[HN Gopher] Starlink launches "cellphone towers in space" for us...
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Starlink launches "cellphone towers in space" for use with LTE
phones
Author : ironyman
Score : 74 points
Date : 2024-01-03 17:31 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| rfarley04 wrote:
| As someone who splits their time between Thailand and the US, I
| cannot wait for satellite phones to become commercially viable.
|
| Everyone in Thailand uses LINE for (data) messaging and calls.
| Everyone in the US uses (cell) SMS and calls. Having just a US
| number with satellite data would give me total coverage
| quailfarmer wrote:
| Unfortunately because of spectrum rules it's unlikely that cell
| plans will work outside of the regulatory coverage region.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.airalo.com/
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Bandwidth is very hit and miss on these. I've tried such a
| service very recently and in the evening in the middle of
| Barcelona it was unusable with very sporadic bits of high-
| latency (+100ms ping) connectivity. Frankly I should
| chargeback the payment out of principle to discourage selling
| broken products/services.
| paxys wrote:
| This use case is already being solved in the boring way.
| T-Mobile and Google Fi offer free global data roaming. All
| other carriers have been pressured to lower roaming prices on
| their networks in recent years. There is more and more free
| wifi coverage available everywhere (and phones now have auto
| connect capability). People are switching away from SMS to
| other apps. This is really not a problem that needs an
| expensive satellite connection to solve anymore.
| Difwif wrote:
| Unfortunately for actual nomads Google Fi doesn't work. After
| 3 months outside the US they shut down your service.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Just pop your SIM card into a serial interface attached
| over the internet to a US-based phone's SIM card slot every
| night (or one night a week?)
|
| Surely they won't notice you teleporting around?
|
| Hopefully the phone doesn't mind the latency when talking
| to its SIM that's supposed to be 3cm away.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| All the thungs you named do not exist in remote areas and
| where they do exist they disappear as soon as a natural
| disaster like an earthquake happens.
|
| being able to use SMS in a disaster area is a big deal.
| riversflow wrote:
| > people are switching from sms
|
| Not my experience at all. I use SMS more now than I did a few
| years ago. The aggregate hardly matters when it comes to
| individual choices.
|
| > T-mobile and Google Fi > free wifi coverage.
|
| Ha! Where do you live? This doesn't hold up to any place I've
| been that isn't the flatlands. Cell coverage sucks any place
| with real terrain.
|
| I live in California within 25 minutes of a major metro, but
| in the hills. I only get one provider, Verizon, at my house,
| and only a few bars of LTE, no 5g. Any other provider gets no
| service at all. There is no place with free wifi within a 5
| minute drive that I know of.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Pretty sure free roaming is still very much a promotional
| offer and a loss leader, it's not meant to be used all the
| time: most carriers either limit the amount of time you can
| roam and/or implement separate data caps (often much lower
| than the main one).
| valine wrote:
| The bandwidth limitations mean it won't be useful in populated
| areas. This is for when you're out camping and there are five
| people on the network per square mile.
| gruez wrote:
| You already should have "total coverage" if you're using Wi-Fi
| calling, which contrary to its name also supports texting.
| anArbitraryOne wrote:
| Why not just get a US VoIP number like Google voice?
| boznz wrote:
| I'd upvote this just for Musk finally being honest about
| something, i.e. its low bandwidth restrictions. Still it's going
| to be a godsend like me who does a lot of hiking in remote areas
| to have SMS.
| gtvwill wrote:
| Incoming monopoly. Already exists but it's now just gonna get
| worse. All your comms belong to starlink.
|
| On one side yay Telstra and Optus can go jump as they finally
| have some competition. On the other hand their competition
| outperforms them so heavily we are gonna end up under a monopoly
| exporting fat gdp out of the nation via starlink. We're probably
| worse off in the long run with the monopoly.
|
| I wonder if any one has contemplated how easy it would be to
| knock out a run of starlink sats and toss a region into comms
| blackout in future years as reliance grows? Probably could be
| don't with a semi trailer truckload of balloon drones.
