[HN Gopher] SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones...
___________________________________________________________________
SpaceX, T-Mobile to connect satellites to cellphones in remote
areas
Author : mmastrac
Score : 574 points
Date : 2022-08-26 00:32 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| [deleted]
| joshuamoes wrote:
| This will shake up a lot of things in the sattelite market. It
| will take a lot of marketshare from satellite trackers like
| inreach. Also living in a remote area, and being familiar with
| the existing tracking solutions for transport this could be a lot
| cheaper per asset. Also remote sensor locations. Anything low
| bitrate.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Iridium in shambles.
| ta988 wrote:
| I would still trust iridium more for a life or death
| situation than T-Mobile...
| [deleted]
| joshuamoes wrote:
| The bigger thing would be availability. I have an inreach
| and use it probably bi-weekly, however most people cannot
| justify the 400$ device and subscription, this would be
| included
| joshuamoes wrote:
| I'm curious what ideas are going around the boardroom table
| right now.
| carabiner wrote:
| FUCK yes. Can't wait for the Inreach to drop from $400 to $100.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| That's probably so low they won't be able to launch anything
| to replace the live sats once they hit end of life
| carabiner wrote:
| Iridium is already subsidized by the US govt, isn't it? The
| original company failed as a profitable venture.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Yeah but the US gov is VERY interested in Starlink now
| after seeing how effective it has been in Ukraine (and
| how quick to deploy). Pretty likely they're going to
| shift to the winning horse.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Good
| londons_explore wrote:
| Can they do that with existing T-Mobile's issued radio licenses?
|
| If not, I assume there will be a ~1 year delay while the whole
| lot goes through FCC approvals and every competing company puts
| in complaints and lawsuits about how it's unfair...
| trillic wrote:
| Anecdotally, 5G is significantly better at line of sight at
| significant distances than previous technology. While sailing 40+
| miles offshore this summer, I've gotten 5G on deck, with decent
| upload performance using my iPhone, when in years previous I
| didn't get coverage much beyond 12 miles anywhere around where I
| sail, despite there being tall buildings with cell towers on them
| with a 30+ mile horizon for at least 2 decades. I use ATT, but
| super excited for this cell service anywhere future, will be
| switching to T-Mobile SIM for my dev phone.
| peteradio wrote:
| Not sure what would make 5G any better than LTE for coverage,
| maybe your towers were simply upgraded to higher power during a
| 5G upgrade?
| cozzyd wrote:
| Maybe the 700 MHz band?
| peteradio wrote:
| Good point, lower frequency band could have been
| introduced.
| memco wrote:
| I'm booking a cruise on which they're asking $200 for five days
| of data. This would be helpful if we were too far off shore to
| get reception to avoid such high fees. Starlink itself
| currently offers service to ships at a cost of $5000/mo. plus
| $10,000 for the hardware. This could save a lot of money where
| a simple mobile data plan would suffice.
| Neil44 wrote:
| I took a cruise last week where they wanted 25$ a day per
| device for internet. I took a little battery powered 4G
| dongle to leave on the balcony to give our room wifi which
| worked quite well even when land was barely in sight. Of
| course the land had to be on our side of the ship.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Do you work from a sailboat?
| trillic wrote:
| Nope; just like getting higher resolution weather and being
| able to update friends/family with ongoings.
| dataflow wrote:
| How will this work in terms of spectrum usage across countries?
| Will every country have to allocate the same frequencies as the
| carriers involved in the US? Will every phone have to support
| particular bands used in the US? A bit confused about how they
| anticipate tackling the hurdles here.
| extheat wrote:
| I imagine that the satellites can switch frequencies within a
| small margin as they commonly need to do that when faced with
| interference. They can already shut off when traveling over
| countries where they don't have broadcast permission. But yes,
| it seems like ~2GHz is what SpaceX/T-Mobile is using here, so
| they'd need approval around those frequencies or more antennas
| on the satellites for higher frequencies which doesn't make
| alot of economic sense. Also the penetration will get worse the
| higher in frequency they go.
| thibran wrote:
| The thing I would really like to read is: SpaceX IPO
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| The Justice Department blocking the AT&T/T-Mobile merger has had
| huge benefits for consumers.
|
| Even though I am on another cell carrier, the competition has
| pushed them to increase their level of service and lower prices.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Absolutely particularly as AT&Ts strategy here is spend
| billions of federal dollars building out firstnet!
| spaghettiToy wrote:
| tomcam wrote:
| Color me not the least impressed.
|
| I pay $200/month for my family to use T-Mobile. Data barely works
| in my backyard--and I'm one city over from their headquarters.
| I've called them and I've Tweeted. They energetically tell me
| they're taking action and... nothing happens.
| wmf wrote:
| Have you considered a CellSpot? It served me well in the days
| when my phone didn't support Wi-Fi calling.
| tomcam wrote:
| That is a good suggestion, thank you. Unfortunately when I'm
| out of the backyard it means I am doing a ton of work that
| doesn't benefit by my carrying an extra device around
| wmf wrote:
| The CellSpot is something you install; you don't carry it.
| tomcam wrote:
| It's a mini cell tower! YES, I'm looking into it!
|
| https://www.t-mobile.com/support/coverage/4g-lte-cellspot
| pokerhobo wrote:
| So why haven't you switched carriers already?
| tomcam wrote:
| I would love to but it's a long-term contract
| googlryas wrote:
| Ever since hearing about Starlink I wondered if SpaceX would eat
| the lunch of iridium and every other geosync satellite player.
| Seems like maybe it will happen.
| sparkyqin wrote:
| more and more statellites are around the earth, they must be
| interfered with each other, how do they solve the problem?
| Corrado wrote:
| There's some evidence[0] that Tesla will enable messaging in
| their cars using Starlink. This would be a bonus for me simply
| because I often times lose signal in my car near my house, and
| I'm near my house quite a bit.
|
| [0] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-premium-connectivity-
| starlin...
| mmastrac wrote:
| I'm not sure how to title this exactly.
|
| There's an article here:
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/spacex-and-t-mobile-to-connect-...
| arbuge wrote:
| More detail here: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/25/spacex-and-t-
| mobile-team-up-...
|
| "T-Mobile users will be able to use messaging, MMS and certain
| messaging apps, from remote points across the lower 48 states,
| Alaska, Puerto Rico and Hawaii and even some remote points in the
| water.
|
| Eventually, the service will work with voice, Sievert said.
| T-Mobile plans to include the service in its most popular mobile
| plans but did not disclose specific pricing.
|
| Musk said the service will work with Starlink's second generation
| satellites, which have very large antennae and will be able to
| transmit directly to a cell or mobile phone.
|
| The service won't require mobile users to get a new phone. Musk
| said in or after a natural disaster, even if all the cell towers
| are taken out, the planned service should work."
| rocqua wrote:
| The quotes here are only about transmitting to cellphones, not
| about receiving from cellphones. Is uplink also a part of the
| plan?
| omellet wrote:
| If it's TCP then there's an uplink implied.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >T-Mobile plans to include the service in its most popular
| mobile plans but did not disclose specific pricing.
|
| Hopefully this includes $20 Kickstart!
| lrvick wrote:
| Certain messaging apps...
|
| All bets are on centralized and/or proprietary ones that can
| afford to pay for the privilege. I have been saying from day
| one that Starlink is well poised to end net neutrality.
| adev_ wrote:
| > All bets are on centralized and/or proprietary ones that
| can afford to pay for the privilege
|
| Or not.
|
| App like Silence (https://silence.im/) have been able to do
| secure e2e messaging using SMS as transport layer for almost
| one decade now.
| lrvick wrote:
| SMS makes it very hard to be anonymous. Not a good option
| IMO.
| adev_ wrote:
| > SMS makes it very hard to be anonymous. Not a good
| option IMO.
|
| How is that even related ?
|
| Silence is the equivalent of Signal over SMS instead of
| the usual Mobile Data: There is _nothing_ by design in
| Signal to stay anonymous.
|
| E2E encryption are mainly there to prevent eyes dropping,
| not to provide anonymity.
| lrvick wrote:
| I was simply pointing out Starlink supporting SMS is not
| good enough, even with layers like Silence on top.
| crangos wrote:
| A major use case is in emergency situations or
| catastrophes when no classical cell service is available.
| If you are hoping to message someone to rescue you, I
| don't think anonymity is your concern.
| lrvick wrote:
| Unless you are a journalist or a dissident and need to
| relay information that will save human lives, but cannot
| risk exposing your identity, location, or the message
| content to anyone but the recipients.
|
| Not all emergencies are the same.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Good enough for what? If you have SMS where you didn't
| before you're still equally free to not use it.
| Personally I like the idea of always having a simple
| channel for emergencies.
| lrvick wrote:
| Not good enough to be the only standard form of
| communication permitted other than a handful of
| centralized proprietary apps.
|
| A journalist or a dissident may wish to get critical
| communications out from a remote area without exposing
| their identity or location.
| v0idzer0 wrote:
| Whose goal is to solve this? Not T-Mobile or SpaceX
| lrvick wrote:
| When you are the only source of a critical service in an
| area, you become a utility and should shoulder the
| responsibilities that come with that.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| They don't have a responsibility to help you stay
| anonymous if they don't promise it. Follow your logic and
| we wouldn't have remote schooling or medical services
| over HF radio either. It extends the capabilities of
| normal phones to provide a feature we didn't have before,
| so you can't expect the capabilities of full fat,
| dedicated hardware. It's better than nothing, so why
| complain? You want net neutrality for a non-Internet
| service?
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Then this isn't the solution for them. You keep assuming
| this is an internet service when it's not. Internet
| protocols are massively inefficient and have latency
| constraints that would choke narrow channels while
| offering almost no utility. This will be a modified SMS
| service, not a not an IRC service. Don't like it? Go buy
| an actual satphone with a data plan.
| Cogito wrote:
| At the event they addressed this, and said they would work
| with anyone, and that the real issue is making sure that the
| data is correctly identified as messages and not generic
| data. This apparently would require back-end work between
| T-Mobile and the messaging app to identify the data in some
| way.
| lrvick wrote:
| This is a net neutrality killer any way you look at it as
| whitelisting apps in any way will by design mean blocking
| legitimate privacy focused messaging solutions that do not
| have fixed IP addresses or identifiable traffic patterns.
|
| I somehow doubt for instance they would have a way to allow
| a federated and often self-hosted messaging protocol like
| Matrix over an anonymization networking layer like Tor,
| which is the only chat solution I use.
|
| Breaking net neutrality even a little bit has consequences
| like creating network effects further favoring centralized
| solutions forcing vulnerable people like journalists,
| dissidents, female healthcare seekers, etc, to take on a
| lot more risk.
|
| If SpaceX has bandwidth limitations they should cap
| everyone to dialup speeds and keep it neutral.
|
| If they insist on breaking net neutrality, people like me
| will be forced to do stupid nonsense like piping arbitrary
| TCP/IP as base64 blobs via chatbots over some whitelisted
| app like Whatsapp. Or masquerade traffic as port 53 DNS
| queries like dnstunnel.
|
| Protocol/app whitelisting will most discriminate against
| those with low technical ability.
|
| We have been down this road.
| Cogito wrote:
| I mean, sort of?
|
| I believe they have some sort of similar solution in
| place for free messaging on in-flight wifi. Having a look
| at how they've done that might give a better idea for
| what this will look like than speculation.
|
| Still, it's a hard problem. They want to prioritise
| connectivity on an extremely low bit-rate channel that
| covers an extremely large geographic region. Messaging
| apps needs to be a part of that connectivity solution,
| but you can't have one user making the entire cell
| unusable by everybody else. I don't know if there is a
| 'net neutral' way to do that, but would love to hear your
| ideas.
| lrvick wrote:
| I think it is quite simple. Just apply net neutrality
| rules to this like any other internet connection.
|
| If they can afford to support whitelisted messengers at a
| very limited data rate of 1k/s then they can afford to
| simply give people 1k/s of neutral internet access to use
| to communicate whatever data they feel is high value
| enough to fit over those constraints using any protocol
| they wish.
|
| We already have internet access over HAM radio via net44.
| Highly bandwidth restrictive because of physics, but you
| can get a permanent IP assigned to your callsign and use
| whatever software you want with your tiny bandwidth pipe
| even in the middle of the ocean.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| I don't think the speed of text messaging allows for many
| other meaningful data types. Someone encoding video into
| the GSM-7 format used by SMS will still consume more data
| than the typical person typing and sending text messages
| (which is what, 140 bytes each way per minute on
| average?).
|
| There is also the difference between free and paid. Sure,
| if you're paying, you should be able to do whatever you
| want at the advertised speed and data limits. But for a
| free feature, I think it's alright to limit to SMS and
| other texting apps (already done on inflight wifi and it
| works just fine).
|
| Why not just limit to SMS? Because travelers' home
| carriers might levy roaming charges on SMS, and WhatsApp
| / Telegram / iMessage is already de facto in most of the
| world.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| In practice though they want to offer bursty throughput.
