iooi wrote:
| Is this a reference to Amazon being disproportionately
| Indian?
| birdyrooster wrote:
| America has a caste system too but we call it "class"
| typically to make it seem more meritocratic. In
| conversation we typically focus on the exceptional cases of
| economic mobility rather than the rule. I did use caste on
| purpose to draw the parallel to India, a place where
| Britain famously used the caste system to rule.
| rpmisms wrote:
| That's a little bit intellectually dishonest. Class
| mobility does exist, albeit more rarely than it should,
| and unlike places with enforced social systems, you can't
| tell someone's social class by their name or clothes.
|
| Class is also a generalization: I'm a gainfully employed
| SWE, and I (by choice) live in a neighborhood where I
| hear gunshots nightly. I don't own any new clothing, my
| nicest pair of shoes are my work boots, and my friends
| are almost entirely blue-collar people. I could easily
| afford to live like an upper-middle-class yuppie, but I
| border on lower class at first glance.
|
| Is class entirely economic, or is there a social aspect?
| MisterPea wrote:
| amazon subsidiaries still operate with their previous culture
| to some degree. Twitch is much different than the rest of
| amazon. However, since they will be merging into an existing
| org not sure if their culture will remain
| walrus01 wrote:
| I'm sure Amazon Corp HQ is taking a boiled frog approach to
| absorbing things like this.
| chrislan815 wrote:
| I heard they are still very much different from amazon after
| the merge which is good to hear. However, it was told by a
| hiring manager :) So it's not from my personal experience.
| TheHydroImpulse wrote:
| still very different but amazon has its influences in many
| parts of the company now.
| tmccrary55 wrote:
| It's going to be at least a year before the incoming FB
| team will be taking their vows.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I've worked at Amazon and other FANG companies and I honestly
| miss amazon's leadership principles. They're really just
| assigning a phrase to a Good Idea (TM).
| kindall wrote:
| The leadership principles are an important part of Amazon's
| solution to the problem of getting hundreds of thousands of
| employees pulling in the same general direction. They are
| easy to get people to sign on to because they are, for the
| most part, obviously good ideas succinctly stated. People at
| Amazon actually use them to make decisions daily.
|
| Other companies don't propagate their corporate culture so
| explicitly, so it seems a little weird and cultish. But if
| you're a big company doing things the same way other big
| companies do them, you're going to get the same results that
| other big companies get. Amazon wants to get better results
| than other big companies.
|
| When I started at Amazon, I felt like 14 was simply too many.
| I tried to do a Carlin-style winnowing, but darned if I could
| get the number below twelve without starting to lose things
| that the company obviously thinks are important. (They
| recently added two more, by the way.)
|
| As a bonus, after a stint at Amazon, your familiarity with
| their leadership principles can make you very desirable to
| other companies. I know a number of people who were
| individual contributors at Amazon and were snagged by
| Microsoft for leadership positions, either team leads or
| product managers.
| teachrdan wrote:
| I would have trouble with the blatant hypocrisy. To take an
| example from just yesterday, Amazon has internal documents
| that instruct managers to hide from employees when they're on
| a PIP. How can you reconcile that with "Strive to be Earth's
| Best Employer"?
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-tells-
| bo...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27786009
| majormajor wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/9/22570579/amazon-
| performanc...
|
| It seems like this is a sorta "pre-PIP"?
|
| > If Amazon employees don't improve while unknowingly in
| the Focus program, they are then placed into the "Pivot"
| program, according to previous reporting from Business
| Insider. Employees told Business Insider that if they were
| placed in Pivot, they were either offered a severance
| package or given a chance to be put on a performance
| improvement plan.
|
| So "Focus" is more a manager-focused thing and then if the
| manager isn't able to turn things around, out comes the
| real PIP, is my impression.
|
| Honestly, I've had to put someone on a PIP before, and more
| support and training on what to do _before_ it got that bad
| would 've been very appreciated.
|
| I think the manager needs to be transparent about "you need
| to do better" but not about internal management practices
| necessarily at that point.
| tdowns wrote:
| That LP didn't exist until after the article was published.
| There is some hope that it could be leveraged to remove
| that kind of guidance from mid-level leaders.