| darepublic wrote:
| Earth atmosphere terrorism right. Just create a bunch of
| whizzing space junk to take out all sats.
| callalex wrote:
| Iridium, Globalstar, and Inmarsat aren't falling out of the sky
| because of this, and they don't even fight over the same
| spectrum. Not to mention terrestrial cellular deployments still
| continue to get cheaper, now including self contained remote
| units with solar+battery becoming reasonably priced.
|
| As to the blowing up LEO stuff yea, at the minimum NATO and
| China have that capability. China caught a bunch of ire a few
| years back for demonstrating their capabilities.
| bob1029 wrote:
| If you look at it from an investor perspective, would you be
| willing to hold IRDM stock into 2025?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It would be much easier to take out the current mobile carriers
| than a Starlink sat. The code that runs it is of terrible
| quality, maintained by incompetent companies with no incentive
| to deliver a quality service due to their oligopoly and the
| regulator being asleep at the wheel.
|
| The reason nobody is doing it now is because it's a one-shot
| weapon. You fire it once and your target will wake up and
| actually do better (rather, the government will force them to
| on national security grounds).
|
| However, non-disruptive attacks on mobile carriers are common.
| I'd wager any competent intelligence agency has a full view of
| worldwide SMS comms for example. Similarly, non-government bad
| actors also have insider access via malware or bribery.
| jltsiren wrote:
| There is a convenient sanity check these days: just look what
| is happening in Ukraine. One of the major lessons of the war
| has been that modern infrastructure is resilient.
| eagerpace wrote:
| Is this how we respond to innovation now? They're the first to
| do something incredible. Regulation and competition will catch
| up but the achievement should e embraced with optimism and an
| open mind for all the incredible positive use cases that can be
| realized.
| pjscott wrote:
| Not an incoming monopoly, except maybe in a temporary sense for
| some remote areas. Ground-based internet continues to exist,
| and is getting better. OneWeb has over 600 satellites in orbit
| right now, with paying customers. Amazon's Kuiper constellation
| is planned to have over 3000 satellites; they've got regulatory
| approval and launch contracts signed, and their pockets are
| deep. Once those come online properly, it'll be hard for
| Starlink to charge anything like proper monopoly rents.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > OneWeb has over 600 satellites in orbit right now, with
| paying customers.
|
| OneWeb is B2B only. I assume, but don't know that it's
| because they can't get the cost of their user terminals low
| enough.
|
| > Amazon's Kuiper constellation is planned to have over 3000
| satellites; they've got regulatory approval and launch
| contracts signed, and their pockets are deep. Once those come
| online properly, it'll be hard for Starlink to charge
| anything like proper monopoly rents.
|
| It'll certainly be interesting to see how that goes. They
| went with the "hire everyone but SpaceX" launch strategy,
| which means that none of the rockets they've signed with are
| operational yet. And they have a looming FCC/ITU deadline.
| There's widespread belief that if they make a good effort,
| they can get a variance, but it's certainly not guaranteed.
|
| In general, I agree with you, though. There's not much
| evidence that SpaceX is trying to squeeze customers. In part
| because there are often plenty of competing options, and in
| part because Elons companies tend to keep prices low even
| when they do have a defacto monopoly (like right now with
| space launch).
| sheb wrote:
| Check out AST Space Mobile. They are actually ahead of Starlink
| at this point.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| In extremely rural environments? Possibly. Globally, as an
| alternative to traditional cellular service? Literally
| impossible as long as cost is the forcing factor. I'd recommend
| reading up on RF information theory and then thinking about the
| cost/bandwidth implications.
|
| Satellite-based cellular is never ever ever going to be
| competitive with locally deployed terrestrial infrastructure in
| urban environments.
| ortusdux wrote:
| They reciently released this image of these new V2 mini
| satellites. Quite the fascinating array!
|
| https://twitter.com/MarcusHouse/status/1738839709508571291
| panick21_ wrote:
| These things are so 'future' its crazy. Highly advanced phase
| array antennas. Multiple fucking space lasers. Advanced
| electric Argon thrusters. Its buzzword galore. That this thing
| is mass produced is pretty amazing, this isn't some research
| project.