| For example, if you want to allow sending photos in
| messages, but not videos, you don't want to send a photo
| at 1k/s. It's not a trivial problem.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| This is exactly why net neutrality rules were a bad idea,
| because of insane proposals like this that would kill
| legitimate innovation. If you are lost in the woods
| without a cell signal, you don't want someone downloading
| a podcast episode at 1k/s sucking up all the bandwidth.
| lrvick wrote:
| Maybe they are downloading a low res video demonstrating
| an emergency field medicine procedure to save a life far
| from hospitals. Maybe they are a journalist or a
| whistleblower uploading a picture that may change the
| outcome of a war.
|
| A central party trying to decide what data is most
| important is going to be wrong when it counts most.
|
| If a single user is monopolizing all bandwidth and a new
| user joins, throttle the existing user in half to make
| room.
|
| There might also need to be a way to signal a need for
| emergency bandwidth, 911 style, that can give you
| priority access for a short time window, with the option
| for a carrier to cut off your device IMEI entirely if it
| is used too frequently.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| How? Net neutrality applies to the internet. You could
| run a private mobile network and allow or disallow
| anything you want on it. The reason it's bandwidth
| limited is probably because they're using dedicated
| SMS/MMS channels, as was field tested and proven earlier.
| T-mobile will likely write or allow modified chat apps
| that use these channels. So there's nothing to indicate
| this would be a limited Internet service. And if you
| didn't want it your options would be no worse than they
| are now.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/18/lynk-sends-the-first-
| text-...
| Melatonic wrote:
| This is probably just a temporary solution to give
| everyone SMS capability after the fact - why would you
| assume this is permanent? Obviously the goal is to get
| everyone global internet. What happens at that point will
| determine net neutrality but that is far off into the
| future.
| tomohawk wrote:
| Net neutrality is not a good thing in and of itself. It is
| one value among many.
|
| If you're a firefighter trying to call for assistance from
| base camp, you don't care about net neutrality. You want your
| emergency phone call to have priority over everything else.
| You want the net to be extremely non-neutral.
|
| On the general internet, where bandwidth is plentiful, net
| neutrality can keep certain pathological things from being a
| thing. On a specialized network where bandwidth is very
| scarce, it can be the cause of pathology.
| mlindner wrote:
| > T-Mobile plans to include the service in its most popular
| mobile plans but did not disclose specific pricing.
|
| No, he said that it would "most likely" be included with the
| most popular mobile plans for free.
| [deleted]
| judge2020 wrote:
| "I would expect our pricing for this service to be the un-
| carrier's favorite price: we expect, on our most popular
| plans, for this service to be included for free"
|
| https://youtu.be/Qzli-Ww26Qs?t=851
| mlindner wrote:
| Yes, that's what I said.
|
| Edit: Downvotes are happening for some reason. "most
| likely" and "I would expect" mean basically the same thing
| unless we're playing grammar police.
|
| The entire point of my above post was to deny the fact that
| they "did not disclose specific pricing". That was the part
| that was incorrect that I was correcting, as shown in the
| long form direct quote.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > "most likely" and "I would expect" mean basically the
| same thing
|
| And so does just saying the claim with no qualifiers. Of
| course when you're making a claim you're expressing that
| you expect it to be the case with high likelihood. That's
| what making a claim is.
| mlindner wrote:
| I have no idea what you're saying. My ONLY point was that
| it wasn't unknown pricing data, it was stated to be free.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| judge2020 wrote:
| The direct quote is more descriptive as it claims "we
| expect" instead of "most likely". The quote implies that
| it's based on preliminary cost data and could change,
| while "most likely" almost sounds like it's based on a
| dice roll and is vague about exactly what is contributing
| to the uncertainty of the statement. He chose his words
| carefully.
| danellis wrote:
| Interesting. Is there no distance limit? I don't know how 5G
| works, but in 2G there was a limit of about 30km, since that's
| as much as the timing advance would allow for (sending the
| signal early so that it arrives in its timeslot despite the
| speed-of-light delay).
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| In 2G _GSM_ there was this limit, because GSM used very
| strictly managed timeslots for each call. If a phone was too
| far away, its signal would arrive out of bounds of the
| timeslot and this was the reason. The protocol didn 't have
| any compensation built in.
|
| However 3G and onwards were based on CDMA tech (which was the
| competing 2G tech to GSM), which is very different. CDMA
| doesn't have strictly managed cells, but rather the
| basestation picks the signals out of a cacaphony (very
| simplified). So the same issue doesn't apply.
|
| 2G was much more static than CDMA, it had a strict capacity
| of a number of calls per cell. But the range (up to this
| 30km) was pretty good because when a phone transmitted the
| air was clear. CDMA cells used to 'breathe': Have much lower
| reach during busy times (because weak signals could no longer
| be identified) so gaps could drop in the network. ON the
| other hand, 2G got busy with a fixed capacity.
|
| 2G did have prioritisation though when the network was full.
| If you called 112 (the international emergency number) it
| would kick someone else off to make space for you.
| kevin_nisbet wrote:
| I'm also pretty out of date, but I believe in LTE (4G) the
| max distance was closer to 100km, with the timing advance
| controlled in the radio protocol. As I understand it, the 5G
| radio protocol should be fairly similar to 4G, it wasn't
| completely reinvented for once.
|
| Based on my read of the summary of a couple Mbps per cell and
| focusing more on low bandwidth services like texting makes me
| suspect they're right at the limits of what the tech will
| allow. Since they're advertising compatibility with existing
| hardware, makes me suspect there is an extension somewhere in
| the standards that allows the timing window to be increased,
| or maybe there's some clever hackery going on, like only
| scheduling every other timing window and cutting bandwidth in
| half.
|
| Which might work on the uplink, but on the downlink I think
| it's more complicated to support something like paging, where
| the UE is mostly idle, and only wakes up occasionally, that
| things don't get out of sync with the moving satellite.
| yaantc wrote:
| Yes indeed, LTE max cell size is 100 km.
|
| There's a system using LTE to backhaul Internet traffic
| from planes (WiFi in cabin, with a LTE to the ground),
| working with larger cells of up to ~900 km from memory, but
| it doesn't use standard LTE for example. It uses a modified
| variant made to support the possibly larger propagation
| delay coming with larger cells.
|
| For 5G (NR), the max cell size has been increased and
| depends on the OFDM subcarrier spacing. For a 15 kHz SC,
| same as LTE, the max cell size is 300 km. This value is
| halved each time the SC doubles.
|
| There's work on-going to extend NR to non-terrestrial
| networks. I don't know where it stands right now, but it'll
| likely add larger cells support. But it's not there yet for
| sure.
| dvdkhlng wrote:
| I'd think that the distance limit for _terrestrial_ mobile
| networks comes from the guard interval of the OFDM modulation
| [1]. I.e. on longer distances the time-offset between
| different different reception paths (due to reflections) of
| the signal becomes so long that you cannot compensate those
| with just a complex gain-factor of the OFDM vectors.
|
| AFAIR LTE (4G) even uses different guard intervals depending
| on rural vs. city setting because that time-offset is larger
| in rural areas (less base station density).
|
| I would not expect those problems to be relevant for
| satellite communication as ground<->satellite does not suffer
| much of the multi-path signal propagation of terrestrial
| systems. (IIRC DVB-c sat-TV broadcasts did not even use OFDM,
| at least not for the older "v1" DVB-c standard).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal_frequency-
| division_...
| ahefner wrote:
| Nitpick: You probably mean DVB-S (and S2, S2X..) rather
| than DVB-C, and you're correct that they don't employ OFDM
| (they're just a straightforward single wideband channel
| mostly employing variations on phase-shift keying), and
| aren't particularly concerned with multipath interference.
| swyx wrote:
| does this extend to TMobile based mvno's like Mint Mobile? cant
| tell
| xeromal wrote:
| Doesn't seem logical as this feels like a premium service.
| We'll find out soon enough though.
| comboy wrote:
| > to transmit directly to a cell or mobile phone.
|
| If it could talk directly with mobile phones it's a game
| changer.
|
| But I don't understand how it could be physically possible
| without phased array and satellite tracking for a phone to
| transmit anything back to satellite. If achieved, even a few
| bytes per minute would already be big.
| ericabiz wrote:
| I believe this is SpaceX trying to stay one step ahead of Apple.
|
| Anyone else remember this strange rumor about iPhones including
| satellite capability a year ago?
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/29/iphone-13-to-feature-le...
|
| Now you have Apple's event in a couple weeks themed "Far Out"
| with space pictures.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised at all if Apple announced something
| similar, possibly with Globalstar instead.
|
| Of course, Apple's solution will likely only work with iMessage.
| So of course Musk comes out first, with the "we are doing it too,
| but it will work with any phone."
|
| Interesting times.
| Axien wrote:
| Apple, as far as I know, does not own spectrum. Therefore I
| doubt it is an Apple thing. More likely an AT&T or Verizon
| thing. And the service works on the iPhone.
| phillipseamore wrote:
| From the rumours I've heard, OneWeb is involved with that.
| OneWeb sats are basically LTE basestations.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Today's announcement says my _existing_ T-Mobile phone already
| had satellite capability!!
|
| They just need to get the satellites up.
| yreg wrote:
| It's not the first time I hear about this tech. AST
| SpaceMobile[0] wants to do exactly the same with existing
| 4G/5G phones.
|
| Of course, they are launching with SpaceX. They might get
| sherlocked before even finishing their product.
|
| [0] https://ast-science.com/spacemobile/
| muttled wrote:
| They're ready to launch their test satellite in the next
| few weeks and are already building the capabilities for the
| next satellites in the constellation. I'm watching them
| carefully as it looks like they're going to be able to do
| it.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| And your existing Tesla can do FSD with its current sensor
| package. Any day now.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| My current Tesla started doing FSD almost a year ago.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Let me clarify. Musk claimed 6 years ago [1] that
| shipping Teslas would be capable of Level 5 autonomy.
| While Tesla's markets their feature as "full self
| driving" it's a far cry from even level 3 afaik.
|
| It's kind of sad people fall for this. It also has lethal
| consequences as people assume it can do things it very
| well can't (cruise control+ is really what the feature
| is). It's a very obvious grift and SEC and FTC regulators
| have apparently been asleep at the wheel to enforce it.
| Wouldn't surprise me if there's a shareholder lawsuit at
| some point. Certainly if the stock collapses once someone
| beats Tesla to level 5.
|
| [1] https://www.motortrend.com/news/new-tesla-models-
| will-featur...
| dailykoder wrote:
| Musk already admitted that he was very wrong about FSD
| and that it's not that easy.
|
| Sure his talk was dumb and a lot of people fell for it,
| but that's just how marketing works.
| philistine wrote:
| That is not how marketing works. Show me a reputable book
| about marketing that says: promise something that doesn't
| exist.
| epgui wrote:
| Alternatively... Explain to me how making predictions
| about the future that don't pan out is surprising or
| alienating to anyone reasonable.
|
| Anyone who thinks predictions about the future hold the
| same weight as statements about things that currently
| exist ought to know better.
| williamtrask wrote:
| If the marketing book said that it would be poorly
| marketing itself. There's plenty of "bend the truth"
| culture in marketing.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| By 'how marketing works' do you mean 'how every software
| sales VP I have ever worked with works'?
| babypuncher wrote:
| I mean, he still took a bunch of people's money for the
| feature, then didn't give it back after admitting L5
| wasn't coming any time soon.
| bagels wrote:
| That's how fraud works, not marketing.
| epgui wrote:
| It's not fraud when you're just over-optimistic, you
| believe what you're saying, and you end up being wrong.
|
| It might suck, but it's not fraud.
| assttoasstmgr wrote:
| > _It's not fraud when you're just over-optimistic, you
| believe what you're saying, and you end up being wrong._
|
| "It's not a lie if you believe it."
|
| -- G. Costanza
| [deleted]
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Yep, if there's one thing that the AI "community" has
| done, it's over promise and under deliver. Tesla was a
| lot more fortunate than some others, being an automotive
| company first, and an AI company at best 4th (after
| battery, charging network).
| babypuncher wrote:
| Not L5 like Musk claimed. It's a stretch to even call it
| L3 right now.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| It's not "a stretch". It's just wrong.
|
| FSD requires constant human supervision. It has nothing
| to do with level 3 or above.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| My 2009 kia rio has FSD too, and like the tesla, it won't
| stop for children in FSD mode
|
| (note the FSD mode here is basically a brick on the
| accelerator)
| speedgoose wrote:
| If you think about the recent test conducted by a Tesla
| AI competitor, it wasn't FSD mode. See
| https://electrek.co/2022/08/10/tesla-self-driving-smear-
| camp...
| bhauer wrote:
| If you are right, T-Mobile's effort to get Apple onboard with
| making the necessary changes to separate iMessage payload from
| regular cell data on these special low-bandwidth space-cells
| could be a challenge.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| They figured it out for the free inflight wifi that allows
| messaging.
| yurishimo wrote:
| That isn't anything special. Every smartphone can send SMS
| over wifi. You need to connect to the in-flight wifi to use
| the service. The router on the plane has a hole in the
| firewall that allows unpaid users to access the specific
| HTTP server to send and receive SMS messages. Absolutely
| nothing special about it.
| rlt wrote:
| Eventually this would be no different: Starlink can
| provide (firewalled) data service to iPhones to support
| messaging apps.
|
| Speculation is that initially there would be a small
| number of satellites periodically passing overhead,
| leading to the 30 minute send/receive times, and likely
| not supporting non-SMS messaging apps well.
| [deleted]
| fragmede wrote:
| Not really. Apple gives T-Mobile the hostnames/IP addresses
| they use for iMessage, and T-Mobile configures their APN to
| only allow connections to those addresses. There's a lot that
| happens on the backend for cell data to work that consumers
| don't see.
| jahlove wrote:
| They need to know more about the payload, so that they
| don't try to upload a video through starling, for instance.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Already solved on in-flight wifi.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Of course, Apple's solution will likely only work with
| iMessage._
|
| What makes you think that? (Messages doesn't need to be on your
| carrier's network to send/receive MMS/SMS messages.)
