[HN Gopher] India tells public to shun Starlink until it gets li...
___________________________________________________________________
India tells public to shun Starlink until it gets licence
Author : mariojv
Score : 52 points
Date : 2021-11-27 17:12 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| The reality is far more prosaic than many people seem to believe.
|
| Starlink has been reported to be taking "pre-orders" for the
| service at $99 in India; without having a license to operate
| [1][2]. This might seem like peanuts to the HN crowd, and the
| move to do pre-orders is completely in line with the "move fast"
| ethos of SV startups, but $99 is a non-trivial amount of money in
| rural India.
|
| IMO the Government is right to at least warn people that they
| might not get the service promised, even if they do end up
| getting their money back. Also, in case Starlink decides to take
| the dynamic and innovative step of just keeping the money, it is
| unclear what recourse these prospective customers will have.
|
| ----------------------------------------
|
| [1]
| https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/telecom/teleco...
|
| [2] https://www.pcmag.com/news/india-spacex-needs-a-license-
| to-o...
| bserge wrote:
| Fuck are they gonna do, blanket jam the signal?
|
| If I'm desperate enough to buy Internet service from a
| satellite provider, I couldn't give a fuck about the gov's
| license.
|
| Best they can do is confiscate the dish in customs.
| mcguire wrote:
| If we all obeyed a dictum to "avoid selling things until you
| can provide those things", Silicon Valley would dry up
| overnight.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| I fail to see a downside.
| Ballu wrote:
| There is a difference in "avoid selling things until you can
| provide those things" and "avoid selling things until you are
| allowed to sell things".
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| What's the difference?
| nine_k wrote:
| You may have the stuff you've invested into production
| of, and potential buyers willing to give you the money.
| But if your stuff is _illegal_ to sell, tough luck.
| butMyside wrote:
| Since it's just math in a machine and we have the math
| written down all over, what would be losing of long term
| value to the human species?
|
| I have made a lot of money thanks to SV, but it's not what
| puts food on my table; people where I live do. I don't live
| near SV.
|
| Billions of us don't give af about SV. It's all hype and our
| daily lives will look pretty much the same without it.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tshaddox wrote:
| I don't really see why that's true, unless you consider
| companies' pitches to investors to be "selling" something.
| Silicon Valley isn't really known for the business model of
| taking money for preorders.
| [deleted]
| dilawar wrote:
| Given the current political climate, iI won't be surprised if
| they will get the license as soon as they cosy up the A
| company. Whatapp got license to do financial transactions (UPI)
| just after they invested in Ambani's Reliance.
| desi_ninja wrote:
| That sounds like a conspiracy
| seibelj wrote:
| This is standard stuff in all countries. If you need
| something political done and you have given ("invested") a
| lot of money to something a politician cares about, it
| tends to grease the wheels. Happens in every government on
| earth.
| btilly wrote:
| It happens different amounts in different countries. And
| the difference matters. Government corruption is a major
| drag on the economy. And therefore less corrupt countries
| experience compounding growth that helps them become rich
| countries.
| shlurpy wrote:
| Corruption is a type of conspiring yes. Your point?
| tata71 wrote:
| Conspiracy, or conspiracy theory?
|
| Sick of seeing "educated" communities conflate the two.
| btilly wrote:
| I will bet dollars to pesos that if Starlink fails to provide
| the service, the cause will be government corruption.
|
| Therefore the government is warning people of the potential for
| them to get hurt because the government failed to get the
| shakedown that they're hoping for.
|
| Excuse me if I fail to see said government as being in the
| right. Now you may think I'm just being cynical. But according
| to https://www.transparency.org/en/countries/india nearly 90%
| _OF THEIR OWN CITIZENS_ think that government corruption is a
| big problem in India. I just think that the general public
| knows what they are talking about here.
| mukundmr wrote:
| Starlink cost is 499$ for equipment and 99$ per month? That is
| way too high for broadband prices in India. Fibre internet of 100
| Mbps is about 18$. Mobile 4G is even cheaper.
| jhgb wrote:
| In that case, what's the problem? If nobody is going to buy it,
| then there's nobody that needs to be discouraged from buying
| it.
| foobiekr wrote:
| It's about bribes.
| wmf wrote:
| Starlink might make more sense as cellular backhaul in some
| places.