| forty wrote:
| Sorry for the naive question, but shouldn't "cellphone towers in
| space" require phones to emit more powerful signal to reach the
| satellite than they do for terrestrial towers?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _shouldn 't "cellphone towers in space" require phones to
| emit more powerful signal to reach the satellite than they do
| for terrestrial towers?_
|
| _Ceteris paribus_ , yes. In practice, beam forming and the
| lack of vertical compared with horizontal obstacles reduce the
| distance. I'm not finding ready information for 5G terrestrial
| towers versus Starlink.
| kube-system wrote:
| Cellphones are UHF which follows a line-of-sight propagation
| pattern. It transmits much better through an empty sky than
| across the ground where there are obstacles.
|
| The Voyager spacecraft are billions of miles away and use 23
| watt radios. The video streamed from the moon landing used a 20
| watt radio to transmit a quarter-million miles.
|
| Starlink is just a couple hundred miles up.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >23 watt radio
|
| Transmitting from a 3.6 meter wide parabolic antenna,
| received by 70 meter wide parabolics, at a rate of 160 bits
| per second...
| kube-system wrote:
| And about 30 million times the distance.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Which is just under 1 000 000 000 000 000 times more
| signal strength loss assuming quadratic dispersion.
| hmottestad wrote:
| When last I heard about it the bandwidth was going to be in the
| kbps ballpark.
| paxys wrote:
| I know it is inevitable, but I'm dreading the day when 100% of
| devices have fast broadband-level connectivity everywhere on the
| planet and there's truly nowhere you can go to just disconnect.
| Already in the last few years with satellite internet getting
| affordable you see people in remote RV camps or backcountry hikes
| or on boats in the middle of the ocean texting and video calling
| away, streaming the latest news and catching up on work emails.
| It's just going to keep getting worse.
| khaki54 wrote:
| Time to take up spelunking!
| paxys wrote:
| Haha zero chance of that. Watching videos of people trying to
| fit into those dark, tight spaces triggers way too many
| phobias for me.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| keep watching the videos to continue your desensitization
| journey
| hammock wrote:
| For anyone who wants to try it out, my favorite place ever is
| Craters of the Moon National Monument. So many lava tubes to
| explore.
|
| And protip the people that actually do it as a hobby tend to
| call it caving not spelunking :)
|
| Would love to hear HNer recs on caving spots
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you see people in remote RV camps or backcountry hikes or on
| boats in the middle of the ocean texting and video calling
| away, streaming the latest news and catching up on work emails_
|
| They want to text and call and stream and email. You don't.
| They can. You don't have to. I get what you're saying. But
| lamenting advances on account of some folks' poor impulse
| control is neither here nor there.
| panarky wrote:
| I live in the middle of a modern and densely populated city.
| I'm perfectly capable of disconnecting without leaving my
| sofa.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "You don't have to"
|
| If something becomes the norm, it creates social pressure to
| do the same. Sometimes you can opt out, but not always and
| usually with a cost.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Wise people tell social pressure to sincerely fuck off.
|
| One of the biggest lessons in life is learning that you
| don't have to care what the fuck others think about you.
|
| Your life is short, and less than 1% of 1% of all the
| people you would ever meet will be of any consequence to
| you, let alone the rest of humanity whom you will never
| even know existed.
|
| So if you want to disconnect: Go for it. Pedal to the
| metal. Afterburners blazing. Who the fuck cares? It's
| _your_ life, not their 's. They can leave a voicemail and
| wait for you to get back at your leisure.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "you don't have to care what the fuck others think about
| you."
|
| No, but there are still consequences.
|
| "and catching up on work emails"
|
| If everyone is doing this, there will be a expectation of
| you to do it. And if you don't - you will have to really
| shine somewhere else, to not get serious disadvantages.
|
| Also I already had various big drama in my life for not
| being reachable (I still have a phone where I can put out
| the battery) - so yes, I know how to disconnect and I do.