| b3kart wrote:
| There are probably better examples you could've used.
| They've literally added "Strive to be Earth's Best
| Employer" to the list of principles like yesterday. At the
| very least they seem to have recognized the problem,
| shouldn't we give them an opportunity to actually try to
| fix it?
| imwillofficial wrote:
| "Strive to be earth's best employer" isn't a leadership
| principle. - oh shit, it is now! My bad!
|
| And "instruct managers to hide from employees when they're
| on a PIP"
|
| This is not as clear cut. The document cited by Seattle
| times clearly states to not go into details of the Focus
| application, and instead go into how they can improve.
|
| A quote: "Do not discuss Focus with employees. Instead,
| tell the employee that their performance is not meeting
| expectations, the specific areas where they need to
| improve, and offer feedback and support to help them
| improve."
| teachrdan wrote:
| "Do not discuss Focus with employees." I don't know how
| much more direct this could possibly be. The _only_ time
| the policy allows managers to tell employees they 're on
| a PIP is if the employee asks directly. That's literally
| hiding the truth as much as they possibly can without
| actually lying.
| kindall wrote:
| If your manager is telling you that your performance is
| lacking and that you need to improve in specific areas,
| how is that really any different from being told you are
| on a PIP, _and_ the rest of that? That is, what would
| you, as an employee, do differently if you were told
| specifically that you had been placed on a formal PIP,
| rather than just being told how you needed to improve?
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| > what would you, as an employee, do differently
|
| Start looking for another job _before_ I get fired. Which
| I assume is about 10x easier than doing so after the
| fact.
| pinewurst wrote:
| The Principles are merely words used as tools - often for
| selfish or even evil purposes - not some sort of adamantine
| moral backbone. The idea that they exist somehow gives a
| higher sanction to the acts performed ostensibly in their
| name.
| herbst wrote:
| Is there any reason we need several private companies doing their
| own thing instead of making this a world wide project where every
| company can buy in?
|
| I mean sure nobody would have done anything like that without
| Starlink. But it's like every mobile provider would setup their
| own antennas in a way.
| kube-system wrote:
| In a broader sense, I think that redundant competing efforts to
| accomplish the same task is a much more reliable path to
| success.
| toast0 wrote:
| It might be a more efficient network if it were a single
| system.
|
| However, having the option to switch networks increases the
| efficiency of administration, customer service, etc.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Competition is the best way to produce desired outcomes.
| herbst wrote:
| While this is true in a way it is to simple. Ex. Health care,
| heavily regulated in Europe and hell we are glad it is if the
| free market would be something like in the U.S. Or credit
| card fees, there is to little competition in the free market
| we (Europeans) are glad that the fees are somewhat regulated
| and therefore much lower. And honestly our local internet and
| mobile market is not bad either, sure a more open market
| could lower the prices but private companies would have no
| interest bringing fiber or proper 4g or 5g in regions with
| only a handful of people, but there is. Germany for example
| has bad internet coverage and they given away most of the
| responsibility to private companies
|
| TL:Dr it's not black and white
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Yea, competition doesn't work when there are market
| failures. There is no competition is the us healthcare
| market because pricing is opaque and consumers have very
| limited information compared to doctors. Natural monopolies
| like wired internet can't have competition either.
|
| I don't see how satellite internet falls victim to such
| egregious market failures.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| Various reasons - capitalism, the degraded ability of
| bureaucracies to manage things compared to agile private
| enterprises as technology improves, conflicts of interest
| between nation states, and so forth. Government is not a great
| mechanism to drive innovation by itself, especially cooperative
| multi-state efforts. Things are better managed by governments
| setting good rules in place and private sector entities doing
| whatever they can to profit within the bounds of those rules.
| paxys wrote:
| You are getting downvoted but this is 100% true. Imagine if
| every maps provider or weather app had to launch their own
| satellites to offer basic functionality. A large collective
| investment into core infrastructure benefits everyone. Not
| every aspect of life needs to be a privatized free for all.
| herbst wrote:
| Yeah. I too totally realize that this is simply how
| competition works and prolly even leads to a more competitive
| and better market. Our mobile market is a expensive mess
| because of the regulation.
|
| I understand all of that. I guess it's just wishful thinking
| that this could be one thing where the world gets their shit
| together.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| This worked for GPS [0] because it was conceived as a purely
| military project (and still is mostly). Once established, it
| was opened up to civilian and commercial uses. But even so,
| other countries and supra-national organizations decided they
| needed their own navigation satellite systems, and now we have
| Galileo [1] and Beidou [2].
|
| Maybe if the military had done this first, a similar path would
| follow (not likely though). As it is, the military is planning
| their own massive LEO satellite system [3].
|
| [0]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System
| [1].