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| There isn't really an incentive for them to support anything
| beyond iMessage for now.
|
| End game will be their own private networks but that's still
| a while away
| ProfessorZoom wrote:
| Because Apple loves to keep a walled garden
| ericabiz wrote:
| I wasn't looking at this from a technical perspective, more
| of a business/finance/operations perspective.
|
| This is Apple we are talking about. They wouldn't make this
| play without some form of vendor lock-in. They will probably
| choose to lock in based on hardware ("must have iPhone 14 for
| this capability!") -- but I wouldn't be surprised to see them
| lock in on the software side as well.
|
| If I were Tim Cook, I might play both sides. "Bandwidth is
| limited, so for now, this will only work with iMessage." This
| gives them room to open it up later for more good PR, and
| allows them to test the reaction of having it only work with
| their proprietary software.
|
| I have no insider knowledge here. I follow this space closely
| due to co-owning an independent repair business that
| primarily works on Apple products.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I wasn't looking at this from a technical perspective,
| more of a business /finance/operations perspective._
|
| I understand, but an iMessages1-only Messages2 is a non-
| starter at Apple because it causes complexity and customer
| confusion, two things that Apple is stellar3 at minimizing.
|
| 1protocol 2app 3overall, always exceptions
| ericabiz wrote:
| Oh, right. I agree with you on that front. I see it
| working this way:
|
| If you are standing on top of a mountain, right now you
| can't send anything.
|
| With Apple's upcoming announcement, you'll be able to
| send an iMessage.
|
| If you try to send a SMS, it just won't go through---same
| as it would today.
|
| I hope Apple allows it for all messages, personally. But
| I could definitely see them restricting it, especially at
| the beginning.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _If you try to send a SMS, it just won't go through---
| same as it would today._
|
| I may be confused about the scenario then, because this
| does work for me. Specifically, when I turn off my
| cellular radio (I'm a T-Mobile customer) I can still send
| and receive messages to people not using iDevices.
| rblatz wrote:
| Weird, I'm on Verizon and if cellular is off all sms is
| broken but iMessage still works if I'm on WiFi.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Most carriers have wifi-calling (and wifi SMS) that you
| can enable.
| easton wrote:
| Even without Wi-Fi? Because that's the scenario they're
| talking about, where nothing sends because you have no
| signal whatsoever.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Because that's the scenario they're talking about,
| where nothing sends because you have no signal
| whatsoever._
|
| Right, but the point of an iPhone that can talk to
| satellites that I'll generally always have at least a
| low-bitrate IP connection? Because with that, I can text
| iDevice and Android users alike.
| CapmCrackaWaka wrote:
| I find this completely false, messaging anyone on a non-
| iPhone (from my iPhone) is a complete disaster. Pictures
| / texts randomly fail to send, videos turn to 12 pixel
| noise, it's so bad that an entire generation of people
| have friend groups that apple / android only because
| communication between the two phones is so bad.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I find this completely false, messaging anyone on a
| non-iPhone (from my iPhone) is a complete disaster._
|
| You should complain to your carrier. I'm on at least 5
| different active text chains at any given time (family,
| friend groups, school parents) with a mix of devices, and
| it all works fine.
|
| > _...videos turn to 12 pixel noise..._
|
| That's an MMS limitation. If you regularly send videos,
| you'll want to use WhatsApp or some other non-standards-
| based messaging app.
| roywiggins wrote:
| iPhones are stuck with MMS limitations because Apple
| won't support RCS.
| SllX wrote:
| Hopefully they never will. Nothing I've read about RCS in
| the last two months has convinced me it is anything other
| than a security and spam hole waiting to happen. If
| there's to be an inter-operable standard between Apple
| and Android, I think it has to be Apple and Google-driven
| rather than something that makes the carriers happy.
| Anything at all to reduce their role to dumb IP-carrying
| pipes is aces in my books.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I doubt it.
|
| The value-add now is that you keep and iPhone so you have
| iMessage. You stay blue bubble etc.
|
| The value add of satellite is that you have _service_ on a
| mountain (or a plane?). The value is that most androids
| won't have that (a musk-maybe-one-day project aside).
|
| It's way more likely they'll make it exclusively available
| on high end phones. Thats a way more obvious play for
| apple.
| dmix wrote:
| iMessage seems like an odd choice to single out for lock in
| though. This is a whole network, I doubt it will be
| integrated directly with services. There's not any
| precedent for anyone else doing that (besides maybe
| Facebook with their phones). Despite the fears about net
| neutrality.
| fragmede wrote:
| Apple's a corporation like any other, and they're not
| above a little bit of vendor lock-in. Plus, given the low
| data rates this will support, this can only support a
| limited subset of Internet access.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > Of course, Apple's solution will likely only work with
| iMessage.
|
| If I'm in the middle of nowhere and need to send an urgent
| message I wouldn't want to be worrying about whether the
| recipient had an Android phone.
| Taniwha wrote:
| it's not really an android phone or an apple phone though -
| good satellite reception (as opposed to initial middling
| reception) is going to mean phones with radios meant for
| satellites and antenna that are designed to look up (and
| track) and not just sideways.
|
| 5 years from now you'll be choosing a particular android or
| apple phone because its good for satellite, just like you
| choose a particular one today because it's small, or fast, or
| has a good camera
| cheschire wrote:
| This conversation is a frequent annoyance for me. I'm tired
| of asking folks if they have Apple or Signal available just
| to send a photo. MMS is unreliable and opaque to most folks
| it seems since pictures never seem to get through if they're
| on android.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Same is true for android to android - it does a much higher
| quality non MMS. Unfortunately neither Google nor Apple
| will open up their damn protocol to the other.
| Stevvo wrote:
| https://www.android.com/get-the-message/
|
| This page, from Google, makes it quite clear their
| protocol is an open standard, and Apple are the only
| closed one.
| Melatonic wrote:
| There are no android clients that can do it besides
| google messages. Google also has their own version of RCS
| that only works messages to messages. Carriers also have
| a version of RCS but its not quite the same.
|
| Apple could and should totally adopt the carrier version
| of RCS though. And it would be great if Google would let
| apps like Textra in too
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Because clearly nobody has ever been able to send a text
| message from an iPhone to an Android device.
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| If recipient does not have iMessage he will get it as SMS.
| black3r wrote:
| iMessages aren't converted to SMS on Apple's servers side.
| It's a fallback on the phone's side. When you're on a WiFi
| but with no cell coverage, you can send an iMessage but
| can't send an SMS.
| londons_explore wrote:
| But, for such a satellite phone service, Apple totally
| could make a SMS to iMessage gateway, or even just a web
| interface where non-apple users could log in and see that
| someone had sent them an iMessage.
|
| Obviously Apple will make the process as painful as
| possible to encourage buying iPhone.
| extheat wrote:
| Apple phones are a lot less ubiquitous than general cell
| phones. Anything with an antenna and a (e)SIM card can get
| access to the T-mobile network, so what Apple is providing
| might be nice but I can't see how they compete at the level
| SpaceX can. And the global regulatory approvals needed will be
| a problem for everyone.
| fragmede wrote:
| Apple could partner with SpaceX and T-Mobile, like they did
| with AT&T and the original iPhone launch instead of trying to
| compete with them.
| rlt wrote:
| They could, but they've supposedly been working on hardware
| support for Globalstar satellites in the next iPhone for 2
| years.
|
| They want this as a differentiator from Android. Starlink
| will work on Android too.
|
| So maybe it would actually make sense for Google to partner
| with them somehow (I believe they're also a SpaceX
| investor) but I'm not sure how.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| 47% of smartphones in the USA are Apple. Seems pretty
| ubiquitous.
|
| T-mobile has 110 million subscribers and the population of
| USA is 329 million people.
| [deleted]
| imwillofficial wrote:
| They don't even have a majority, much less ubiquity.
| fastball wrote:
| Ubiquity is not a step above majority. It's a separate
| concept.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| iPhones are the plurality. If you have a few random
| people together in the US there's a good chance one of
| them in an iPhone. Pretty sure that's what they meant.
| atyppo wrote:
| Spend some time in an affluent neighborhood in a large
| metro area and I think you'll realize that isn't true. I
| sure don't know any Tribeca or Pacific Heights residents
| with Androids.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| They could put-compete if they can create an iPhone with
| extra powerful antennas or other hardware. Like they always
| do- own the full stack to allow it to work better.
| shaklee3 wrote:
| you can't create "extra powerful antennas" in a cell phone.
| it's physics, and antenna gain is driven by size.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| It was somewhat off the cuff and meant to encapsulate the
| idea that you can improve the ability _of the phone_ to
| connect with the satellite. That isn't possible if you
| don't design the phone.
|
| You could potentially control the situation enough where
| a user can enable "satellite mode" which uses extra power
| for sending messages. It'd affect battery life, and need
| to be manually enabled, but it'd enable better
| connections in emergencies.
|
| You could try to improve directional antennas and some
| sort of aiming system with the screen.
|
| Lots of things that maybe could happen when you control
| the client side instead of just the satellite side.
| jupp0r wrote:
| And then you need to design it in a way that it's not
| blocked by somebody's hand when they hold the phone.
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| Or just add a telescopic antenna and present it as
| "innovation never seen before".
| bbarnett wrote:
| What?! You mean, have an antenna show outside a phone,
| like in the pre-2010s? In today's world, form is more
| important than function.
|
| Especially for fashion statements like iphones. (Doubt
| this? Upthread people are discussing how certain affluent
| neighbourhoods only have iphones).
| chinathrow wrote:
| So what I am learning out of this is: nation states (like the US)
| probably can already track cell phones from LEO as the tech is
| there - all you need is enough sats and a very large antenna.
|
| What am I missing here?
| dang wrote:
| We changed the URL from
| https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1562954090996346880 whilst
| merging this thread and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32601899.
| 14 wrote:
| The only thing I am thinking of is constant tracking anywhere in
| the world even outside cell range. My guess is the capability
| will be always on even in a powered off state. Some sort of
| faraday cage will be needed to stop it.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Sure: https://slnt.com/collections/faraday-
| sleeves/products/farada...
|
| They probably don't make a car sized one yet which is a problem
| since every new car ships with a 4g chip these days that can't
| be easily switched off.
| bbbh318 wrote:
| Roark66 wrote:
| This is indeed very nice if it is implemented. As for T-mobile,
| how about they commit to ipv6 on all of their LTE networks? Here
| in Poland they have a network sharing agreement with Orange which
| means they use the same infrastructure, but when I use Orange's
| APN I get an ipv6 address. With T-mobile only ipv4 and they have
| no plans to implement ipv6.
| boomchinolo78 wrote:
| What do you get other than decreased privacy?
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Side note:
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/15629673112...
|
| "SpaceX announced a big partnership with T-Mobile, $TMUS.
|
| But $TMUS gets 0 options activity.
|
| Before the 12:24 pre-news yesterday, someone swept 112k into
| $TMUS $150 calls for 6/16/2023 at 11:50am!
|
| The 30k volume sustained next day, a 1000% increase.
|
| Unusual."
| 6d6b73 wrote:
| It's just another way for Musk to keep Spacex from going
| bankrupt. This will not work well for TMobile but SpaceX will get
| some money to stay afloat. Another Musk's scam.
| basementcat wrote:
| AST SpaceMobile will be launching its first cellular base station
| satellite on a Falcon rocket later this year.
|
| https://ast-science.com/
| ronsor wrote:
| How exactly does that work? Cell phones have such small
| antennas and put out a relatively weak (and omnidirectional)
| signal. I think the phone would have trouble receiving the
| satellite's transmissions and vice versa.
| syedkarim wrote:
| Big antennas (25 square meters?) which are highly directional
| go along way to improve the link budget. The main lobe is
| focused on a pet small area of land. My guess is they will
| also use the lowest bitrate modulation/coding for additional
| improvement to the link budget. I think LTE goes down to QPSK
| 1/12, which supports demodulation down to about -7 SNR?
| Something around there.
| wildzzz wrote:
| Massive phased array that could potentially support multiple
| spot coverage. You still need a bunch of satellites to ensure
| continuous coverage unlike GEO birds that can cover a whole
| continent so it will be awhile until you can get worldwide
| (or nearly worldwide) coverage. With a really fancy DSP box
| and enough bandwidth, you can account for Doppler. The speeds
| won't be great but it will certainly be good enough for voice
| and SMS.
|
| Adding things like mesh networks, you could drop a small
| server rack and generator at any where in the world and
| create a robust cell network to cover disaster zones.
| thecompilr wrote:
| I hope virtual providers on t-mobile network will also benefit. I
| use google fi, and it would be an enormous perk.
| uptown wrote:
| Somebody seemed to have the info a little early:
|
| https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/156296104641942732...
