[HN Gopher] Satellite IoT dreams are crashing into reality
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Satellite IoT dreams are crashing into reality
Author : ozdave
Score : 76 points
Date : 2021-10-20 18:53 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (staceyoniot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (staceyoniot.com)
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I'm nowhere near being an expert, but I have been dealing with a
| whole lot to do with things about Satellite - Geospatial Imagery
| and related data. We were intrigued and somewhat happy with all
| the cube-satellites and micro-satellites being launched. In-fact,
| we were contacted by many of these Satellite Startups and we are
| happy that we will have lots of options for our data sources. We
| could, however, never understood the cost though. We did know
| that the data is being commoditized more and more.
|
| I cannot say much now but we are working on something super
| exciting and we might be able to turn, tune, tweak and bring some
| major change to the cost involvement with Satellite data.
| jinzo wrote:
| I checked the Hiber [1] IoT Solutions (mentioned in the article)
| that are mostly focused on Asset/Vehicle/Machinery tracking. Even
| tho their message focuses (among other things) on how cheap they
| are - I have to disagree. Maybe if they find someone that truly
| needs global connectivity where 2G/NB-IoT/LTE-M can get pricey,
| but then someone needing that probably has quite a big purchasing
| power. Also their claims of easy install and productivity/uptime
| gains (without a CAN module, as they don't offer it currently)
| are very much PR speak and don't work like that in reality (I run
| a tiny asset/vehicle tracking business). Really not seeing how
| they are even close to being competitive in this space - or able
| to provide value added solutions later on. There are niche
| tracking solutions which are a lot better fit than what they are
| currently offering/focusing on. Something like yacht tracking,
| you know, where satellite connectivity is actually needed. But
| what do I know, maybe I'm wrong.
|
| Also looks like you have to sign a 5 year contract, very
| optimistic from them.
|
| Generally thinking the IoT and satellite connectivity (at
| affordable, non Iridium level, pricing) have it's uses. But for
| general vehicle/machine tracking where you usually have power,
| need to extract data from the machine anyway (for real insights),
| a plain old (or even better new NB-IoT/LTE-M) cellular
| connectivity will (generally) be plenty.
|
| [1] - https://hiber.global/
| delabay wrote:
| Have you read about Helium? its an open Lorawan network.
| permissionless and $.00001 per 24 byte packet. coverage is
| great in the US & europe.
| abeppu wrote:
| Maybe this is crazy, but should we be thinking of satellite
| connectivity the same way we think about public utilities?
|
| - For a lot of public utilities, the point is that building
| several parallel sets of infrastructure would be really wasteful.
| It makes sense to build it once, hopefully well, and let everyone
| use it.
|
| - One might think this only is true of strictly terrestrial
| infrastructure like phone landlines or water districts. But of
| course, GPS is an example where we all benefit from a satellite
| constellation which is operated by the US military with an annual
| budget of roughly $1B -- and we can all use it for free. Had the
| US not provided for civilian access to GPS, and instead there
| were several competing private systems, they would all be worse
| and every application which is today based on GPS would have an
| additional monthly fee to access whichever private constellation
| that application had built around.
|
| Admittedly, satellite connectivity comes with a bunch of
| complexities that GPS don't have. But still, if we were smart,
| would we be building one giant common-access constellation rather
| than multiple competing ones?
| Klimentio wrote:
| Do you have the feeling that you miss Satelite or that you use
| it a lot?
|
| Because while i agree on GPS and all the others (and it
| happened anyway), i'm lost on why i would care about satelite?
|
| I do prefer optic fiber when possible.
| wumpus wrote:
| You can use satellites in many ways without realizing it.
|
| Examples:
|
| * Rural cell towers that use satellite backhaul
|
| * Airplane wifi over the ocean
|
| * Newscasts which use video uploaded via satellite, from
| places like Afganistan
| ultrarunner wrote:
| I have two specific needs for remote data connections
| (uploads in both cases). In one, satellite connectivity makes
| a ton of sense, and I think we are on the cutting edge of it
| being viable. This need is fairly tolerant of low bandwidths
| & high latencies.
|
| The other need requires low power, high bandwidth and low
| latencies. Satellite is completely nonviable as of now. We
| might need an upgrade in the physical laws of reality to make
| it viable.
|
| I imagine 90% of most people's usage would be closer to the
| latter case than the former. Denser constellations might make
| the former more palatable in the long run.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > which is operated by the US military with an annual budget of
| roughly $1B -- and we can all use it for free.
|
| Non-Americans, yes, but Americans pay taxes to use it. In fact,
| if you replaced tax-funded model with, say, a markup on each
| receiver, Americans would pay less than they already do, and
| only those that use it would pay for it. I find both of these
| things beneficial.