| But there is an increasing pressure to be always
| reachable and when you don't live totally on your own -
| it is a real struggle to get away from it.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > No, but there are still consequences.
|
| Can you name them?
| Espressosaurus wrote:
| Getting poorer reviews. Not being seen as a team player.
|
| Seriously? Have you ever worked where the expectation is
| you'll be on-call, even on your vacation?
|
| If we're talking just socially, that will impact how the
| people you interact with perceive you. It's the same
| thing, as work, but with different stakes in terms of
| your ability to move among social groups that use texting
| constantly.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If everyone is doing this, there will be a expectation
| of you to do it_
|
| Most people don't go to low- and no-connectivity areas to
| recreate. If you're bucking the trend by doing that now,
| it isn't much different to turn your phone off (or leave
| it at home).
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Most people don't go to low- and no-connectivity areas
| to recreate."
|
| Well, those who do, are unfortunately often those who do
| it, so they don't catch Corona via the 5G waves ...
|
| But my point was more that right now, it is still an
| acceptible excuse (in some areas) to not be reachable, to
| say you just had no reception. That is going away soon -
| and then it seems I will have to defend every time I turn
| off my phone and someone wanted to reach me with
| something "important". So yes, the problem is not the
| technology in my eyes, but the social expection. The
| result is still the same.
| paxys wrote:
| You don't exist in a vacuum. If people around you are
| connected then you are as well. You can still hear their cell
| phone pings. You can see that strangers gathering by your
| campfire and having conversations is happening less
| frequently. And "sorry I didn't have network" is no longer a
| convenient excuse when you are on these trips. It's never as
| simple as "oh just let them do their thing and you do yours"
| when talking about a broad cultural change.
| nickpp wrote:
| I miss spending time in the evenings as a child with my
| grandparents at candle light, before electricity got
| brought to their remote village. They told us stories, we
| watched the flame flicker and we sang. It was a simpler,
| smaller world. But our modern world is an undeniable better
| one - they were the first to acknowledge, when they were
| still alive.
| r00fus wrote:
| > But ours is an undeniable better one.
|
| Is it? Honestly, global trade/capitalism has ravaged our
| planet - we have a fire season nearly everywhere now,
| ocean acidification/plastic gyre. The same engine that
| can give us global wireless broadband has polluted our
| planet beyond restoration.
|
| Yes, medicine and technology is arguably better for most
| but increasing income inequality is making everything
| less available to all.
|
| I would urge you to confirm your priors on whether the
| concept of "ongoing progress" is a state of nature, or a
| belief system.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Stop consuming the news so much and you'll realize the
| world is not anywhere as bad as the pundits would want
| you to believe.
| sgu999 wrote:
| I don't think that's fair, it's entirely dependant on
| where the person you're replying to lives.
|
| Life quality in cities is still improving, assuming one
| can afford it. In more rural areas, often simultaneously
| subject to all kinds of attacks on nature and a lack of
| opportunities and essential services, I'm not so
| convinced...
| nickpp wrote:
| Never in our civilisation history have we had so much
| available to so many.
|
| Yes, nature and the planet are in a worse state but the
| humanity is in a much better one. And I am confident with
| time and technology we will improve them both. The engine
| of progress has already solved much harder problems than
| the current ones.
| sgu999 wrote:
| > The engine of progress has already solved much harder
| problems than the current ones.
|
| I suspect the harder problems you're thinking of are all
| technological. The current ones we are facing are social
| and political more than anything, so I don't share your
| optimism...
| nickpp wrote:
| Yes, there is a danger there, and it wasn't always an
| easy path, but anti-tech movements were always around.
| Call them luddites, de-growth, anti-tech, anti-nuclear
| greens, anti-development (or their e economic equivalent:
| anti-capitalists, marxists and communists) - historically
| they always lost to progress.
|
| Humanity is huge and diverse - if a group of people
| decides to stop evolving and stagnate, another will
| gladly steal their place.
| lewdev wrote:
| I don't get it. These things are all still possible to
| do. It's just the less preferred thing to do.