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Now give me a crypto over this and route it only through
| satellites (put a crypto sat up there). Remove money controls
| from the hands of governments. That would be a crazy revolution.
| joshe wrote:
| This will be interesting, one advantage Verizon has had is more
| area coverage in many states. In Northern California I switched
| from Tmobile -> Verizon just for this reason. It has been much
| better. This is for stuff like on a random beach, at a camping
| spot or just driving around in hills in the North Bay. I've never
| noticed any difference in SF.
|
| I thought competitors would never catch up, because tower
| buildout is so difficult. This has the potential to leapfrog over
| that. To me a reliable 2/3G experience everywhere would be
| superior to higher speeds in suburbs (if that's Verizon's
| benefit).
|
| Also I miss the Tmobile travel experience, you just land and it
| works for free in many countries. I'd happily switch back.
| jorvi wrote:
| > Also I miss the Tmobile travel experience, you just land and
| it works for free in many countries.
|
| I wish T-mobile made this work both ways.
|
| T-mobile USA customers get to chill on the network in any
| country, but if you're a T-mobile NL or Germany or whatever
| customer, you don't get free roaming anywhere outside of
| Europe.
| londons_explore wrote:
| This announcement is rather early.
|
| No capable satellites have been launched yet. The license
| necessary hasn't been granted (and you can be sure a lot of other
| companies will object to every detail).
| candiddevmike wrote:
| This is using cell towers to relay to the satellites right? There
| were some companies trying to do direct cell to satellite and I
| didn't think it was feasible.
| verdverm wrote:
| Direct from cell to sat, goal is deadzone free, global coverage
| 0xChain wrote:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1562956451538014209?s=21.
| ..
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| No, it's the latter of what you mentioned-- direct cell to
| SpaceX satellites
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| I thought existing Starlink needed a phased array antenna to
| get decent signal strength. How the hell is a cell phone
| radio going to reach a satellite?
| elihu wrote:
| If they're just going to be using this for sending texts
| for now, the signal to noise ratio can be really bad and
| still work. I suppose they could also fall back on
| buffering until a satellite is in an optimal position if it
| can't send immediately -- texts should arrive quickly, but
| they don't have to be quite real-time.
|
| That's my guess anyways, there might be some other tricks
| involved and it's an impressive thing to do at any rate.
| nomay wrote:
| I'd assume they included a cheap rudimentary cell antenna
| on the back side.
| verdverm wrote:
| Gen 2 sats and a big antenna, will work with existing
| phones
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| This is definitely what I am interested in-- how existing
| cell HW can be picked up by their satellites. Even at low
| data rates for emergency SMS, etc. (caveat, I'm not a HW or
| radio engineer), this seems like an incredible feat if they
| can get it to work.
| mlindner wrote:
| They said that the new satellites will included a roughly
| 25 square meter antenna dedicated for cell phones.
| jacquesm wrote:
| GPS is an 'incredible feat', that's advanced magic. This
| is many orders of magnitude more signal strength, even
| without beam steering. That said, it will still require a
| pretty sensitive receiver, but nothing on the order of
| what your cell phone already contains for GPS.
| jahlove wrote:
| GPS receivers do not transmit information back to the
| satellites. Presumably these cell phone users will want
| two-way communication.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's straight up, line of sight. The biggest issue will
| be water in the atmosphere. Compared to your average
| urban canyon it probably isn't all that bad.
|
| Consider that HAMs routinely work insane distances with
| extremely little power LOS is relatively easy, especially
| if one side is a satellite with a beefy antenna for both
| transmission and reception. I'm more interested in the
| power budget than whether or not they can close the
| distance and what the effect is on the cell phone's
| battery life.
|
| GPS receivers in a cell phone work at or under the noise
| floor, which to me is advanced magic. This will be _way_
| above that.
| extheat wrote:
| Line of sight will be needed for upload transmit,
| definitely. However, with sufficient power on the
| satelites it should be able to transmit loud enough at
| lower frequencies (better penetration) so it should be
| receivable inside of a phone pocket or underneath
| something shallow.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It will be interesting to see how well it performs inside
| structures. Is there any info on what kind of power those
| satellites can output or is that classified?
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Maybe we're back to the days of lunchbox cell phones that
| get extremely hot and are questionably safe to hold next to
| your head.
| trothamel wrote:
| Really big antennas, and really slow signals. The satellite
| is expected to downlink at 2-4 megabit, and uplink will
| likely be slower still.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| 2-4 megabits per "cell zone."
|
| If you're really out in a super remote location you might
| be the only person in your zone, but if you're camping
| with a dozen friends you'll all be splitting that 2-4
| megabits.
|
| Still tremendously impressive though, if they're able to
| pull it off.
| hedgehog wrote:
| This sounds like direct to satellite from existing handsets. I
| can imagine that LTE at 550km is possible but quite a feat of
| engineering.
| e40 wrote:
| There goes another plot device for movie. Now they'll have to
| rely on the battery being dead.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| How will this play with the national radio silence zone?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio...
| whoopdedo wrote:
| Starlink's coverage map currently displays that area as
| unavailable. Presumably they're able to aim the beam around the
| quiet zone.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| I watched the announcement. Knowing Musk, I'll believe it when I
| see it, but it sounds promising. Apparently the G2 Starlink
| satellites will be equipped with large antennas to support
| cellular users on the existing spectrum.
|
| Video was live-streamed, and still available here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzli-Ww26Qs
| fragmede wrote:
| Self-driving cars have proven harder than expected, but given
| the rest of Musk's tale, I wouldn't bet against him. SpaceX is
| already launching satellites, and Starlink is already providing
| service. T-mobile owns the frequencies for it, it's "just" a
| matter of building the satellites and putting them into space.
| If the claim were more outlandish, it would be harder to buy,
| but the technology is eminently doable.
| extheat wrote:
| Yes, I expect this to be one of many announcements going
| forward, with Amazon Kuiper and OneWeb coming into the party
| -- eventually. However, SpaceX has the advantage of vertical
| integration (they launch their own rockets) which
| substantially helps with costs.
| the_duke wrote:
| Also the benefit of time. Kuiper hasn't launched anything
| yet, and all their launchers are still in development - BOs
| own rocket New Glenn, Arianne 6, and ULA Vulcan. Vulcan
| probably isn't too far off, 2023, but they will need time
| to ramp up production. It'll also be a lot more expensive
| than for SpaceX.
|
| Amazon will probably have to heavily subsidize Kuiper.
|
| I reckon they hope the market is big enough for multiple
| providers.
| dboreham wrote:
| > proven harder than expected
|
| Expected by whom? People who didn't understand the problem
| presumably.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Just a couple days ago they announced that they will also be
| using Falcon 9 to launch the new Gen2 Starlink satellites,
| instead of the original plan to launch all of them using the
| still-in-development Starship. So it seems like Musk is
| pretty committed to doing this in a reasonable timeline, with
| smaller technology risk.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Starship's orbital test may happen somewhere in the next 6
| months, so until they succeed with that Falcon 9 is all
| they have (it's plenty though).
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It could be earlier than that, but they won't deploy
| Starlink satellites to a permanent orbit until later
| flights, so I agree.
|
| And Falcon 9, with droneship landing and fairing recovery
| now routine, is really a workhorse. Remarkable how much
| they fly it.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| F9 is the backup plan, but they're still planning to launch
| within a few months on Starship.
|
| You'll know Starship is about ready to launch after they've
| completed static fires for both stages.
| carlivar wrote:
| No, self driving cars are as hard as expected.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| Even in its current state with FSD beta my car drives
| itself 95% of the time.
| kelnos wrote:
| I'm not sure what software was present on this random
| Lyft I took a couple months ago, but I was seated in the
| front, watching Tesla's infotainment screen the entire
| ride, which on one side was displaying a sort of
| wireframe (not the right word, but they weren't realistic
| drawings) of objects in front of and around the car as we
| were driving.
|
| I was alarmed to see how often pedestrians, and even cars
| passing while waiting at a traffic light, would just
| randomly wink out of existence while still in the car's
| path, or nearby. Sometimes it would show cars parked at
| the curb to the sides, and other times nothing, even with
| our car being the same distance away. And yet somehow at
| one point it consistently displayed a traffic cone that
| was on the sidewalk against a building. Didn't really
| give me much confidence in Tesla's self-driving software
| if the object detection bits can't even get that right.
| But again, I don't know what software was running on that
| car, may not have been the latest-and-greatest.
|
| I don't think I'd trust even the FSD beta to drive my car
| 95% of the time. Or 1%, even.
| ericd wrote:
| That sounds like it was probably the standard Tesla
| display, rather than the FSD Beta display? My
| understanding is that it's a very different system. But
| yeah, the standard display has pretty laughable object
| persistence.
| rblatz wrote:
| I was interested in FSD but autopilot is so shitty and
| unreliable it has convinced me to not buy the upgrade. If
| they want to sell an expensive upgrade from autopilot to
| FSD they need to make the autopilot flawless at its job.
| epgui wrote:
| The display is not a great indicator of what the car
| "sees". Ideally the display would reassure the passenger,
| but you could totally solve self driving without solving
| this UX problem.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| It's a beta so you shouldn't trust it. I'm just saying,
| I've driven thousands of miles and 95% of the time no
| issues. The other 5% I almost always know where it will
| have issues and manually take over before it even gets
| into a bad situation. A lot of these bad situations I
| think are easy fixes that will be resolved with future
| updates. I agree the object recognition is a bit jumpy,
| but it hasn't really affected the driving afaik, and I'm
| sure over time that will stabilize. It is really cool
| Tesla shows you exactly what the car sees. In other self-
| driving systems the user usually has no idea what the car
| is seeing. Tesla could do that as well, but this way it
| is much more honest. I'm looking forward to getting the
| latest release which is able to recognize the 3d model of
| unknown objects and avoid them.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _I 've driven thousands of miles and 95% of the time no
| issues. The other 5% I almost always know where it will
| have issues and manually take over before it even gets
| into a bad situation._
|
| This is not Full Self Driving, or remotely close to it.
| Having to take over for any tricky situation is
| antithetical to FSD's purpose. Besides the fact that
| "thousands of miles" is a microscopic scale of driving.
| That's a vacation for some people.
|
| > _A lot of these bad situations I think are easy fixes_
|
| Ah yes, easy fixes. Just have to catalog all the "bad"
| situations!
| bottlepalm wrote:
| Really? I'd say it's 95% there if the car is fully self
| driving 95% of the time.
|
| Taking over for tricky situations alerts Tesla to those
| situations and allows them to rank and fix the issue.
|
| 1,000's of miles might be nothing, but then multiply it
| by the tens of thousands of drivers using it everyday and
| yes Tesla basically is aware of _all_ the tricky
| situations and is working to resolve them.
|
| I really don't understand people like you who criticize
| companies trying to push things forward. At least they're
| trying, why be so unsupportive?
| carlivar wrote:
| Are you a developer? Everyone knows the last 10% takes
| 90% of the time.
|
| Though in this case I would say the remaining problems in
| FSD become exponentially more difficult the closer to
| 100%.
|
| Why am I critical? Because Elon Musk reminds me of bad
| bosses and product managers in my career. They act like
| PT Barnum to the public and throw tantrums internally.
|
| I also strongly dislike Musk's rejection of Kanban and
| Toyota Production System principles.
|
| After all, Musk was fired as CEO by the PayPal board
| after Engineering mutinied against his ill-advised plan
| to migrate to .net and Windows.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Building and launching them is the easy part.
|
| SpaceX will need to get FCC/ITU approval for the G2
| satellites. T-Mobile is seeking agreements with international
| carriers. I think those are probably required for the
| proposed system to be viable. Spectrum management
| bureaucracies in other countries, and opposition from
| competitors will slow things down. It will require a lot of
| money to get worldwide operating agreements in place, and
| some of the money will be bribes to the right people.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Musk has had some failures (FSD, battery replacement, solar
| roof, satellite laser communication), but also notable
| successes (supercharger network, landing a rocket).
|
| While this particular idea seems theoretically possible, as
| far as I know there haven't really been proper tests of it
| yet. So I could imagine it theoretically working, but being
| really bad (which may honestly be enough).
|
| There's probably a reason Apple seems to be doing hardware
| adjustments for their satellite communication.
| Cogito wrote:
| Satellite laser links have been deployed haven't they? And
| all new satellites going up have the laser links on them, I
| thought.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Musk has had some failures (FSD, battery replacement,
| solar roof, satellite laser communication), but also
| notable successes (supercharger network, landing a
| rocket)._
|
| Yeah, of all the projects of Musk's to be skeptical of,
| this one seems the most plausible and mundane.
| kobbe wrote:
| After hyperloop and tesla semi, I don't trust Elon that much.
| DoesntMatter22 wrote:
| Self driving is one of the hardest, if not the hardest
| software problems ever to be solved. I think people
| underestimate just how challenging the problem is. Must says
| a lot of stupid stuff but in reality he has delivered on the
| vast majority of it, though as he says it's not always in the
| time frame he expects.
| skydhash wrote:
| Wouldn't something like Westworld road system easier?
| Basically, almost all the cars are self-driven, and it's
| more like a public transit than anything. Essentially, a
| closed system. (Easier in the technical sense, not the
| implementation (politics, ...)).