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation)
| [2]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeiDou [3].
| https://www.sda.mil/us-military-places-a-bet-on-leo-for-spac...
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Also GLONASS (Sovient/Russian) and a couple of regional
| systems from India and Japan.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_navigation
| exdsq wrote:
| > Amazon aims to have a 3,236-satellite constellation in orbit by
| 2029
|
| Assuming Starlink is similar, are there any risks of
| "imprisonment" on Earth having ~8k low-orbit satellites flying
| around? In that they gravely affect efforts to fly Humans to the
| Moon/Mars?
| ncallaway wrote:
| I haven't looked at the Amazon plans, but the risks of
| something like Kessler syndrome "trapping" us on earth from
| Starlink are low.
|
| The main reason is that the Starlink satellites fly in a very
| low altitude, such that even if they lose all control, they
| will deorbit in a few years. Which means, if something went
| horrifically wrong, the Starlink system debris would clear
| itself within a short period of time.
|
| It looks like the Amazon Project Kuiper satellites will be
| slightly higher up, but still have a natural orbital decay time
| of between 5-7 years. https://spacenews.com/amazon-lays-out-
| constellation-service-...
|
| So, the long term risks from these kinds of low-orbit mega
| constellations is fairly low. If anything goes catastrophically
| wrong we wait a decade and it's gone.
|
| I think personally, the longer term risks we should be wary of
| are medium altitude and geostationary orbits that won't
| naturally clear themselves for decades or centuries if
| something goes wrong.
| T-A wrote:
| Suppose there were only 8000 cars in the world, evenly spread
| all over it (I'm being generous here, since 2/3 of Earth is
| covered by water). How likely would you be to ever see one?
| kamkazemoose wrote:
| The starlink satellites are traveling a little bit faster
| than your average car though. They complete an orbit about
| every 100 minutes. So your 8000 satalites are covering much
| more ground than the same 8000 cars.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| At any given moment the distribution is similar, and we
| track and regulate the orbits, leaving swathes of space
| open. Everything about the satellites is engineered,
| including their orbits. Other countries have less stringent
| standards, resulting in more or less random de-orbits that
| can drop space junk anywhere in their path, but the US has
| a lot of forethought put into orbital standards.
|
| Space junk is an issue, but it's not anywhere near crisis
| level yet.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Atmospheric drag brings down anything below 800km:
|
| https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Space_Debris/About_space...
|
| Starlink operates at 550km altitude:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Launches
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| The planned Starlink constellation is actually quite a bit
| bigger, but even if there's 20k satellites whizzing around it's
| not a huge problem.
|
| I think it's sometimes hard to reason about the vastness of
| space, but imagine if the planet Earth had exactly 20,000 cars
| on it's surface. Even if you crossed the street without
| looking, your odds of getting hit by a car would be incredibly
| low. And ofc in reality low earth orbit is bigger than the
| surface of the earth AND we know where every obstacle is
| located. If humanity ever gets to the point where we decide
| it's too crowded, most of these constellations are low enough
| that they'd naturally deorbit in less than a decade.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely,
| mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long
| way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts
| to space. - Douglas Adams
| runnerup wrote:
| Probably not. Even 500,000 sattelites would still leave more
| than enough space between them for whatever you want. The risk
| would be if many of them blew up or something, creating
| billions of tiny pieces of debris. In that scenario, we might
| just wait 5 years and then most of the debris will have burned
| up in the atmosphere.
|
| SpaceX satellites are around 550km attitude. If someone puts
| satellites higher than that, collision debris will last longer,
| the satellites' fuel will last longer so the satellites won't
| have to be replaced as often, but network latencies will be
| higher. Seems like 500-600km is the optimal zone for the
| primary constellations of internet satellites.