| pm90 wrote:
| Lots of comments dunking on Indian Government as grandstanding or
| too corrupt and quoting extreme examples to justify this
| position. Sorry folks, not every other non Western or non
| Western-allied country is a banana republic. India does suffer
| from endemic corruption but that doesn't mean that every decision
| is tainted by that for fucks sake. It's entirely reasonable for
| the Government to ensure that a foreign corporation is going to
| offer a legitimate service, and has proper mechanisms to address
| grievances, before it's allowed to take money from it's citizens.
| Thlom wrote:
| India is known to be really difficult to satcom providers. F.ex
| Inmarsat just recently got a limited license to operate their Ka-
| band service in India, but I think only on aircrafts and Indian
| flagged maritime vessels. Russia is also a bit difficult for
| requiring all terminals in their territory to register with the
| government, but at least fishing vessels can continue to use
| their satcom while in Russia as long as they register the
| terminal.
|
| Just saying, it can take a really long time to acquire a satcom
| license in India. I think Starlink I Ku-band, so might be easier
| than Ka-band license.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| How easy is it to enforce this? Can the signal be picked up on
| the ground?
| rajasimon wrote:
| ha ha yeah literally my thought. Why I can't just catch the
| signal now. It's all come to starlink hand right? Why
| starlink need Indian Gov permission?.
|
| On a side note. I'm living in India. Finally we see some
| promising speed from Jio and have good stable speed from
| Bharath Fibernet( 150 Mbps )
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| The main way to enforce this is by restricting sale of the
| hardware. It's big and high tech, can't be smuggled into
| the country in meaningful quantities.
| tata71 wrote:
| Competition and transparency cures all market woes.
| CyanBird wrote:
| It really doesn't, that just ensures that already giant
| western firms reign Supreme on the national markets of
| smaller countries
|
| But if you like to take that slogan and spread it around,
| then I am sure which you might be quite happy with said
| outcome?
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| It might or might not be easy to catch someone. But, if
| things are anything like in Pakistan, if you do get caught
| you will be in trouble with the military, which is no joke.
| Thlom wrote:
| Not sure, but the Indian coast guard is known to board ships
| to check ... Guess most mobile satcom providers are
| geofencing to help customers not getting in trouble.
| cptaj wrote:
| India shakes fist at the sky
| AnotherZaphod wrote:
| They have already demonstrated the capability to shoot down
| satellites. Maybe the US should propose a treaty regulating the
| militarization of space, thus far they have rejected the ones
| proposed by other countries.
| rconti wrote:
| Streisand effect? Of course, if the goal is payoffs to the
| government, raising awareness of Starlink might be in the
| government's interest.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Because heaven forbid the masses have Internet access that their
| government doesn't have the means to censor or surveil.
| outside1234 wrote:
| In this case, they are probably also unhappy that they haven't
| received bribes.
| new_stranger wrote:
| True, the vary foundations of proper commerce are threatened!
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| why would starlink have different rules than any other ISP
| licensed to operate in India?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Because Starlink has no physical infrastructure there and no
| plans to set it up.
|
| You can access a website without that website being somehow
| licensed to "operate" in your country. You should be able to
| talk to Starlink equipment (which is in space and outside of
| India's jurisdiction) without them being licensed in India.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I think Starlink will have a hell of a time convincing any
| amount of prospective customers to smuggle in illegal
| transmitters - the triangulation of which is a solved
| problem
|
| but this is a moot argument, Elon is interested in funding
| Mars missions, he will comply with Indian
| censorship/regulations because there's no profit without
| their blessing.
| bklyn11201 wrote:
| You're going to be shocked that
|
| A) Starlink will have lots of Indian ground infrastructure
| once approved
|
| B) Starlink will be highly compliant with nation state laws
|
| C) Starlink will comply with filtering requests made by
| nation states when the revenue is lucrative enough
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| This is nothing special to India or "evil" countries that like
| to censor/surveil their interwebs. Also, Indian politicians
| care far more about grift than they do surveillance (though
| they do also like surveillance.) We're talking about a country
| where one party tried to buy an election by distributing free
| color televisions:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=india+free+color+tvs+electio...
|
| Many countries (the US included) regulate/license even receive-
| only satellite devices.
|
| It's not for surveillance or censorship reasons, it's for
| interference prevention reasons. If they didn't regulate ground
| stations, space would be a wild wild west of people beaming
| whatever frequencies, at whatever signal strengths, they
| wanted.