|
| > Had the US not provided for civilian access to GPS, and
| instead there were several competing private systems, they
| would all be worse
|
| Why, though? Why would they be worse? Typically, when you have
| even two competitors, the quality is improved.
|
| > and every application which is today based on GPS would have
| an additional monthly fee to access whichever private
| constellation that application had built around.
|
| You are lacking imagination. It's like saying that if
| government stops providing internet connectivity for free,
| every application accessing the internet will charge monthly
| fee. Alas, government does not provide free internet, but
| nevertheless, apps don't charge consumers for ingress/egress.
|
| As it happens, businesses are pretty good at coming up with
| business models convenient to users. Google could, for example,
| easily cover the entire cost of GPS completely on its own, and
| offer free Google Maps, which would easily outcompete other map
| apps if they charged money for use. Considering how much they
| pay for being default search engine on Apple, $1B is a
| pittance.
| abeppu wrote:
| > Why, though? Why would they be worse? Typically, when you
| have even two competitors, the quality is improved.
|
| I think the key points are:
|
| - because there would be fragmentation, we might have several
| smaller private services, each with crappier coverage because
| of fewer satellites in each, different variance in clocks,
| etc
|
| - because GPS _doesn't_ need to worry about collecting
| revenue from users, you don't have to prove you're a
| subscriber to use it. Every GPS device you have doesn't have
| to be linked to your account. And you don't have to worry
| that e.g. your phone and your car partnered with different
| satnav services and so now you need two subscriptions _and_
| they don't play together, etc.
|
| I think it's not that hard to imagine casual consumer
| applications where the product benefit of incorporating
| satellite-based location services would become swamped by the
| overhead of connecting to your preferred location service.
| wumpus wrote:
| > In fact, if you replaced tax-funded model with, say, a
| markup on each receiver,
|
| GPS isn't technically designed to do that, the open signal is
| open. And if you did it, the cost of a receiver would go up
| because it would have to be more sophisticated.
|
| Galileo tried to do this business model and failed.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality
| is improved._
|
| It's hard to argue this is the case, especially for
| businesses that require a significant amount of upfront
| capital. The trivial example in utilities are ISPs. You can
| argue that ISPs are not a "free market" because of the
| government doing X, Y, Z, but if it's the case that
| government intervention is required _anyways_ , then removing
| the profit motive and having the government just build seems
| preferable.
|
| > _Considering how much they pay for being default search
| engine on Apple, $1B is a pittance._
|
| The $1B number is a red herring. It cost them $1B to
| _maintain_ the system. The costs of acquiring rockets and
| designing satellites, as a private company, is likely far
| greater. Secondly in the case of Google Maps, that product
| doesn 't exist as it's own standalone business, but as one
| that was largely _subsidized_ by another, more grossly
| profitable business. The question you should ask would if a
| company like Waze (pre-acquisition of course) could have
| built the infrastructure for GPS. The answer is likely no.
|
| Edit: Thinking about this more, there is a trivial counter-
| example to your point about being charged egress on the
| internet, and it's just Google Maps. Google did the work of
| mapping a huge amount of the US, and generally has the
| highest quality maps. If you wanted to use that data, much
| like a business uses GPS, Google charges an fee which has
| been often derided as exorbitant. Even in the face of new
| competitors like Apple Maps and OpenStreetMaps, Google has
| even increased prices. I feel we would be worse off if GPS
| was privatized like this as this would put companies like
| Uber, Flexport, and Waze at the mercy of a single profit
| driven "competitor". The "App Store" but for GPS doesn't
| sound like a better alternative.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > It's hard to argue this is the case, especially for
| businesses that require a significant amount of upfront
| capital.
|
| There is plenty of capital to be had these days, and a lot
| of competition in many capital-intensive industries. For
| example, we have multiple competitors in cloud computing
| space, despite it requiring ten of billions of dollars in
| capital to enter.
|
| The ISPs, and utilities in general are different not
| because they are simply capital intensive, but rather
| because they have low marginal return for marginal unit of
| capital spent, and because competition damages these return
| even higher. Launching a few satellites to provide service
| globally is a different sort of capital expense than
| painstakingly building out utilities every street and every
| block.
|
| > The $1B number is a red herring. It cost them $1B to
| maintain the system. The costs of acquiring rockets and
| designing satellites, as a private company, is likely far
| greater.
|
| Sure, which is why there has been no competition to GPS so
| far. However, SpaceX, now that it already has rocket and
| satellite expertise, could provide competition to
| Government GPS relatively easily.
|
| > The question you should ask would if a company like Waze
| (pre-acquisition of course) could have built the
| infrastructure for GPS. The answer is likely no.