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Even if that were easier, there's basically no way to get
| there without full self driving capable of working around
| human drivers. The reason why cars are convenient is due
| to the existing road network, and any deployment of self
| driving cars is going to have to function on existing
| road. If you tried to segregate the system, you would
| have to close some of the existing roads but this would
| mess with regular people and result in a very small
| network of pure self driving roads.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _I think people underestimate just how challenging the
| problem is_
|
| Is this the shifting of the narrative?
|
| "People" aren't underestimating the problem. It's widely
| known to be an extremely difficult problem.
|
| _Musk_ said he 'd have it done by now, and actually _sold_
| the technology. People have been skeptical of it for the
| better part of a decade.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I remain skeptical Tesla is anywhere near let-the-driver-
| sleep self driving (except perhaps in tunnels), but I'm
| very glad they're trying to do it, and do it at scale for
| consumer cars, not just company-owned hyper-sensored
| vehicles that cost as much as a house.
|
| Literally every company working on the problem a decade
| ago was over-optimistic, but many pursued a strategy that
| would keep the technology only for company-owned
| vehicles, which I find less satisfactory. The whole point
| of personal cars is independence. We already have buses
| and transit vans if we want mass transit. If you want
| self-driving to actually save all the lives it supposedly
| could, it has to be scalable to everyone.
|
| Musk is terminally optimistic on AI generally, including
| paranoia about AGI. I don't expect let-the-driver-sleep
| self driving for a good 10 years, but it'll be never if
| no one tries. The technology does not advance by itself.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| The technology has already been demonstrated in a similar form
| by Lynk. The large gen2 satellites have already been built, and
| you can see the deployed fitted into the Starship prototype in
| Texas, which is planning an orbital flight test shortly (low
| single digit months is the desired plan, but don't get too
| excited until the static fire tests have been completed on both
| the booster and the upperstage). They have several other
| Starships being built as we speak, you can watch them on
| livestreams on YouTube right now, and these will be the ones
| that start deploying the new satellites (the first Starship
| will not enter a permanent orbit as they want to ensure that if
| there's a problem with Starship it doesn't stay in orbit as
| debris... like Shuttle External Tanks, it'll splash down in
| another ocean).
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Seems like it requires Starship to launch unless I heard it
| wrong? Its too big for Falcon 9. Starship is still not space
| ready so it seems like it really depends on that program moving
| forward before we see these satellites in space. Given Musk's
| track record, I expect probably a year extra delay before it
| finally is opened to users. He did mention that they will
| probably produce a mini version of the satellite if Starship is
| delayed too much. Would they need to develop this mini
| satellite?
| fastball wrote:
| At the event, Musk said if Starship isn't ready they'll try
| to launch a slightly smaller version of the Gen2 sats on
| Falcon 9.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I would bet money there will be some availability of the
| service by 2023, when they said it'd be available.
|
| I know the meme is that Musk's track record is to delay, but
| Starlink has been regularly underestimated and has kept pace
| pretty successfully. Much more than industry insiders
| expected.
| cma wrote:
| Garmin inReach but works on any phone and a bit more bandwidth
| so not restricted to emergency messages. Also free with most
| T-Mobile plans (inReach is currently expensive, but may drop in
| response if that isn't a capacity only issue).
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Doesn't this require specific hardware?
| mlindner wrote:
| No, it's will be using standard cell phones with no
| additional hardware on the cell phone.
| cma wrote:
| They claimed it will work on most existing phones, but they
| did caveat with "aspirationally" all over the place.
| mlindner wrote:
| I didn't hear any claims of "aspirationally".
| bombcar wrote:
| If it's send-only than a satellite receiving a ping isn't
| insane - they're only 340 miles up.
| mlindner wrote:
| It's not send only. It's a standard cell phone service.
| ars wrote:
| It's text and data only, no voice.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| > Also free with most T-Mobile plans
|
| I can't find anything suggesting a bundling or partnership
| between garmin inreach (iridium) and T-mobile. inReach has a
| separate subscription.
| dboreham wrote:
| > Garmin inReach but works on any phone
|
| That's because it's an app that connects to an Iridium phone
| via BT.
| assttoasstmgr wrote:
| No he's asserting that this is like Garmin inReach, but is
| higher bandwidth, magically works with any existing phone,
| and is free.
|
| Which we all know isn't going to happen. 80% of the
| commenters here have fallen for the banana in the tailpipe.
| Again.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Curious that the Apple event next month is themed "Far Out"
| with space imagery. I imagine this is the modems that were
| widely reported last year as being part of the 13/14 SOCs
|
| I think this is very interesting and a smart move for Starlink
| to improve profitability options in the long term.
| SllX wrote:
| The rule of thumb for Apple Event invitation themes is to
| just assume they mean nothing--or that they're just screwing
| around with people who like to read them like tea leaves.
| mlindner wrote:
| This isn't just SpaceX, this is T-Mobile as well.
| fogleman wrote:
| "This isn't just Theranos, this is Walgreens as well."
| hackernewds wrote:
| Touche
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This is an egregious comparison, not even remotely close.
| mlindner wrote:
| Why do people keep comparing to Theranos when Starlink is
| already being used by hundreds of thousands of people?
| Starlink exists. In fact, SpaceX/Starlink now operates more
| satellites in Low Earth Orbit than every other country and
| business in the world, combined. Theranos had no proven
| track record.
|
| Like, what's enough to satisfy you?
| mplewis wrote:
| jacquesm wrote:
| Most of us here would dream of being that effective. He's
| a jerk though, that's the part the world could do without
| and with him now firmly in the Trump camp we'll see what
| kind of long term misery will come from that.
|
| I can't stand it when immigrants into a country become
| champions for the anti-immigration party, it's the moral
| equivalent of kicking the door shut behind you.
| signatoremo wrote:
| He is not a champion for anti immigration. Where did you
| get that impression?
|
| Musk is also not in Trump's camp [0]. He is centrist and
| libertarian, and he doesn't have to cater to any
| particular political party.
|
| [0] -
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-12/musk-
| says...
| jacquesm wrote:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1526997132858822658?l
| ang...
| mlindner wrote:
| > with him now firmly in the Trump camp we'll see what
| kind of long term misery will come from that.
|
| [citation needed]. I guess you missed the news of Trump
| completely lambasting Elon? Trump is no friend of Elon.
| Nor is Elon a friend of Trump. Elon is a centrist, not
| far right.
| expensive_news wrote:
| To add, Elon actually accepted an advisory position for
| Trump when he became President, but quit less than 6
| months in after voicing his disagreement on leaving the
| Paris Agreement. [1]
|
| That's exactly the opposite of being in the Trump camp.
|
| [1] https://fortune.com/2017/06/01/elon-musk-trump-paris-
| agreeme...
| nocsi wrote:
| lol you can tell someone doesn't understand elon when
| they claim he's on anyones side. He trolls everyone
| equally
| mlindner wrote:
| Conveniently ignoring all the evidence of success?
|
| I wish I could charlatan my way into thousands of
| satellites in space, a rocket that flies into space
| weekly and a car company changing the flow of the entire
| industry.
|
| Sounds pretty good for a mere charlatan.
|
| This is like the old argument about faking the moon
| landings. By the time you add up all the things you'd
| need to fake/people you'd need to buy off in order to
| make it bullet proof, you end up with it being actually
| cheaper to actually fly to the moon.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| ryan93 wrote:
| ?
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I think you damage your own credibility more than Musk's
| by saying things like this. He's delivered on electric
| cars and reusable rockets. It's fair to say promises more
| than he delivers, but he delivers an awful lot.
| fivestarman wrote:
| bottlepalm wrote:
| He's actually a pretty incredible engineer who was been
| making important engineering decisions daily for 20
| years. Decisions that make or break products and
| companies.
| fivestarman wrote:
| He never studied to be an engineer. He doesn't have his
| name on any designs or inventions within his companies.
| He isn't an engineer. A lot of claims have been made that
| he also hasn't actually coded anything that's been used.
|
| The guy is a liar, look it up.
|
| Go on youtube and search "elon musk debunked". There are
| lots of videos with sources showing how elon is a fraud.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| Elon has a degree in physics. You think you can only work
| as an engineer if the word 'engineer' is the degree you
| have? Many engineers have degrees in physics among other
| foundational sciences - math, chemistry, etc... They make
| for especially good engineers.
| fivestarman wrote:
| He has a bachelor of arts in physics. He isn't an
| engineer. There are actual qualifications to being an
| engineer and he doesn't have those. He came up from his
| dad's unethical mining company. His code has never been
| used because it "was garbage".
|
| If elon musk is an engineer, what has he engineered that
| has his name on it?
|
| Please point me in the direction that shows that elon has
| the certifications and education to call himself an
| engineer.
|
| Musk has a lot of people fooled that he's a genius, and
| he even lied about having asbergers, on top of everything
| else he has lied about.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| There actually aren't any official qualifications to be
| an engineer unless you are talking about 'licensed
| engineers' of which only 20% of all engineers are. Please
| correct me if I'm wrong and post the official
| qualifications.
|
| That being said, a physics degree is more than enough to
| work in most engineering positions. Elon being the leader
| is probably the most important part of the SpaceX and
| Tesla engineering teams and shares the credit with
| everyone else when a good product ships.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I've had people tell me that a kid building things with
| LEGO bricks is an engineer, so that means Musk is an
| engineer, too. Apologists will stretch the definition of
| an engineer in order to claim that Musk is an engineer,
| as well. It's often stretched so thin that pretty much
| anyone who built anything would be qualified as an
| engineer using the definition that also qualifies Musk as
| one, too.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| Many engineers have degrees in physics. It's a perfectly
| legitimate degree to have for an engineering position.
| There is no stretch of the definition whatsoever.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Many engineers have degrees in physics._
|
| I never claimed otherwise. Having a degree in physics
| does not make an engineer, though.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| A person whose title is 'RF Communication Systems
| Engineer' and has a physics degree is an engineer.
|
| A person whose title is 'Chief Engineer' and has a
| physics degree is also an engineer aka Elon therefore he
| is an engineer.
|
| This is ridiculous debate given Elon leads thousands of
| engineers daily and given his success there's no doubt
| that he is making good engineering decisions daily
| because he is a good engineer.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _A person whose title is 'Chief Engineer' and has a
| physics degree is also an engineer aka Elon therefore he
| is an engineer._
|
| You mean the title Musk gave himself, like "Techno King"?
| Even Musk admits that his titles don't mean anything[1].
|
| It's a real stretch to think someone calling themselves
| an engineer makes them an engineer.
|
| There must be millions of people working with "software
| engineer" titles who aren't aware that they're actually
| engineers, too!