|
| Video showing decay of debris vs. its altitude. The "X" shape
| is because each debris is plotted twice, once at it's perigee
| and again at its apogee (describing the ellipse of the orbit as
| they generally are not perfectly circular)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQT5aMa_7iI
|
| Higher altitude satellites would be a bigger concern but these
| aren't a big deal.
| bagels wrote:
| There are already approximately 250,000 objects in low earth
| orbit 2cm and up. The risk from these constellations isn't from
| the satellites themselves directly, but from Kessler syndrome
| if they start getting smashed by untracked debris.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Starlink is at low enough orbits that even if the entire
| constellation spontaneously exploded all the debris would
| deorbit within ~5 years
| kiba wrote:
| You quoted that Amazon planned to have 3,236 satellites.
|
| Yet, SpaceX already launched 1730 satellites, 1630 of which are
| active, with a planned constellation of 12,000 satellites.[1]
|
| Amazon's Kuiper Systems hadn't even launched yet, and they're
| going with ULA for their first launch, which AFAIK, is much
| more expensive than SpaceX, with only 9 satellites as opposed
| to 60 satellites at a time.[2]
|
| [1] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink
|
| [2] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_Systems
| SEJeff wrote:
| And if/when SpaceX finishes Starship plus Superheavy, SpaceX
| will be launching up to 400 satellites per launch.
|
| Also, they've submitted authorization for up to 42,000 total
| starlink satellites: https://spacenews.com/spacex-submits-
| paperwork-for-30000-mor...
| tigershark wrote:
| And they applied for permission to launch additional 30k
| satellites, bringing the total to 42k. Amazon Kuiper is a toy
| by comparison..
| gamegoblin wrote:
| On most days there are up to 20,000 airplanes (which are
| 100-1000x larger than satellites) in the sky. And the
| satellites, being at 100x higher altitude, are 100x more spread
| out than the airplanes.
|
| So just from a "unusable space" point of view, it's on the
| order of 10000x less of a problem than airplanes. The caveats
| here are the satellites are moving much, much faster than
| airplanes, and they stay in the sky much, much longer.
|
| But it's not really a huge problem unless stuff goes wrong and
| you get Kessler Syndrome. This is more of a risk with the
| higher constellations like Amazon's and OneWeb's than it is
| with SpaceX Starlink (which is in a low enough orbit to de-
| orbit all debris within a few years, rather than centuries).
| kmonsen wrote:
| But we know where all the planes are, and actively monitor
| and move them around to avoid collisions. If there are a
| sufficient large number of satellites would there not be some
| risk of accidental collision with spacecraft taking off?
| dehrmann wrote:
| > But we know where all the planes are
|
| We really don't. We mostly know for commercial flights, but
| not so much for general aviation. What aviation does is
| have zones around airports with restricted airspace that
| _is_ well-controlled.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > But we know where all the planes are, and actively
| monitor and move them around to avoid collisions.
|
| This is also true for satellites.
| EveYoung wrote:
| A similar monitoring applies to satellites as well. We're
| not launching spacecrafts and just hope that everything
| goes well.
| gvb wrote:
| We know where all the satellites are and they are actively
| tracked by both governments and private citizens.
|
| Every satellite is in a very deterministic orbit which
| requires energy to change (enormous amounts of energy for a
| significant change) so they don't change their orbit
| significantly nor often.
|
| Ref: https://sos.noaa.gov/catalog/datasets/space-trash-and-
| satell...