|
| No, but they would simply buy license to use GPS, just like
| they bought license to use maps. No reason to pass these
| costs to users directly as a line item in a bill. That's my
| point: there is no reason to believe that privately owned
| GPS would diminish the user experience. As I already
| mentioned, instead of subscription fees that people lacking
| business imagination keep bringing up, you could for
| example charge royalties per GPS receiver sold, you know,
| the way Android phones already pay dozens of dollars in
| royalties.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > Why, though?
|
| They'd be subscription services.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| There is, practically, no model in which GPS subscriptions
| make sense without enabling bidirectional communications
| with the satellite. GPS modules (ground side) do _not_ need
| transmitters, only receivers and, potentially, a decryption
| module (soft or hardware).
|
| A subscription GPS system with bidirectional communication
| (to authenticate users) would have grossly inefficient
| devices (transmitting to space is not cheap, plus the
| incurred latency on the communication). But that's the only
| way to enforce a subscription.
|
| Subscription GPS systems with unidirectional communications
| (down only) would be cracked in about 5 minutes. Every
| authorized device would have to share the same key for it
| to be practical, which means even with key rotation schemes
| (sucks to be in the wilderness without internet
| connectivity for an extended period in this case) the keys
| would be on every device and trivially recovered.
|
| The only way a unidirectional communication scheme works is
| if the GPS devices are already internet connected on the
| ground side, which largely defeats the purpose of GPS in
| many situations (at least historically, before widespread
| cellular data networks). You certainly couldn't use this
| effectively at sea or when hiking through the backcountry.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Little known fact, if you do have the GPS decryption
| module, you get way better sensitivity and spoofing
| protection. But you have to be the US military[1].
|
| 1:
| https://militaryembedded.com/comms/encryption/securing-
| milit...
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Maybe, or maybe not (most likely not, in fact). Have you
| read the rest of my comment?
| orangeoxidation wrote:
| > Why, though? Why would they be worse? Typically, when you
| have even two competitors, the quality is improved.
|
| > Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality
| is improved.
|
| If those state services weren't available for the public they
| would exist anyway, they are primarily for military purpose.
|
| Imagine the US didn't offer free GPS and civilian competition
| would arise. Wouldn't it just mean the US users would have to
| pay for two satellite services? Once for the military one,
| once for the civilian. Since cost does not increase with
| users, the military (tax supported) one wouldn't be cheaper
| to run either.
|
| Apart from that there are competitors even today. My
| smartphone does connect to Galileo, Glonass and GPS.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| In that world, military would just contract with commercial
| providers and use commercial GPS, same way they already
| spend hundreds of billions of dollars on products and
| services provided by private companies.
| jppittma wrote:
| I can't imagine how one would think that's better than
| the current situation. Military contracts with commercial
| providers are an absolute nightmare. Is this not what
| even libertarians denounce as "crony capitalism?"
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Most of technology procurement that military does is
| through commercial providers. This means that if there is
| a nightmare project, it will most likely be a done with a
| commercial partner, because most projects are done with
| commercial partners. On the other hand, there are plenty
| military contracts with commercial businesses which
| aren't nightmares. For example, US military has a
| contract with Samsung for mobile devices. It is most
| definitely not a nightmare.
|
| Government buying from private businesses is no what
| "crony capitalism" means.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _Non-Americans, yes, but Americans pay taxes to use it._
|
| Yes, but non-Americans also pay, by living in a world with
| America, in particular the US military, in it. So the cost is
| spread fairly evenly, I'd say.
| abeppu wrote:
| If competition makes stuff better, and a large company like
| Google can make one at "a pittance", it's worth asking -- why
| isn't there a privately created global satellite navigation
| system yet? GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO were created and are
| operated by state institutions.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Because there is one already, and it's free to use. If
| government hadn't paid for it, you'd see much more
| competition in the space. For comparison, ask why no
| company has built a cheap, fast satellite internet yet?
| Apparently, some are building them right now.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > Had the US not provided
|
| In this hypothetical you'd need to assume that there was also
| no civilian access to GLONASS, BeiDou, or Galileo.
| varjag wrote:
| Which is a fair assumption. GPS going civilian in the 1980s
| was an incredible thing, so was the lifting of selective
| availability two decades ago. Without American govt spoiling
| the market there'd be little incentive.
| short12 wrote:
| Where are public utilities like that? Certainly not the US
| rjsw wrote:
| The last time I went to the US there were roads, has that
| changed ?
| lloydgrossman wrote:
| Last time I used NHS, it was free. Is everything free in
| the UK?
| abeppu wrote:
| Ok I described this poorly. That's my fault.
|
| I think the fixation should be less on the 'free to use'
| portion of GPS, and more on the fact that for many of us
| there's basically one satellite-based location system to which
| we have access, in the same way that there may only be one set
| of phone landlines in my neighborhood, and one municipal water
| supply. Phone service and water are not free to use, but we
| also didn't pay to build several competing overlapping systems.