|
| Bit of history/trivia: many cell phones used to not support
| GLONASS satellite fixes within US territories because first
| telecom companies "forgot" to file the necessary paperwork with
| the FCC to get GPS chips in phones licensed for GLONASS
| reception. Then when they did, the FCC sat on the paperwork for
| no particularly good reason.
|
| Used to be you could enjoy a GPS/GLONASS/Galileo satellite
| position fix on a cross-atlantic flight and watch as your fix
| dropped to just GPS the second you crossed into US territory.
| bklyn11201 wrote:
| Starlink provides access to geographically diverse customers
| but doesn't work well for dense population clusters. And what
| promises have been made around censorship? Do we have any
| reason to believe that Starlink will avoid large swathes of the
| world in the name of censorship-free services?
| shellfishgene wrote:
| I don't think Starlink would currently work without base
| stations in India.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Couldn't they make it work for most of the population of
| India by putting stations near the border in neighboring
| countries?
| toast0 wrote:
| India is pretty sizable, and Starlink currently does not do
| any orbital routing, so you've got to be within a certain
| distance from a ground station so that the satellite has
| you and that ground station in view. I don't know what that
| distance is though --- maybe someone else can provide that.
|
| If Sri Lanka also doesn't allow ground stations, that would
| make it pretty hard to cover southern India.
|
| Even when there's orbital routing, there's likely capacity
| limits.
|
| If Pakistan doesn't block ground stations, it may be a good
| solution for people in Jammu and Kashmir to get around the
| frequent government telecommunications shutdowns; assuming
| lax enforcement.
| bklyn11201 wrote:
| Could they bypass the laws of a nation state by using
| inter-satellite lasers? Yes! But what leads people to
| believe that Starlink is going to ignore the laws of
| powerful countries?!
| orangepurple wrote:
| Just wait until you learn about the Central Board of Film
| Certification
| dilawar wrote:
| May be Ambani's Jio is upset.
| bklyn11201 wrote:
| Starlink requires massive annual cap ex, is bandwidth limited
| per cell, and needs very expensive ground receivers. Jio is
| the most cost effective large-scale bandwidth provider ever
| created! They are on two different planets playing two
| different games.
| jhgb wrote:
| Actually, Starlink is not _on_ a planet. (But that Indians
| don 't like competition is understandable.)
| bklyn11201 wrote:
| It's just a misunderstanding on competition. Many Reddit
| forums show Americans looking for Starlink to compete
| with their fixed bandwidth provider like Comcast.
| American cable providers have very bad support
| reputations but generally provide about 300mbps for about
| $70 a month these days. Starlink is not real competition
| for the cable providers. Starlink will be a massive
| upgrade for users in remote locations that currently have
| the choice between DSL and slow satellite services.
| Starlink is giant competition for HughesNet and ViaSat.
| desi_ninja wrote:
| Or NSA reading other country's ppl data.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Starling receiver receives as well as _emits_ radio waves,
| isn't that tightly controlled everywhere?
| amoshi wrote:
| It's a reasonable concern for a government if the surveiling
| capability is shifted from themselves to a foreign government
| (USA with PRISM and all the other programmes)
| asadotzler wrote:
| So, SpaceX started taking pre-orders for Starlink in India before
| they had license to operate Starlink in India.
|
| I understand India being upset, but a pre-order is not the same
| as service. SpaceX is not going to offer service in India until
| its licenses are approved. But what's the harm in taking
| refundable pre-orders?
| basisword wrote:
| They're taking people's money and promising a service they
| don't yet know they will even be able to provide (e.g. if they
| don't receive the license). That's dishonest. It's not a
| preorder in this case - more of a kickstarter.
| legolas2412 wrote:
| On par with what Elon musk does for FSD. American regulators
| do not care.
| jessriedel wrote:
| All pre-orders have the possibility of not being fulfilled.
| SpaceX is a lot more capitalized than a random start-up or a
| kickstarter, so they are significantly more likely than a
| typical pre-order of delivering the product and of issuing
| refunds if they can't deliver.
|
| So I think you just have to have an objections to the vast
| majority of pre-orders in general if you have a problem with
| this. And if so, focusing on Starlink is clickbait and/or
| disingenuous.