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > But we know where all the planes are, and actively
| monitor and move them around to avoid collisions.
|
| Do you think they don't know where their satellites are?
| popz41 wrote:
| NASA & the ESA actively monitors all satellites and
| actually maintains a database of every little piece of
| space debris they find (payload fairings, failed
| satellites, etc). They determine the orbit and track it
| until it falls back to earth.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| This is a fun site for tracking stuff in space:
|
| http://stuffin.space/
| jsnell wrote:
| > And the satellites, being at 100x higher altitude, are 100x
| more spread out than the airplanes.
|
| This doesn't feel right. Shouldn't the right frame of
| reference be the distance to the center of the earth, not the
| sea level? Then it is not a 100x difference, but more like a
| 10% one.
| gamegoblin wrote:
| If we were also launching from the center of the earth I
| would agree, but as we are launching from sea level, I
| think the general idea still holds.
|
| Thought experiment:
|
| You are standing in a field.
|
| There is a 10x10 meter plate hovering 10 meters above you.
| There is a 1 square meter target on it. You fire a gun
| upwards at a random location on the plate. There is a 1 in
| 100 probability you hit the target.
|
| Now imagine there is a 20x20 meter plate hovering 20 meters
| above you. It is perfectly occluded by the original 10x10
| meter plate. It also has a 1 square meter target on it.
| When you fire at a random location on the original plate,
| the bullet passes through it and continues on to the higher
| plate. What is the probability you hit the target on the
| higher plate? I believe it is 1 in 400.
|
| From this thought experiment it seems that altitude from
| launch point is what counts.
| jsnell wrote:
| Now expand your thought experiment to 4 people, standing
| in a 10 meter square from each other. They each have
| their own 10x10 and 20x20 plates, and their own targets.
|
| Clearly the 10x10 plates are lining up (modulo
| curvature). But the 20x20 plates are not, they're
| overlapping. So when I shoot through a random location of
| my own 10x10 plate, there's a chance that I'll hit a
| target from somebody else's 20x20 plate. Sum up those
| additional chances, and they'll cancel out the 4x
| difference you found.
|
| This feels like it would make a nice puzzle, your
| phrasing makes for a great misdirect / sleight of hand.
| gamegoblin wrote:
| I totally agree with you and the other commenters that
| the total area of the spherical shell is only increasing
| by a few %, but I still think for the purposes of
| "escaping earth" as the top level comment was talking
| about, all that matters is how spread out things are
| directly above you.
|
| When talking about the area of the spherical shells, it
| conflates what is above me as equally relevant to things
| that are on the other side of the planet from me.
|
| That is, satellite X and Y may be over me at 500km and
| 1000km distance, respectively. Later, they may be
| directly through the earth from me at distance 13200km
| and 13700km distance.
|
| In the first case, if I shine a laser straight up, my
| probability of hitting X is 4 times higher than my
| probability of hitting Y.
|
| In the second case, (if I could somehow shine a laser
| straight through the earth), the probabilities are nearly
| equal.
|
| But my intuition is that for the purpose of escaping
| earth, this second case does not matter, because we are
| just dealing with what is above us, not the entire
| spherical shell.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Except you can't generalize a square plate to a spherical
| shell...
| gamegoblin wrote:
| Can you explain why?
|
| If I am launching a rocket, and there is a 1x1 meter
| satellite orbiting 1000km above me. What is the
| probability that my rocket hits that satellite compared
| to an identical satellite at 2000km above me? The area of
| the angular sector of the sky that the 2000km altitude
| satellite is 1/4 of the 1000km altitude satellite.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The orbital launch will follow a curved path through
| succesive spherical shells. The percentage of the
| spherical shell occupied by the 1000km satellite is not
| 4x larger than the percentage of the spherical shell
| occupied by the 2000km satellite.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| This is the wrong mental model entirely unless your
| rocket launch is directly vertical and instantaneous.
| froh wrote:
| (10x10):(20x20) sounds like 1:4 to me, instead of 1:400,
| no?
| gamegoblin wrote:
| It's not 1:400 -- it's 100:400 which is equal to the 1:4
| you mention.
|
| That is, you 2x the height of the target which results in
| the probability of hitting being 4x less.
| tgb wrote:
| If your original claim were true, then you'd also be
| saying that there is twice as much area at 2m above sea
| level as there is 1m above sea level, and infinitely more
| than at sea level. If you truly believe this, then I will
| be willing to make you a trade where I give you one tenth
| floor condo in exchange for 10 first floor condos.