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/07/elon-musk-ceo-is-
| made-up-tit...
| e-clinton wrote:
| I agree that he delivers a lot, but the comment is still
| fair seems he constantly over-promises and under
| delivers.
| mlindner wrote:
| What he "under-delivers" is still a lot more than most
| other companies deliver, maybe every other company.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Underdelivery is par for literally every human
| institution on earth.
|
| The federal government underdelivers. Corporations by
| default underdeliver. Grad students underdeliver.
| Football teams underdeliver.
|
| Every single institution on earth more ambitious than
| lawncare services makes lofty ambitious goals and then
| achieve maybe 20% of them. Musk is the same, but the
| difference is that his 20% are orders of magnitude more
| ambitious than anyone else, so 20% delivery is still
| world-changing.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| If someone said "I'm the fastest man alive! I can run at
| the speed of sound!" And then they went out and ran at
| 30% the speed of sound I think it would make sense to say
| "That was an amazing try. You're not at the speed of
| sound, or even that close to it, but you're definitely
| the fastest man alive and that is amazing running." I
| don't think it would make sense to call this person a
| fraud.
| rvz wrote:
| > I think you damage your own credibility more than
| Musk's by saying things like this.
|
| Why are you making it about this commenter? They are not
| wrong. Unless you can answer this next question:
|
| > He's delivered on electric cars and reusable rockets.
| It's fair to say promises more than he delivers, but he
| delivers an awful lot.
|
| So where are the 1 million robo-taxis driving around at
| Level 5 FSD ready for release in 2020 then?
|
| There is a reason why he is very clever at playing the
| pied piper and manipulating his customers like crash
| dummies to buy his FSD contraption to run each other down
| whilst increasing the price of a broken product.
|
| That alone highlights the scam he is running with FSD
| which is a shame since that it damages his credibility
| and with the repeated failed claims and predictions of
| FSD not materializing, he is making himself a magnificent
| example of a great con artist with Tesla.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| I'm pretty happy with FSD beta, drives itself 95% of the
| time and I can easily see them figuring out the other 5%.
| People like you said landing rockets wasn't possible
| either. Where are they now?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Ardent Musk critics look at FSD, see a scam, and conclude
| that Musk is a scammer and everything he does is a scam.
|
| Ardent Musk fanboys look at the rockets, see them
| actually work, and conclude that Musk is legit in
| everything he does.
|
| Personally I think Musk's ventures are a mix of scam and
| legitimate. His rockets are real, but I don't believe for
| a minute they'll ever send a colony to Mars. His cars are
| real, but anybody who bought one hoping it would make
| passive income as a robotaxi got burned. Musk ventures
| are like going to a circus; the lions are probably real,
| the mermaid exhibit isn't, and the "world's strongest
| man" is certainly strong, but not the world's strongest.
| rvz wrote:
| Well, my criticism is _specifically_ and only with FSD.
|
| There was no mention of me calling SpaceX, Tesla cars,
| etc a scam. You can support and purchase a Tesla but also
| be critical of the claims about FSD and leave out SpaceX,
| Starlink, etc.
| manquer wrote:
| Minor pedantic observation
|
| Starlink will be able to claim that achievement of having
| more than everyone else combined soon but isn't there
| yet.
|
| There are around 4000ish non starlink satellites in orbit
| today , starlink has 3k today .
| lettergram wrote:
| Dear SpaceX,
|
| How about you just give me service in middle USA. I pre-ordered
| in 2021, you're currently saying I have to wait until 2023. What
| gives? You're launching over oceans, Europe, South America, why
| not Missouri or Indiana or Kentucky?
| hedora wrote:
| You can always pay extra for their marginally slower RV
| service.
| post_break wrote:
| Probably because the base station in that area is maxed out.
| Not a limitation of the part in space.
| simfree wrote:
| Building and shopping dishes at a loss is expensive and
| requires money to scale, signing roaming agreements that bring
| in cash with no customer service work or hardware manufacturing
| required is comparatively easy.
| SECProto wrote:
| > I pre-ordered in 2021, you're currently saying I have to wait
| until 2023. What gives?
|
| The current network in Missouri and Indiana and Kentucky is
| saturated [1]. This will get better as they launch the next
| shell of satellites, and as they upgrade the satellites to v2
| (more/better antennae, laser interlink). There can only be so
| many subscribers per "cell" on the map.
|
| [1] https://www.starlink.com/map
| mlindner wrote:
| Because your area is already at capacity. It doesn't affect you
| for them to operate in other locations.
| wongarsu wrote:
| The satellites aren't geostationary. That satellite that's
| currently over your head will also travel over Europe, South
| America and even some oceans. Would be kind of a waste not to
| use it there too.
| alphakilo wrote:
| One reason may be the deployment of Starlink to Ukraine
| mlindner wrote:
| Key notes:
|
| * Everywhere in the US and US territories including ocean waters
| you will get T-Mobile service through Starlink satellites, no
| additional hardware needed (for the person owning the cell phone
| anyway)
|
| * Beta service starting end of 2023
|
| * Included for free with most T-Mobile plans other than the
| cheapest plans
|
| * More limited features may be added earlier, i.e. texting or
| emergency calling
|
| * Total available bandwidth will be 2-4 megabits per cell zone so
| this is not intended to be a replacement for conventional cell
| service but a way to provide service to completely or almost
| completely unpopulated areas of the US
|
| * T-Mobile wants to encourage other carriers in other countries
| to give up similar mid-band bandwidth (what T-Mobile is giving to
| SpaceX) and to any carriers who do, T-Mobile will offer
| reciprocal roaming where anyone from those countries visiting the
| US will also be able to use this service and T-Mobile will do the
| same for T-Mobile customers visiting in those other countries.
|
| One unclear point: It supposedly depends on gen2/v2 satellites
| which depend on launching Starship, but there was a comment that
| they may launch a "v2 mini" on Falcon 9 and it was unclear if
| those will also support the hardware for T-Mobile service.
| the_duke wrote:
| As others have pointed out, SpaceX recently ammended the
| licensing request to launch v2 sats on Falcon 9.
| nootropicat wrote:
| What the... is that what's possible with 5G? Amazing, and even
| days ago I was thinking of satellite smartphone internet as
| something scifi because of (clearly incorrect!) complicated
| antenna requirements.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Radio's got some crazy physics.
|
| So baseline, a modern cell phone can connect to a tower about
| 45 miles away. Stsrlink satellites orbir about 10 times out
| from that. They are solving this problem by some very clever
| phased array technology to be deployed on the satellites
| themselves, because when it comes to radio, you can often
| solve the problem of signal reception by boosting either the
| transmitter or the receiver side of the story.
|
| This is how we've kept in touch with the Voyagers all this
| time. The Voyager radio technology is getting no better, but
| the technology we can throw at it from a ground station has
| been out-stripping the loss due to distance and degradation
| (or at least approximately keeping pace).
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Also 10x may not be representative since the 45 miles to a
| cell tower is all through atmosphere but Starlink is 400
| miles up, so there's only 5-10 miles of atmosphere at any
| noticeable density.
| cozzyd wrote:
| The atmosphere is transparent at typical cell phone
| frequencies (and the part that can be a problem are
| clouds and the ionosphere).
| mlindner wrote:
| > So baseline, a modern cell phone can connect to a tower
| about 45 miles away.
|
| Isn't that primarily because of the Earth's curvature and
| obstructions/hills?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Good question. I've had a bear of a time sourcing good
| info on this and would welcome a solid analysis.
| Hextinium wrote:
| This [1] may help but I'm wholely unfamiliar with the
| field. A guy at Defcon did a talk about how HAM radio in
| Florida allocates their bandwidth and goes into the nitty
| details of propegation.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/fH-yyTZffAk
| ac29 wrote:
| Radio horizon is somewhat complex, but 45 miles is not
| entirely unreasonable from an elevated position.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-of-
| sight_propagation#Radi...
|
| There could also be timing related constraints that limit
| max range: radio waves propagate at the speed of light
| which is fast, but not instant.
| genewitch wrote:
| microwaves go about 10% further than the horizon, barring
| any tropospheric ducting - which cell towers shouldn't,
| in general.
|
| The issue you have with long distances is multipath,
| which can throw off the complex timing required to have
| multiple users in realtime on a single radio.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I've heard that US spy satellites used to eavesdrop on
| soviet telephone calls transmitted between line-of-sight
| ground-based microwave relay towers. The relay towers
| used directional microwave antenna aimed at each other,
| but satellites in space could pick up those signals.
|
| I can't find a direct reference to it on wikipedia, but I
| suspect this is what the Vortex satellites were doing:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_(satellite)
| madengr wrote:
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I think the "complicated antenna requirements" still exist -
| they've just put the complicated antenna on the satellite,
| instead of on the phone.
| assttoasstmgr wrote:
| Yeah that's _not_ how it works. You can 't just "put the
| complicated antenna on the satellite, instead of on the
| phone" and declare this problem solved. If you believe that
| I have a bridge to sell you.
|
| I'm declaring shenanigans right now on Elon's pitch but
| what else is new. It makes me sad that this thread is full
| of (probably) SWEs in a complete froth who took this at
| face value with little understanding of how antennas work.
| No, your existing phone will not be able to work on this
| service, full stop.
|
| The issue is not getting signal from the satellite to your
| phone. That's the easy part - after all, your phone
| receives GPS signals. Satellites have powerful transmitters
| and high-gain antennas. Even GPS which is considered
| extremely low-power has a TX power of around 20-25 watts
| and EIRP is probably an order of magnitude higher after the
| antenna (probably enough to turn your eyeballs into Easter
| eggs if you were standing in front of it). The issue is
| going the other way. For messaging to work, your phone
| needs a two-way connection. Your current iPhone/Android
| handset is simply not designed for satellite communication.
|
| "But muh Garmin inReach" ..... have you stared at one and
| wondered "why can't my iPhone do this"? First, the antenna
| is the size of a thumb, it looks like a helical antenna to
| me, which would make sense given that most satellite
| communications uses something called "circular
| polarization" to combat things like the Faraday effect.
| This requires an antenna specifically designed for it. Your
| iPhone doesn't have one, which means more signal loss.
| Iridium phones look similar - very Michael Douglas in Wall
| Street industrial design. Satellite phones and
| communicators are designed to direct most of the energy
| upwards towards the sky. Your existing phone does not so
| you are losing most of the energy in an omnidirectional
| pattern. Even things like 406 MHz emergency beacons send
| extremely short message bursts - just a few bytes - the
| link budget needed to sustain an IP connection (uplink)
| with an existing handset just isn't there.
|
| So I'm expecting Elon to deliver on the magical
| complicated-super-antenna that works with your existing
| mobile handset right around the same time he gives us his
| FSD Cybertruck. Which is to say, never.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >"circular polarization" to combat things like the
| Faraday effect
|
| Another factor is that the antenna on a satellite can be
| in a pretty arbitrary rotation compared to the receiver
| on the ground. Circular polarization doesn't care about
| orientation. Further discussion here:
| https://ham.stackexchange.com/questions/12414/antenna-
| polari...
|
| >Satellite phones and communicators are designed to
| direct most of the energy upwards towards the sky. Your
| existing phone does not
|
| Recent iphones run 2x2 MIMO on mmWave and 4x4 MIMO on
| LTE. They should be able to do a fair bit of beamforming.
| [deleted]
| samatman wrote:
| Phased arrays are pretty cool, if I had no idea how they
| worked I'd be incredulous as well.
| pishpash wrote:
| A phased array far away is effectively a point source.
| samatman wrote:
| Not when it's synthesized from numerous satellites.
| rocqua wrote:
| But it is a point source with a non-uniform radiation
| pattern. Hence it can send a lot more power into a
| specific direction.
| fastball wrote:
| Can you show your calculations for this? From the sound
| of it the Starlink antenna is going to be a 25 m^2 phased
| array antenna, which I believe would have impressive
| gain.
| pishpash wrote:
| If this worked why is a Starlink receiver a cat-warming
| dish and not a cellphone antenna?
| fastball wrote:
| Because (existing) Starlink is for home internet where
| people want good bandwidth? e.g. 100Mbps _per household_
| vs the stated plans for this which is 2-4Mbps _per cell
| region_.
|
| And because existing Starlink satellites don't have giant
| phased array antennas on them.
| rblatz wrote:
| I would assume v2 only receivers/transmitters could be
| much smaller.
| mhio wrote:
| This isn't a Starlink/SpaceX scheme. Non-terrestrial
| networks are being worked into the 3GPP specifications
| and highlight the same handset difficulties that need to
| be addressed. It's not the phone currently in your pocket
| that does this but might be fine on the phone you get in
| the next few years.
|
| https://www.3gpp.org/news-events/partners-
| news/2254-ntn_rel1...
|
| The BlueWalker 3 test satellite from AST should launch in
| the next couple of months. Looks like a pretty
| complicated phased array antenna:
|
| https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=50349.m
| sg2...
| assttoasstmgr wrote:
| > It's not the phone currently in your pocket that does
| this but might be fine on the phone you get in the next
| few years.
|
| I don't think anyone's questioning this - yet there's
| people here rage-posting the ludicrous assertion that the
| very handset in your pocket right now will work with
| Starlink unmodified. This is what I have an issue with.
| More FSD-style overpromising and underdelivering all over
| again.
| mhio wrote:
| They did go a bit hard on the existing phone's bit,
| tmobile guy at least used the word "aspiration" when
| mentioning it. I somehow doubt it, but maybe phone radio
| implementations are very forward looking on the
| standards?
|
| In any case, late '23 never means '23. So maybe actual
| useful service in '25-'26 when the network, phones and
| sats are all ready.
| wongarsu wrote:
| 4G/LTE was commonly quoted as 3km range for rural
| installations (using the 2GHz bands). 5G added 700MHz and
| 800MHz bands that are quoted as 10-20km achievable range. For
| typical cell tower heights 20km is about the range where they
| would sink behind the horizon, so that might be the practical
| limit here.
|
| Starlink satellites are about 330km up, so one order of
| magnitude further. But they also have basically unobstructed
| line of sight (if you are under blue sky). Compared to the
| normal conditions a cell phone has to deal with that might
| get you a substantial improvement. I think it's plausible
| that at least some existing phones can do it, with the tiny
| bandwidth you would expect from a poor signal.