| camhart wrote:
| I disagree. Their product is already functioning. It's not a
| kickstarter. How is this dishonest? The only dishonest thing
| would be the government not allowing it for some unethical
| reason.
| teh_infallible wrote:
| From the Indian government's point of view, taking
| preorders might be seen as kind of a snub, like, "Your
| approval is just a rubber stamp we will get eventually."
| shlurpy wrote:
| Caring about this sort of thing sounds like some toxic
| masculinity grandstanding childishness. So it makes sense
| that politicans would.
| pm90 wrote:
| It's in any Governments interest to vet new technology or
| services from multinational corporations before they are
| allowed to take money from its citizenry. SpaceX is not
| Governed by Indian law; so it's pretty reasonable for
| them to be extra conservative when dealing with new kinds
| of services.
| thecleaner wrote:
| The problem is with the order amount. $99 is a lot of money
| (Google pegs it at 7.4k INR) and anyways its a large sum even
| for an American with low income. The problem with pre-orders is
| the amount of money that gets locked. The government has to
| enforce its regulations via the proper channels and doesn't
| want to be in a position where they ask Space-X to refund the
| money whereupon they might sue and cause trouble at
| international levels. Informing the people that they haven't
| received their license is okay I think as it gives the
| government breathing room to have the same rules for everyone
| since they can always justify by saying "we told you so" and I
| think that's fair.
|
| Secondly, the Indian government is under no obligation to deal
| with free-trade nonsense here. Space-X cannot and does not
| employ any Indians, so giving them an operators license and
| access to consumer base without actually being able to create
| jobs or deep expertise locally makes zero sense. In such deals,
| in the end, the only technological expertise that flows is
| crappy admin jobs and frankly no country should take such a
| deal.
| josephcsible wrote:
| The money isn't "locked" if the deposit is fully refundable
| at any time, with the only thing you lose being your place in
| line. And how is free trade "nonsense"? Do you think
| protectionism is a good thing?
| pm90 wrote:
| What recourse do Indian citizens have if SpaceX decides to
| not honor its agreement? They cannot be sued in Indian
| courts. It's entirely justified to be extremely skeptical.
|
| > Do you think protectionism is a good thing?
|
| Yes, absolutely it is.
| gaadd33 wrote:
| Why can't SpaceX be sued in Indian courts? Does India
| have a law prohibiting that? In America you can sue a
| foreign entity and if it's found that the court has
| jurisdiction and you win then you can get a judgement
| against any assets the entity has in the country. I
| believe this has been used to seize a skyscraper in
| Manhattan owned by Iran among other things in the past.
| pm90 wrote:
| US courts do not have jurisdiction outside the US; the
| only reason their orders are obeyed outside the US is
| because of the power of the US Government; if a foreign
| Government refuses and the USG wants to compel them, they
| can use diplomatic or other ways (e.g via sanctions) to
| make them. At the least, it can be used as leverage when
| bargaining for other things. As you can see, it just
| doesn't work the other way around.
| thecleaner wrote:
| The financial argument is valid but nobody wants to pay
| money for a service they would want and then receive an
| email saying we can't provide it because "Indian goverment
| deemed it so". One scenario is the government doesn't
| communicate with the public and then Space-X doesn't get
| its license. Telling people to be cautious is okay. And
| anyways if Space-X has enough capacity, pre-orders
| shouldn't matter.
|
| There's nuance here and sound policy lies on a spectrum
| between fully free trade and protectionism. Free trade in
| services without free movement of people is nonsense in my
| opinion. It almost always benefits the incumbent.
| samstave wrote:
| define what value and relevance a license has for such?
|
| How easy will it be to shootdown starlink devices?
|
| I am sure it will be easy for someone to build an app that tracks
| your current GPS and the Starlink cause-ways and provide the
| telemetry data to shoot these things down with ease...
|
| Does Starlink have a ChaosMonkey for such scenarios built in?
|
| --
|
| Imagine a world war - or even a war btwn 2 supers... killing
| starlink is going to be A#1 target.
| enkid wrote:
| Shooting down thousands of satellites would extremely expensive
| and piss off every other space faring country
| errantspark wrote:
| Next to impossible to kill a starlink satellite and there are
| thousands of them, I don't think any country has the capability
| to to take starlink satellites down en masse by force. The US,
| russia and china could probably take down a few, but I doubt
| the stockpiles of anti satellite missiles of all three combined
| equal the size of the constellation. Guessing about that
| though.