| [deleted]
| karatekidd32v wrote:
| Agreed rough math there doesn't seem right. Also, I wonder
| if there's an added benefit from the inverse square law
| here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law
| montenegrohugo wrote:
| Here's the actual correct math:
|
| ---
|
| Area of sphere: 4pr^2
|
| Airplane cruising height: ~10km
|
| Satellite orbit height: ~550km
|
| Radius of earth: 6371km
|
| thus, relative increase: (6371+550)/(6371+10) = 1.084 =
| 8.4% increase
|
| Squared (because of first formula) that corresponds with a
| 1.084^2 = 1.175 = 17.5% increase in area.
|
| ---
|
| Still, a few caveats:
|
| 1. Earth is huge. 510.1 million km2 is a lot of space (+20%
| at 550km altitude). We could have a million sats with each
| having more than 1km^2 to themselves.
|
| 2. Satellites orbit at different heights. Amazon's and
| SpaceX's satellites will not be on the same orbit.
|
| 3. Starlink satellites are at a sufficiently low altitude
| that Kessler Syndrom is not a problem; even if they all
| simultaneously turned into millions of pieces of dead
| debris at the same time, the atmospheric drag would make
| them lower their orbits and burn up in just a few months.
| agilob wrote:
| Broken planes fall down, while satellites create space
| debris.
| dogorman wrote:
| Dead sats in LEO fall.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| * Altitude is essentially the same 6300km vs 6700km, so
| satellites aren't signficantly more spread out.
|
| * Those 20k planes don't all fly at the same time.
|
| * Retired / Broken planes don't fly, satellites may still be
| on orbit for decades.
|
| * There are no debris flying in the sky at 11000 km/h
|
| * Planes can adjust their path at will instantly for
| avoidance.
|
| * Planes can be grounded instantly if we need to.
|
| Orbital space is a limited resource that gets depleted very
| fast and recovers very slowly. We are talking about launching
| in the next ten years 5x the total number of satellites that
| were ever launched so far. I am sure humans in 50 years would
| still be able to launch a thing or two in space as well.
|
| This is an actual problem, and unlike for planes, once the
| problem is apparent, you can't just take some of them out of
| the sky while you figure out a solution.
| gamegoblin wrote:
| > Those 20k planes don't all fly at the same time.
|
| They absolutely do. Check out
| https://www.flightradar24.com, there are currently 15,673
| planes in the air worldwide at the moment I am typing this
| comment.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| Fair point, but does that really change the conclusion?
| staticassertion wrote:
| But we can ground airplanes in a matter of hours. It doesn't
| really feel comparable.
| tgb wrote:
| They're at 100x higher altitude relative to the sea level but
| nearly the same altitude relative to the Earth's center which
| is what matters here.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| There are two probable problems:
|
| a) debris damaging other satellites or space stations. There
| currently is no proper liability currently and different
| monitoring systems are still in development
|
| b) astronomy from earth will see problems.
|
| As long as they are on their orbits there is enough space
| (haha) and if they don't cause conflict with radio frequencies
| they also don't cause issues
| gpm wrote:
| What you're asking about is basically
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
|
| In general the question of collision risk and debris is
| something evaluated for every launch/constellation. Starlink,
| for example, mostly avoids it being an issue by flying so low
| that debris quickly falls to earth and burns up in the
| atmosphere (they also design their satellites to fully burn up
| in the atmosphere). On the flip sides Starlink is planning on
| an order of magnitude more satellites than this.
|
| Even the worst case though doesn't really impact humans ability
| to fly to the moon/mars. You can make low earth orbit
| relatively unusable because there is a high collision risk if
| you hang out there for a year, but you should basically always
| be able to fly through low earth orbit to a higher orbit with
| negligible collision risk.
| bjacobt wrote:
| pardon the dumb question - how do rockets from spacex, etc
| avoid crashing into a satellite on its way up? Is there a way
| to keep track of all the satellites and debris in space and
| time the launch so there is a clear path?
| bagels wrote:
| Short answer: yes.
|
| They do this thing called "COLA", Collision On Launch
| Assessment, an analysis of launch trajectory to ensure they
| it won't hit known objects.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Yes, there is a database and radar tracking stations, and
| they'll avoid launching if there's an increased chance of a
| collision. The density of satellites and debris in orbit is
| so low in absolute terms, though, that the probability of any
| given rocket colliding is negligible even if launching
| totally blindly.