| brokenodo wrote:
| FWIW, 5G isn't really to "thank" for increased range. LTE
| was widely deployed on the 700Mhz band in the early 2010s
| and line of sight range could easily exceed 10 miles for
| useable data.
| WithinReason wrote:
| Not to forget that satellite antennas are directional and
| can focus all their power in a narrower beam
| teraflop wrote:
| 330km is only when the satellite is directly overhead.
| Starlink's coverage is typically given on the assumption
| that the satellites may be as low as 25 degrees above the
| horizon, and at that elevation, the straight-line distance
| is more like 700km if my math is right.
| virtuallynathan wrote:
| None are currently at 330km, and the first shells of v2
| will be at 540-570km.
| kibibyte wrote:
| GPS is a thing, so I can imagine that a phone would be able
| to receive satellite signals pretty easily. But for
| transmission, I can't imagine this working without having
| your phone put a ton of power into sending a powerful
| enough signal, perhaps more so than how much power you need
| to passively receive GPS signals in the absence of
| traditional cell towers?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It works because the satellites will have a HUGE antenna,
| 5m by 5m. And to enable the launching of this many big
| satellites, SpaceX will launch (most of them) on
| Starship.
| intrepidhero wrote:
| There are cell phone sized thingies that can send text
| messages to iridium's constellation, which is (as I
| understand it) way further away than starlink. I use one
| while backpacking.
|
| I'd be super excited to get the same capability in a
| standard cell phone.
| fsh wrote:
| The Iridium orbit heights are not much higher (781 km vs.
| 550 km). You can always trade bandwidth for increased
| sensitivity. The most extreme example is GPS. Your phone
| can receive it from 20000 km away with a tiny antenna,
| but the data rate is only 50 bits per second.
| rocqua wrote:
| Within the limits of a 5G receiver, there are probably
| limits to how much sensitivity you can give up for
| bandwidth.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| It sounds like the data rate is incredibly low. That
| allows for a lot of signal margin. GPS receivers are
| sensitive to something like -165dBm.
|
| It's probably harder for the satellite to hear from the
| phone. Especially at a lower frequency like 700Mhz, a
| phone's tiny antenna is going to be a rather inefficient
| transmitter. Maybe 5g technology helps by allowing the
| phone to do some rudimentary beam forming using multiple
| antennas?
| mwint wrote:
| (How) Does beamforming work in a moving device?
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but I believe a receiving radio can
| make note of the relative phase of the incoming signal
| across all antennas, and then simply transmit its signal
| with the same phase offsets. This can happen incredibly
| quickly on the time scale of milliseconds, and so the
| typical device really isn't moving that quickly to
| matter.
|
| I believe modern wifi has periodic "sounding packets"
| specifically designed for devices to robustly measure
| that sort of information for beam forming and multiple
| spatial streams.
| rkangel wrote:
| This is all roughly right except that when you say
| "incredibly quickly on the time scale of milliseconds"
| it's often actually _microseconds_.
|
| This sort of work is done either in custom hardware or
| FPGAs - that's the only way you can precisely control the
| phase offset of signals (and measure it). They can
| respond very quickly.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Satellite smartphone internet is still sci fi.
|
| This is extremely low bandwidth and intended for sending
| extremely high latency text chats. Elon said in the
| presentation that it could be as much as 30 mins between
| hitting send and the message going through.
|
| This competes with existing stuff from existing satellite
| providers.
|
| It's really really cool, and doesn't need to be full on
| smartphone satellite internet to fulfill that coolness!
| gfosco wrote:
| His 30 minute example was when there are only a few
| satellites in space. Once many are active, it would
| allegedly become near-realtime.
| fragmede wrote:
| Satellite phone Internet previously existed, it's just crazy
| expensive.
| jupp0r wrote:
| It's $10 per month for my Garmin InReach which gives you
| emergency comms and let's you upgrade to unlimited SMS and
| some other stuff for $60. I use it a lot and it's very
| reasonable. Runs on Iridium.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| I have a Garmin InReach too, but to say it's "satellite
| phone internet" is a stretch. You can send little blips
| of data. There's no phone service. Nor is there any
| internet service.
| jupp0r wrote:
| If you read the T-Mobile announcement, that's exactly
| what you'll get. Not saying it's not great but I think
| people have the misconception that they'll have usable
| satellite internet which is really not happening due to
| physics.
| mlindner wrote:
| <deleted>
| trothamel wrote:
| It's being transmitted to existing phones, so it's going
| over 5G, LTE, or both.
| extheat wrote:
| > Included for free with most T-Mobile plans other than the
| cheapest plans
|
| This is big. Only concerning part seems to be the large antenna
| required on the satellites, which would probably incur some
| extra scrutiny by regulators, but IMO the benefits of something
| like this far exceed the downsides.
| jupp0r wrote:
| Why would large antennas require scrutiny by regulators?
| trothamel wrote:
| A combination of orbital debris and astronomy issues. A big
| antenna means it's more likely to be hit by other
| satellites, and it'll be brighter.
|
| There's a good chance this might mean these are limited to
| the ~350 KM shells, which will deorbit faster (limiting
| debris risk), and will go into sunset sooner.
| hoseja wrote:
| Is that an actual concern? Honestly sounds kinda
| nonsensical to me but I don't know enough about antenna
| size in orbit regulation.
| NavinF wrote:
| It is indeed nonsensical, but it was covered by every
| news outlet a couple of years ago.
|
| Astronomy issues:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_flare#Mega-
| constella...
|
| Orbital debris: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syn
| drome#Potential_tri...
|
| Nobody bothered to look at the details.
| deelowe wrote:
| I read the links, but I'm not seeing where the concerns
| are nonsensical.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > Nobody bothered to look at the details.
|
| This is a solid contender for humanity's epitaph.
| samstave wrote:
| space based global coverage scares the shit out of me, especially
| when its 100% commercial interests.
|
| Thought you could be untrackable off grid? Think again.
|
| Think you can be in an RF free zone, anywhere on planet? Nope.
|
| There is no "off-grid" when your grid is literally LAT+LONG
|
| 100% data access sounds awesome until you realize that its no
| longer "surveillance state" and its "surveillance planet"
| mlindner wrote:
| > Thought you could be untrackable off grid? Think again.
|
| If you want to be untrackable and off grid why are you bringing
| your cell phone with you?
| samstave wrote:
| The idea is that airplane mode is a farce, and even if you
| put yourself into airplane, there is still a back-trickle...
|
| can anyone disclaim this? What are the anechoics of an
| airplane mode phone?
| snazz wrote:
| You can get a Faraday cage pouch if you really want to be
| sure.
| samstave wrote:
| BUT, Assume Im technologically naked... global coverage
| allows drones with weapons to be 100% navigable over the
| entire planet.
| mlindner wrote:
| No I mean, there's a power button.
| samstave wrote:
| Ever heard of ILO?
|
| -
|
| Edit:
|
| And back doors, and Eschelon, and six degrees and a bunch
| of other things people dont want you to recall.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| They should be identical to the typical spurious emissions
| standard. Airplane mode is a common way to quickly test
| spurious emissions before spending tens of thousands on an
| external lab to certify your device. I'm sure there's some
| sort of RF magic you could use to get range with 25uW
| radiated, but it sounds difficult and unnecessary when no
| one actually uses airplane mode in regular life.
| samstave wrote:
| The fn lame thing is that "airplane" refers to
| specifically baseband cell... wifi AND bluetooth do not
| apply to airplane mode....
|
| Guess what the biggest RTLS radio thing-a-majigger
| BLUETOOTH - and BT pings, triangulation etc...
|
| Ever wonder why an iphone will tell you they "temporarily
| disabled bluetooth when you hit that switch for just 24
| hours??
|
| So they can re-enable (it was never disabled, you still
| have wifi on yes?) more accurate surveillance in 24
| hours...
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| If you don't want to be tracked, don't carry a cellphone.
|
| If you want to live in an RF free zone, well that will be
| tricky. Avoid lightning storms and the sun.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Also satellite TV went up a couple decades ago.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| 100% off grid sounds awesome until you have a medical
| emergency.
| samstave wrote:
| Unless youre this guy:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Rogozov
| wmf wrote:
| If you want to be really disconnected you need to take
| responsibility and at least enable airplane mode or use a
| faraday pouch.
|
| I noticed that Starlink does obey the RF-free area in West
| Virginia.
| boredpudding wrote:
| Oh man, wait till you hear about GPS.
| palata wrote:
| GPS satellites broadcast data, and the GPS receivers (e.g.
| your phone) only receive. That means that they are completely
| invisible to the satellites.
|
| You are tracked on your phone because it is connected to the
| Internet somehow, so it can send your location. But with only
| a GPS receiver (my Garmin running watch for instance), you
| are completely invisible.
| boredpudding wrote:
| I'm aware of this. I was commenting on the
|
| > Think you can be in an RF free zone, anywhere on planet?
| Nope.
|
| It seems OP wants to be 'signal free'. Which, since GPS is
| already not happening anywhere on the planet.
| samstave wrote:
| Everybody seems to focus on the RF free comment...
|
| I was talking about towers and such.
|
| But I really appreciate the comments.
|
| If you have ever been in remote areas, and intrinsically
| 'felt' a disconnect from the tech world (meaning not near
| any major RF transducers) let me know...
|
| because I have been super remote (arctic circle) etc a
| bunch and also remote jungle, and I feel a difference.
|
| Perhaps placebo mental conditioning, but just curious if
| anyone else felt the same effect??
| [deleted]
| samstave wrote:
| Wait until you hear the difference between UPD and TCP.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I think you might have a point w.r.t. tracking, but you
| brought up "RF free". There's next to nowhere on earth you
| can go to escape radio transmissions completely, except a
| faraday cage or maybe a deep mine. Besides GPS, there's
| been shortwave radio broadcasts bouncing all over the place
| for a century.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| typo: UDP
| samstave wrote:
| UPDOOTS to you ;-)
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| :)
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| GPS is unidirectional.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I assume they were referring to the "RF free zone" claim.
| Which is nonsense, since RF noise existed long before
| humans figured out how to generate it, from storms, or even
| the sun itself.
| woevdbz wrote:
| How does the radio link budget work from the cell phone to the
| satellite? (I understand downlink can work with powerful tx at
| the satellite end but most cell phones transmitters are much
| lower power)
| shaklee3 wrote:
| this is why he said it could take 30 min to get a text out.
| it's essentially noise/a very low bit rate on uplink.
| btown wrote:
| This is actually fascinating. T-Mobile doesn't need a fiber or
| even cable buildout to a remote location, just power and the
| local clearances for a tower, they plop a Starlink antenna on the
| top and bam. Congestion will be a challenge but it will be _way_
| better than the current status quo.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| I don't think congestion will be too bad. If you have too much
| congestion for starlink, you probably have enough traffic to
| make a tower make sense.
| verdverm wrote:
| This needs no new towers, direct cell / sat comms with current
| phones
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Won't that require a bunch of phone hardware for sat comms?
| stetrain wrote:
| They are using standard 5G midband spectrum from T-mobile
| jacquesm wrote:
| Not if they use the regular frequencies. It'll require a
| pretty sensitive receiver though, no point in steering the
| beam if you don't know where the recipient is.
| fragmede wrote:
| The claim is it won't.
| charles_kaw wrote:
| >Congestion will be a challenge but it will be way better than
| the current status quo.
|
| If they QoS common messaging apps and SMS, it'll be a massive
| win for a lot of people.
| cma wrote:
| That isn't what this is, but they did mention maybe partnering
| for backhaul in the future (likely with similar tech and
| frequencies to the home internet, not the frequencies in this
| announcement).
| refulgentis wrote:
| No, this needs no new towers or hardware
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| As others have pointed out, this isn't that. But you bring up
| an interesting possibility for the progression of this
| partnership.
| dboreham wrote:
| Once they discover the "bird to handset" thing doesn't
| actually work.
| mlindner wrote:
| No I think you're misunderstanding the service. No towers
| involved, this is beaming direct from space to cell phones.
| xcskier56 wrote:
| While I see the great potential in this technology, the
| collateral damage is the loss of places where one can truly
| disconnect.
|
| I just got back from 4 days camping at a remote mountain lake
| with zero phone coverage, and it's one of the most incredible
| ways to fully recharge and step away from the day to day
| treadmill of the modern world. When we loose the possibility to
| completely disconnect, I at least, will feel a loss of the true
| wilderness.
|
| I'm not debating the usefulness of this or saying it shouldn't
| happen. Having cell service everywhere will undoubtedly save
| lives, but it's not without a price in loosing true wildernesses
| macNchz wrote:
| I agree with you. For me, at least, there's something to be
| said about the expectation of being reachable: if you happen to
| be somewhere remote without any service at all, there's simply
| no way for someone to reach you. If you go somewhere everyone
| knows has service and just turn off your phone, you are
| perceived to be actively ignoring people.