|
| You _could_ probably blow up a nuke on orbit to EMP a bunch of
| them at once but that would have a lot of collateral damage.
| spyridonas wrote:
| Doesn't hitting one of them be good enough for chainlink
| reaction due to space debris? They are all on the same height
| and pretty close to each other.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I'm not sure I would call 1600 objects scattered over an
| area about as large as the surface of earth "pretty close
| together". There's plenty of empty space between them
| sokoloff wrote:
| The debris field would move generally with its original
| momentum, meaning I wouldn't expect hitting one to take out
| the others in the same string.
| ascar wrote:
| If you're hitting it with a rocket the explosion should
| considerably change the momentum, no?
|
| But not that it's really relevant anyway, these things
| are not close to each other at all in this context.
| shlurpy wrote:
| Hitting it with anything at those speeds causes and
| explosion. At low earth orbit (LEO) most vectors cause
| the debris to rapidly deorbit, but a few can cause a
| slightly raised orbit that could hit things behind it.
| The problem is, if such a chain reaction does start, it's
| not likely limited to a single orbital plane like
| starling, but to destroy every single LEO satellite and
| make LEO unusable for tens of not hundreds of years.
| Jensson wrote:
| Couldn't you fly up a satellite with a small gun and a
| propulsion engine? You don't have to be much faster than the
| starlink satellites to eventually shoot down all of them, and
| it shouldn't take a big gun to make a satellite stop working.
| At least it should be way cheaper to destroy it than to build
| the network.
| ninjanomnom wrote:
| Orbital mechanics being what they are, you can't simply
| speed up to intercept something in orbit. Very roughly
| speaking, as you increase speed you increase the distance
| the opposite side of the orbit is from the orbited body.
| This means if you're trying to catch a bunch of satellites
| on a single orbital path you'll miss most since your orbit
| is different now. There are ways to do what you say but I
| dont know if any countries have managed to make a reusable
| orbital satellite killer like this.
| jhgb wrote:
| Since you're talking about a "satellite train", so as to
| speak, I'm not sure you need to "speed up to intercept".
| If for example the orbital period is 90 minutes and the
| time between two consecutive satellites passing through
| the same point is 5 minutes, just make sure that your
| orbital period at the time of intercept is 95 minutes and
| then you can shoot down one satellite per orbital period.
| There's not a lot of maneuvering that the electrically
| propelled satellites could do on quick notice.
| mcguire wrote:
| Not hard to kill one, but probably hard to put up enough
| stuff to kill many of them with a single launch.
|
| On the other hand, it would be much easier to take out the
| Starlink launch vehicles before they deploy the satellites
| and then wait a couple of years (given their 5-year lifetime)
| for the service to degrade.
| sreevisakh wrote:
| India is one of the 4 with ASAT capability, in addition to
| the 3 you mentioned. But it doesn't make sense to destroy
| even a single satellite (due to Kessler syndrome), if it is
| just to stop starlink service. The signal can just be jammed.
| Or even simpler - just monitor the uplink transmission and
| punish those who break the order.
| robscallsign wrote:
| It would be easier to attack/sabotage/JAM/DOS the ground
| stations.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| >define what value and relevance a license has for such
|
| Government compliance? India is a democracy. Tech may move
| faster, but that doesn't mean it's right. Voters decide what's
| right, ultimately.
|
| The Amish are wise in this: wait for the community to approve
| technology, and only then apply it to their lives. The
| Government of India doesn't need to be held hostage by
| cybermancers, they can decide tech usefulness on their own
| time.
| throwaway2077 wrote:
| satellite internet is not a new technology.
|
| come on now, you've been a superpower for over a year. get
| with the times.
| quit32 wrote:
| lol "tracks your current GPS"
|
| Starlink is not going to be A#1 target in space in a new world
| war. Reconnaissance and Mil Comms satellites will be.
| jhgb wrote:
| > and Mil Comms satellites will be.
|
| Like Starlink in the future, then? Possibly?
| https://spacenews.com/u-s-army-signs-deal-with-spacex-to-
| ass...
| samstave wrote:
| You ass: Obv I mean determining your current location and
| azimuth as relates to the starlink satellites you may want to
| shoot down.
|
| Jeasus... are like 25?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-11-27 23:02 UTC)