|
| Most launches are timed for minimizing fuel to achieve the
| desired orbit, and there's only a few seconds of wiggle room
| for a launch window. So, a particular launch window may be
| preferred over another depending on the relative probability
| of a collision. Nobody is explicitly timing their launches or
| ascent profile with regard to other satellites other than for
| space stations and other explicit destinations. Most launches
| the rocket just gets the satellites up into roughly the right
| orbit, and then the satellites use their own propulsion
| systems to maneuver into precise orbits over several months.
| [deleted]
| SEJeff wrote:
| No. This wouldn't happen as space is much bigger and there are
| far more airplanes today in the sky than satellites with a
| higher more distant apart orbit.
|
| These low earth orbit constellations will naturally experience
| orbital decay and at the end of their useful life will simply
| burn up on re-entry. They're explicitly designed to prevent
| Kessler Syndrome:
|
| See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
| sayem38 wrote:
| Amazon has significantly ramped up hiring efforts for Project
| Kuiper at its Redmond headquarters, with 500 employees currently
| aboard and 200 open positions
| highfrequency wrote:
| Are these global internet initiatives targeting _faster_ internet
| (10+ Gbps) or just more accessible internet for poor regions?
| deelowe wrote:
| I believe it's both, but mostly accessibility. Access to
| internet is seen as limitation on growth for the large
| companies. Bandwith is certainly factor though when considering
| AMZN's media empire.
| mdasen wrote:
| It's very unlikely to be faster internet (compared to what is
| generally available in urban/suburban America).
|
| Ultimately, we're using radio similar to any 4G or 5G
| connection. There are some differences, but they probably work
| against satellite internet more than they work for it.
| Terrestrial wireless networks like Verizon or T-Mobile can
| easily split cells to get more capacity (install another tower
| and split traffic between them). It's harder to do that with
| satellites. Plus the satellites will be over ocean so much of
| the time when their capacity can't be used (and other
| satellites in the network will take that traffic). You do get
| better line-of-sight which is helpful, but the amount of
| capacity is somewhat limited. Elon Musk has even said that
| they'll "most likely" be able to serve 500,000 customers. "More
| of a challenge when we get into the several million user
| range."
|
| These are unlikely to be services that offer a faster internet
| completion for people who are already well-served. Of course,
| there are a lot of people who aren't well-served.
|
| Over the coming years, 5G home internet is going to become more
| common. T-Mobile is looking to sign up 7-8M customers which
| would make them the 4th largest home broadband provider.
| Verizon has announced that they want to cover 50M households
| for home internet by the end of 2024 (T-Mobile already offers
| home internet coverage to 30M households; also, remember that
| while there are 330M people in the US, there's only around 130M
| households). While 5G won't reach everywhere that satellite
| will, it will fill in some of the broadband gaps that we
| currently have. 5G will also offer an alternative to wired home
| internet in many areas.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/02/isps-step-up-fig...
|
| A lot of the interest in satellite broadband is driven by
| government money. The US government is offering $9.2B to expand
| access to 5.2M home/businesses in this one instance and there's
| a lot more money where that came from. The Universal Service
| Fund in the US shells out billions every year to companies
| providing rural connectivity. It might not even be that there's
| much interest in these programs beyond government subsidies. Of
| course, once the satellites are traveling over other areas,
| might as well make the service available and get some extra
| money.
|
| Musk has said that Starlink might require a $30B investment to
| be viable, but might become cash-flow positive after $5-10B.
| $5-10B is probably well within the realm of government subsidy
| in the US. I mean, the government will definitely be spending
| much more than that subsidizing rural broadband over the coming
| years, but whether Starlink/SpaceX will get that money remains
| to be seen.
|
| I wouldn't say this is just about poor regions. There are
| plenty of far-flung places that I wouldn't classify as "poor"
| that don't have great internet.
| agildehaus wrote:
| Faster than what, fiber? DOCSIS 3.0? No.
|
| 10x faster than anything that has ever been available in many
| regions of the globe that currently have some form of limited
| access? Yes.
|
| And then of course this Internet being available absolutely
| everywhere on Earth.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| I think an underrated part of this is applications for merchant
| ships and edge compute in LEO (though I don't think Amazon has
| discussed this explicitly). The enterprise use cases could be
| interesting.