| nickpp wrote:
| Of course. They're not around anymore though, so...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _You can still hear their cell phone pings_
|
| This is valid. That said, if you're close enough to hear a
| cell phone ping, you've chosen proximity. You're close
| enough to hear a lot of other sounds. You retain the option
| to move away.
|
| > _" sorry I didn't have network" is no longer a convenient
| excuse when you are on these trips_
|
| To whom are you giving this excuse? Because if you were
| previously saying you were going somewhere without
| connectivity, you can still say you're going to reject
| connectivity.
| ygjb wrote:
| I agree with you, with one proviso. I hope there is a
| proliferation of camp grounds and sites with rules forbidding
| things like projectors and speakers over a certain volume
| level.
|
| The number of projectors I have seen in use at campgrounds in
| the last couple of years is just profoundly irritating.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _camp grounds and sites with rules forbidding things like
| projectors and speakers over a certain volume level_
|
| 100% agree.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| Nothing worse than someone on a Facetime call on their way up
| Half Dome, I agree...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Nothing worse than someone on a Facetime call on their way
| up Half Dome_
|
| Is it so different from two hikers conversing?
| firstime111 wrote:
| Yes
| joe5150 wrote:
| In the most material terms, they're probably more
| distracted than two people who are both present and
| chatting which isn't great for anybody's experience. People
| also tend to be shouting into the phone, worse if they're
| not using headphones so you get to hear the other person
| shouting back.
|
| At a psychic level it also kind of sucks in ways that are
| harder to describe.
| puchatek wrote:
| Yes. People focused on their phones are even more oblivious
| to their surroundings than two people having a
| conversation.
| kilolima wrote:
| The worst outcome will be that urban Californians will be able
| to buy houses anywhere and work remotely, driving up local
| prices and making every where look like orange county.
| janice1999 wrote:
| I think the bigger problem will be omnipresent HD audio and
| video real time surveillance by governments both directly and
| also indirectly via commercial devices like smart glasses.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's an odd social issue. You can obviously regulate your own
| access. So the issue distils to it being regrettable that other
| people aren't behaving in a way that's necessary to satisfy
| one's desired ambience. Ie. enforcing behaviour of others for
| our benefit.
|
| I imagine there may eventually be sufficient demand for private
| locations that ban devices?
|
| Is there something about this that makes it distinct from a
| "kids these days" kind of lament?
| carabiner wrote:
| Such a tryhard take. Look at me, I want everyone to know I'm
| not like other girls. Get over it. I probably spend 10x as much
| time outdoors as you but I can disconnect anywhere. Even here.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| At Burning Man, I saw a woman getting accosted by a man for
| having her phone out, "ruining" the experience of the guy who
| came there to disconnect.
|
| She was trying to talk to her relatives, because her house had
| caught on fire, while her kids and babysitter were home. She
| was freaking out and trying to find out if everyone was ok.
|
| You don't like that other people are connected, when you want
| to disconnect. That's really a _you_ problem, not a _them_
| problem.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| Reposting a comment I made some time ago here:
|
| When I was much younger I also felt a profound sense of loss
| when I found that the Iridium constellation covered the globe.
|
| Thankfully our shared thought that you can't be away from
| everything is not true: caves, anything underwater or dense
| forests around the world are totally inaccessible for any
| satellite devices.
|
| Also, not sure if you've used any satellite devices but even in
| most conditions you're still pretty away from things. You have
| to set up the device with a view of the open sky and wait
| several minutes for a text-only message of a handful of bytes.
| Using it in a Costa Rican rainforest was almost impossible.
|
| For better or for worse, there are pretty large parts of the
| Earth where we will have no Internet for most likely our entire
| lifetimes.
| onlyhumans wrote:
| I'm not looking forward to cellular connected IoT devices. Like
| my tv watching me and I can't just turn off its lte connection
| nunez wrote:
| This will be amazing for in-flight internet.
| 6nf wrote:
| Might require a window seat though.
| andix wrote:
| As always with Elon: Sounds great, I will believe it when I see
| it. Or if some reliable journalist/YouTuber confirms it.
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