|
| Others on this thread are discussing the safety aspects, and I
| don't disagree that there's some value there-I like to go out
| solo in the backcountry, and lead trips with groups of
| inexperienced people, so I own a satellite phone for that
| purpose. That said, only a few people have the number for it,
| everyone else knows that when I'm out there, I'm offline. Even
| if others had the number, it only sends texts, and very slowly,
| so it's not a true connection to the real world, just a
| lifeline.
|
| I used to feel the same way about getting on a plane. Flaky as
| airplane wifi can be, it's no longer the disconnect it once
| was.
| carabiner wrote:
| xyst wrote:
| "True wilderness" has not existed for a long time. Even your
| "remote mountain lake" area is not "true wilderness". You
| probably drove or flew to the area to camp. Human influence is
| everywhere. Our footprint has changed the various landscapes
| whether for better or worse.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| Until you get lost, injure yourself, or plain just need help.
| mwilliaams wrote:
| You could just not bring your phone. I would still feel
| disconnected without any civilization around.
| swatcoder wrote:
| You could already bring a satellite phone wherever you were,
| could probably have tuned an AM radio into something if you had
| wanted, etc
|
| Disconnecting is a choice you make, not a place you go.
| mef wrote:
| why not just not bring your phone? or keep it in airplane mode?
| nsilvestri wrote:
| Until the eye-Phone gets installed, you can always leave your
| phone somewhere else.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| I've been backpacking since I was in kindergarten and this
| comment has made me more angry than just about anything on this
| website.
|
| Your phone has a power button. Use it.
|
| You have not lost access to nature, and stop inventing a
| totally BS self aggrandizing narrative out of nowhere. Nature
| is fine. Humans are fine. We have not fallen from Eden. You can
| turn the phone off and I promise reality still works the same
| as far as strolling through the forest.
| jjcon wrote:
| > the collateral damage is the loss of places where one can
| truly disconnect.
|
| The real bummer is for the astrophotographers and observers who
| can't do anything now without massive streaks of light flying
| everywhere.
| concordDance wrote:
| If this goes ahead that means Starship is a thing, so the
| professional astronomers will have lots of orbital
| telescopes.
|
| It's the amateurs who are screwed.
| [deleted]
| imoverclocked wrote:
| Not to be snarky, phones do have an "off" button. There is no
| reason we can't have a little disconnectedness anywhere we
| choose. Ie: the problem isn't the connection, it's the
| expectation that just because there is a connection there is
| also a need to respond.
| geoffeg wrote:
| I think the problem isn't me turning my phone off, it's other
| people not turning their phone off.
| bredren wrote:
| This problem will fade, the way hearing custom ringtones on
| flip phones in the early aughts did.
| risho wrote:
| if you want to not have cell service while you are camping then
| you can just leave your phone at home. i'm sure that the
| benefits brought to people who are saved from being bitten by a
| poisonous snakes or fall down the side of a mountain will
| outweigh your moderate discomfort brought about by your lack of
| self control.
| concordDance wrote:
| This may not actually be true. The number of people currently
| dying from those things due to lack of coverage is tiny,
| while a vastly greater number get substantial QoL
| improvements from the disconnect.
| xcskier56 wrote:
| To everyone saying "just don't bring your phone"
|
| 1) Camera: iPhones are about the best lightweight camera I'm
| willing to purchase 2) Navigation: Offline maps with details
| like slope angle are critical when traveling in the backcountry
| in winter. Yes I use paper maps too, but some things are much
| easier digital. 3) I don't want to leave it in the car to get
| stolen.
|
| And about airplane mode. Yes "disconnecting is a choice", but
| if the internet is just the flip of a button away, I've found
| I'm not able to keep that button off.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Whenever I travel I tel myself I'm free to not reply to
| people on time. Especially anyone who doesn't know the
| itinerary.
|
| "Sorry I was on a plane then". "You texted me right as I was
| checking into hotel- got distracted while replying and forgot
| to send". "Couldn't answer the phone - was at a restaurant
| and answering the phone is rude".
|
| Didn't take long before the lies became true and I _would
| forget_ to reply when I see the message.
|
| You have the power to make it your reality. If the issue is
| replying to people, give yourself small permissions to not be
| punctual. If someone dies, you'll still know immediately...
| but that work memo may have arrived why you were on a plane
| ;). If your issue is that you can't stop scrolling through
| twitter or HN then i don't know. Take more exciting
| vacations? Rarely when I travel would I rather be scrolling
| endlessly (except maybe while in line places).
| kortex wrote:
| There are apps which can disable/nerf specific apps or the
| internet wholesale for N mintues, and lock you out until the
| timer lapses.
| gruturo wrote:
| > And about airplane mode. Yes "disconnecting is a choice",
| but if the internet is just the flip of a button away, I've
| found I'm not able to keep that button off.
|
| So we should all be denied a new potentially life-saving
| technology, because of your own self control issues?
|
| Also, take the SIM out (assuming you don't use an ESIM), give
| it to your spouse or put it at the bottom of your backpack as
| others suggested, or leave it at home/in your car. Emergency
| calls will still work.
| concordDance wrote:
| It's not just him, it's over 90% of humans. Us monkeys have
| poor self control and need help.
| woevdbz wrote:
| > And about airplane mode. Yes "disconnecting is a choice",
| but if the internet is just the flip of a button away, I've
| found I'm not able to keep that button off.
|
| Leave your SIM card home
| fomine3 wrote:
| Remove current APN (and keep memo away) so it can't connect
| to internet but phone/SMS is still available.
| skydhash wrote:
| Or remove it and put it at the bottom of the backpack
| (suitcase).
| kelnos wrote:
| So in other words, you're annoyed at this new development
| because you have no self control?
| concordDance wrote:
| Does anyone have good self control? Or do they just tell
| themselves that they actually DO want to mindlessly scroll
| for hours?
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| > but if the internet is just the flip of a button away, I've
| found I'm not able to keep that button off.
|
| That's a human problem with a human - not technical -
| solution. You need to find a way to resist temptation. I
| promise you'll be better for it in more areas than you
| realize.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| In my experience for backpacking photography a used DSLR is
| definitely the best choice. You can go an entire week on a
| single battery if you don't use the LCD too much.
|
| I hear you on offline maps though. Back in the day I paid the
| Tom Tom tax when going to Europe because $100 for offline
| maps was ultimately better than trying to figure out a
| roaming plan or local sim.
| surfpel wrote:
| Then does this mean you don't get recharged after any vacation
| near a cell tower?
|
| > loosing true wildernesses
|
| I'm seriously wondering how people living in the wilderness
| will feel about this point?
| hk1337 wrote:
| We'll see. This will be interesting to see how it plays out. Both
| T-Mobile and SpaceX are capable companies but they always boast
| these grandiose plans that technically do what they say but turn
| out to be lackluster.
|
| *EDIT* excluding the space exploration division of the company. I
| had a brain fart for a moment and forgot about its huge
| successes.
|
| I was thinking more on the satellite internet portion which this
| would be concentrated on with T-Mobile most likely.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| What has SpaceX done that has turned out even remotely
| lackluster?
| shaklee3 wrote:
| starlink so far has been lackluster compared to the promises,
| and it's only getting worse.
| hk1337 wrote:
| Okay, excluding the space agency portion. I honestly forgot
| about that for some reason. Because of the nature of the
| post, I was focused on the satellite internet part of the
| company. Which has been somewhat lackluster.
| joshuamoes wrote:
| How so, I personally know quite a few people using the
| service, and it has been nothing close to lackluster.
| basementcat wrote:
| AST SpaceMobile will be launching a cellular base station
| satellite on a SpaceX rocket later this year.
|
| https://ast-science.com/
| extheat wrote:
| Getting regulatory approval for the spectrum is one of the
| hardest problems, the hardest non-technical one. T-Mobile
| agreeing to allocate some of their spectrum to SpaceX is
| something that will probably happen with other carriers later
| down the line. AT&T and Verizon in the US are probably going to
| explore similar moves if the T-Mobile plan works well (IIRC,
| Verizon has plans for something with Amazon Kuiper). Wouldn't
| be surprised to see AST SpaceMobile as a target of M&A if they
| have something that works.
| ChaseG wrote:
| AST is already partnered with AT&T
| pyrolistical wrote:
| AST SpaceMobile is already partnering with telecoms to use
| existing spectrum. Seems like they have EU, Japan and Africa
| agreements.
| mlindner wrote:
| Yes if the SpaceX service succeeds it's kind of a death knell
| for the likes of AST SpaceMobile and Iridium.
| harpratap wrote:
| The market seems to be big enough for multiple providers. AST
| will definitely be providing services to Rakuten in Japan and
| thus many more clients through their Symphony offerings
| jshaqaw wrote:
| AST seems to be heading into a cost of capital war with
| Elon Musk - not a great position to be in. They have been
| telling investors for years that direct to cell was some
| secret sauce of theirs and that appears to be BS.
| bjacobt wrote:
| Most telcos like to have two or more vendors and almost all
| large terrestrial networks are built with equipment from at
| least two vendors.
|
| If space based cellular service is viable with good adoption.
| History says operators will want at least two providers
| because having only one vendor is risky.
| fomine3 wrote:
| I wish others aren't US based for that reason.
| mlindner wrote:
| This assumes that other vendors can be cost competitive,
| which, at least to me, seems quite unlikely.
| mwint wrote:
| Right, this is like trying to compete in building cell
| towers against the only company that knows how to build
| tall things _at all_.
|
| Cell carriers aren't going to learn to build rockets, and
| no one can launch at SpaceX costs (and in the US, no one
| else can launch period)
| dangle1 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Y4Jya
| userbinator wrote:
| I was momentarily puzzled at the title as I thought "Increasing
| Connectivity _from_ Space " meant astronauts using T-Mobile.
| maxcan wrote:
| Since terrestrial LTE/5G can penetrate aluminum aircraft hulls,
| does this mean cell service in the air?
| joshmn wrote:
| I'm still baffled that I get better service in the middle of a
| lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness than on the
| shore. I tried T-Mobile for service, I tried Verizon, and I tried
| AT&T, and for whatever reason, I could run a decent speed test in
| the middle of many lakes, but not anywhere else.
| kortex wrote:
| Fresnel zones are weird. Radio waves don't always behave like
| line-of-sight would suggest. So out on the water, you might be
| farther from the tower as the crow flies, but there may be less
| interference, obstruction, multipath error, etc.
| elihu wrote:
| Also, water specifically has good propagation
| characteristics. (Salt water is best, iirc.) At least, I
| think that's true for the longer wavelengths more typically
| used with HAM radio. I don't know if it holds for microwave-
| ish frequencies like cell phones would use.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Interestingly the ARRL distance records have several "rain
| scatter" propagation entries at higher frequencies...
|
| https://www.arrl.org/distance-records
| Thlom wrote:
| Back in the day when we had a VHF/UHF TV antenna on the
| side of the house I noticed the quality varied with the
| tide. Our house were 15 meters or so above sea level and
| the TV tower were on the other side of the fjord. Some
| channels we could only watch during high tide.
| JamisonM wrote:
| The network techs at my telco tell me that Cell towers hate
| trees and that is why I have no service at my home except
| intermittently on the second floor since I live along a well-
| treed river at the edge of a coverage area.
|
| It makes some sense to me, just as antenna folks jokingly call
| humans bags of water trees are ... bags of water with infinity
| tiny appendages that are constantly in motion in the slightest
| breeze.
| extheat wrote:
| Less network congestion probably? Maybe something in the area
| is causing interference on the mobile frequencies.
| noncoml wrote:
| Can someone smarter than me explain what's in it for Starlink?
| wmf wrote:
| T-Mobile is paying for this. They might be paying quite a bit
| since it requires adding a large antenna to every Starlink
| satellite.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Spectrum. T-Mobile owns the spectrum they are using.
| mandeepj wrote:
| How many of you are not convinced that StarLink will launch a
| smart phone soon? Tesla has all the related tech and StarLink has
| the connectivity. I guess at this point, it's just a matter of
| time.
| wmf wrote:
| Remember the Facebook phone? A slam dunk, right? Or the Fire
| Phone? (More like Fyre Phone.)
| mandeepj wrote:
| You notice a pattern there? A phone should be generalized;
| both the phones that you mentioned were narrowed down by its
| parent company to their own use cases. I guess maybe that's
| why they FAILED.
| unixhero wrote:
| devindotcom wrote:
| Accommodating the doppler effect is non-trivial, Lynk has
| demonstrated it with its own satellite but doesn't exactly have
| the orbital presence of Starlink:
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/29/lynk-demos-global-satellit...
|
| This will definitely be a common thing from multiple providers in
| a few years though.
| throwfaraway9 wrote:
| And so begins the next chapter of "Our Electromagnetic Prison".
| hughes wrote:
| Just add another layer of tinfoil.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| I bet that Musk's next company will be a mobile carrier. It will
| disrupt the industry, like he did with cars.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| You can't just magically become a mobile carrier. You need
| spectrum. The only practical way to do it is to buy an existing
| one.
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