|
| I compare this to cell service, where multiple private networks
| covering the same area are built and maintained, and if you're
| on the wrong network, you might have worse coverage in a given
| neighborhood than your friend -- and you both have worse
| coverage than you would under a hypothetical network which was
| the union of both.
|
| The original article was about a plethora of companies who had
| aspired to create their own constellations and are now seeing
| that actually that's really expensive. We're still going to end
| up with several competing ones. Would we be better off (i.e.
| pay less for connectivity from a constellation with more
| satellites and better coverage) if there was one larger one?
| colechristensen wrote:
| > for many of us there's basically one satellite-based
| location system to which we have access
|
| This isn't the case though. Most "GPS" (GNSS is the better
| acronym) chips these days support several.
|
| American GPS, Russian GlONASS, European Galelio, and Chinese
| BeiDou all provide the same basic functionality, the first
| three are quite common in most chipsets (like the one in your
| phone)
| DaveExeter wrote:
| > Would we be better off (i.e. pay less for connectivity from
| a constellation with more satellites and better coverage) if
| there was one larger one?
|
| We certainly would not be better off.
|
| Because with a monopoly, you pay the highest price and get
| the worst service!
| ultrarunner wrote:
| What is seen is a generally workable GNSS solution,
| especially after the removal of selective availability
| (note: this is a good thing, but by no means necessary;
| BeiDou still suffers from intentional degradation).
|
| What is not seen is a potentially better service that
| doesn't cost $1 billion a year which wasn't created. GPS
| radios are fairly power hungry, slow to sync without
| ephemeris, and accuracy can vary especially near buildings
| and terrain. But it works well enough and is entrenched
| enough that a private improvement would struggle to make
| financial sense.
|
| A utility of this scale also creates a single point of
| failure, which came to bear during the Galileo outage a few
| years ago. What some call needless competition is seen by
| others as redundancy & robustness. The water provider in
| Flint, MI should have gone out of business and been
| replaced for pumping lead into peoples' homes, but instead
| the situation became a political football. The only cost to
| bad actors was the expenditure of political capital; all
| but one minor charge was dropped.
|
| There are lots of trade offs, so the ways we'd be better
| off change depending on the way the system is defined. I do
| think the consideration of what might have been is
| interesting nonetheless.
| musingsole wrote:
| > we also didn't pay to build several competing overlapping
| systems
|
| I think you're missing the history of utilities but also most
| public granted monopolies: they did grow out of several
| competing businesses. In the case of electricity, water,
| subway systems, most of these institutions will trace back to
| a history of privatized providers competing to establish a
| market. These utilities having a monopoly from the jump in
| any new developments is only because we've inherited that
| history and know better. It's only in the aftermath of
| providers clashing to an annoying enough degree that granted
| monopolies get created.
| wumpus wrote:
| Electric power from the grid comes in only a couple of ways,
| but there are a ton of different kinds of satellite
| communications: broadband in several bands, narrowband in a
| billion bands, satellites that talk to low power devices,
| satellite phones in either S or L band, etc.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| If we had, we definitely wouldn't have gotten the low cost of
| the Starlink constellation. The industry experts, including Tim
| F, didn't think such a thing was feasible. I've talked to a
| Guidance and Navigation expert (a civil servant working for the
| federal government for space systems) that didn't think
| droneship landing (which SpaceX relies on for making reusable
| rockets--and thus Starlink--economical) was possible.
|
| When you have one big system and no competition, you get status
| quo solutions. That is, an order of magnitude greater cost.
| (And this isn't an exaggeration... compare space shuttle costs
| for commercial satellites to Falcon 9. STS roughly is 10 to 100
| times as expensive per launch with comparable payload.)
|
| But it's important to keep in mind that the satellite networks
| are different from GPS and one important way: they are two way
| communication systems not broadcast. That means that you don't
| get the same economies of scale for having just one system that
| you might for GPS. Having two communication systems that use
| two different spectrums means double the throughput that a
| single system would've provided.
| bsenftner wrote:
| The economic advantages of Apple to delay any satellite
| functionality of their devices until these IoT providers are
| desperate is the script playing out. It requires no coordination
| between the larger technology and tech service providers for them
| to realize the significant value they will realize by being slow
| to implement satellite related options to their devices and
| services.
| macintux wrote:
| This seems like a particularly cynical take. It seems more
| likely that Apple is, as they usually are, cautious about
| introducing an external dependency until they're confident
| about its reliability, quality, and battery life impact, plus
| how to make the integration easy for users.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Cynical? yes; profitable? enormously. why partner now when
| one can own later?
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