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| It varies from constellation to constellation.
|
| O3B's MPower constellation promises 10 Gbps terminals, but
| those terminals are very likely to go to big enterprise
| customers, as they will cost several $10k's.
|
| Telesat's Lightspeed constellation is aimed at rural areas of
| Canada and 5G backhaul. To do the latter, they'll have to
| deliver at least 1 Gbps. Telesat's been in the game for a long
| time, so I wouldn't doubt that they'll deliver.
|
| There's two Chinese constellations going up. They'll probably
| deliver anything and everything they can, but it remains to be
| seen what the satellite and terminal capacities will be. The
| west still has an edge here.
|
| Starlink started with residential service but they'll try to
| expand into everything they can. One of applications I expect
| to see is to use Starlink to get data out of Teslas and back to
| the ML team so they can improve their self-driving code.
|
| Kuiper? I mean, who knows. It's Amazon, so, they'll probably
| also try to expand into everything they can. I wouldn't be
| surprised if their delivery trucks will use it as backhaul.
|
| You might notice that none of the above, so far, are actually
| aimed at connecting the unconnected. That's because the
| terminals, so far, are too expensive and too power-hungry. The
| only two initiative I'm aware of that are actually trying to
| connect the unconnected are:
|
| OneWeb, which has truly global coverage (including the poles)
| and has a quite smart design, including working crosslinks and
| a relatively affordable terminal. Also, in the arctic, they can
| provide connectivity to militaries, so there's some good
| cashflow there.
|
| Curvanet, an initiative by Tom Choi. They promise a sub $100
| terminal that can run on 5 W (!) and does not require an ESA
| but can still deliver up to 50 Mbps. If they can actually pull
| this off I will buy a unit and stick on my roof just for fun.
| Also, if they succeed, they would be absolutely best-positioned
| in the market, as no one can (so far) match their cost or power
| consumption.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| we are in the new age of consolidation.
|
| Just like the combustion engine development created the
| transportation and assembly revolution some ~60 years after,
| profits from the newly created peripheral markets led to massive
| profits in specific tech sectors (oil, steel)... Flush with cash,
| they started horizontal, vertical acquisitions, leading to the
| massive corps of the time (1950s).
|
| We now have the internet. We are roughly almost 60 years into the
| internet creation revolution cycle.
|
| We have seen how this movie plays out.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Was it ever a serious effort; or was it an excuse to get the FCC
| to hinder similar projects?
| Mxs2000 wrote:
| From Facebook's POV? Very serious.
|
| Edit: For added context, I worked on this along with several
| other FB Connectivity projects.
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| That's interesting, can you share anything about why we never
| really seemed to see much of this team's work?
| tguvot wrote:
| as somebody who worked in this org: they are mostly focused
| on research, enablement and getting new tech used by
| operators of different sizes. Low level network tech is not
| sexy and doesn't really makes news
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I guess they must have something if Amazon are buying it
| instead of it just being abandoned by Facebook.
| toast0 wrote:
| Disclosure: I worked at FB, but not on connectivity projects,
| although I was adjacent to internet.org.
|
| As far as I could tell, these were serious efforts, but it's
| important to understand the organizational goals. Facebook
| benefits from increased connectivity regardless of who operates
| the network (as long as it's not actively hostile to FB,
| anyway). So there was a focus on research and publication
| rather than build-out. If FB can find a viable improvement in
| networks, and convince networks to use it, that increases
| connectivity which is good for FB. Additionaly, if network
| providers use FB developed technology in their networks, it
| might improve relations with those networks, which are
| sometimes strained because of competition in the messaging
| space.
|
| In my mind, this is the same as Google Fiber. Google Fiber was
| a terrible business for Google, but as a result of announcing
| their plans to build out in specific cities, the incumbent
| networks built out high speed fiber in most (or all) of those
| cities and maybe a few other places, which increases
| penetration of high speed connectivity, which is good for
| Google as a whole, so it's still a win.
| h2odragon wrote:
| "A rising tide lifts all boats" sounds like a pretty good
| reason to me. Thanks very much for illuminating more of the
| details.
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