[HN Gopher] Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mob...
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Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 136 points
Date : 2024-01-13 17:40 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ispreview.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ispreview.co.uk)
| samstave wrote:
| > _On Monday, January 8, the Starlink team successfully sent and
| received our first text messages using T-Mobile network spectrum
| through one of our new Direct to Cell satellites launched six
| days prior. Connecting cell phones to satellites has several
| major challenges to overcome._
|
| FOR decades I have wanted a modern Pager - an SMS ONLY device,.
|
| Before Android, there were a few devices that were headed there,
| but the hiptop made it for a while and Danger begat Android (and
| a $200 million dollar exit for Rubin)...
|
| But you know what device is PERFECT for this:
|
| HOT BUNNY 1 [0]
|
| but modified to have a thin connection via starlink - if mods are
| required.
|
| [0] https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/hot-bunny-
| aler...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| +1, sign me up, like a Star Trek communicator with global
| coverage
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicator_(Star_Trek)
| jddj wrote:
| The future is now. Soon, in the middle of the Pacific ocean:
|
| _You 're package has been deliverred. Visit scam-post-gov-
| us.com/package19474_
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| "We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them on
| the oceans."
| tra3 wrote:
| You already have that with inreach or Zoleo devices. Of
| course once it's integrated into phones it'll be much more
| convenient.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| With the rabbit it would be like talking to the starship
| enterprise as well.
| tra3 wrote:
| I must be getting old. Even though I grew up on TNG I
| can't imagine talking to my computer. Maybe because Siri
| at all have been such a disappointment.
| samstave wrote:
| "Beam Me Up Scotty" Should automatically get you home -
| either by directions or ordering you a cab or calling
| your emergency setting...
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| There are a bunch of people who take blackberry keyboards and
| making LoRa texting devices. One example:
|
| https://www.hackster.io/news/this-lora-messenger-is-perfect-...
|
| It would be cool if they extended this to use satellites where
| LoRa is not available.
| DenisM wrote:
| Skimming the article I couldn't find which phone models they
| tested with. Any ideas?
| samstave wrote:
| It specifically was unspecified.
|
| [This Comment Intentionally Left Blank]
| tra3 wrote:
| Why would that be?
|
| > with regular unmodified Smartphones
|
| Why are they being so cagey?
| mlyle wrote:
| So that when operational service is announced by their
| partners, they have a meaningful announcement that will get
| worthwhile press attention.
|
| e.g. T-Mobile and Samsung might trot this out together (to
| counter Apple's announcement of emergency text for help by
| different means). It'll work better than if all the
| keywords have already occurred in media articles; it'll
| work _especially_ better if they were testing on weird /old
| development phones or phones from different vendors than
| their chosen highlighted partners.
|
| Basically there's no upside in disclosing equipment, and
| there's a lot of ways it can be unfortunate.
| lxgr wrote:
| I'm almost certain it won't be actually unmodified
| smartphones. At least some baseband and/or anpplic layer
| adaptation seems necessary in order to not waste all
| bandwidth on signaling and overhead.
| OatmealDome wrote:
| Judging by the photos they posted on Twitter, looks like some
| semi-recent iPhones (definitely not 14 Pros or 15s because of
| the notch). [1]
|
| [1] https://nitter.net/SpaceX/status/1745246204118925711
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Probably not Androids. I don't think any android supports sat
| comm right now especially after Qualcomm abandoned it's
| chip/radio effort so it's not included in most common SoCs.
| modeless wrote:
| The point of this service is it works with unmodified
| existing LTE phones. "supports sat comm" is not a
| requirement.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Ahhh I misread the article then! And Woah ok, I genuinely
| didn't think that would be possible without phased arrays
| like starlink uses for its normal service. Amazing!
| vinniepukh wrote:
| Starlink's direct to cell service works with regular 4G LTE
| radios
| modeless wrote:
| I don't know if this has been announced before: "Operators in our
| network have access to reciprocal global access that allows their
| users to access the service when they travel to one of our
| partner countries." [1]
|
| It sounds like once SpaceX has partnered with at least one
| carrier in most countries then you'll be able to travel to almost
| any point on the surface of the Earth and still have baseline
| emergency cell texting coverage, the only requirement being a
| decent view of the sky. This is going to save lives. I hope they
| are also allowed to make it work in places without carriers, like
| international waters and Antarctica.
|
| [1] https://api.starlink.com/public-
| files/DIRECT_TO_CELL_FIRST_T...
| extheat wrote:
| I assume this works like traditional cellular roaming, no? So
| this would mean you have to be a customer of one of the service
| providers to get reciprocated roaming capabilities abroad.
| modeless wrote:
| Yes, you would need service with one of the partners to get
| roaming on all of them. Although on terrestrial networks in
| the US at least 911 service is supposed to work even on
| phones without any carrier plan. Maybe they can eventually
| work it out so that texting emergency services works on any
| phone anywhere globally even without service. That would be a
| great achievement for humanity.
| 14 wrote:
| Yes it would be a fantastic achievement. I was saying in
| another comment what is your he movie industry going to do
| when there is no such thing as no service, a common theme
| used in almost every scary movie?
| connicpu wrote:
| Lead roof shingles?
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| Not even joking, a place I was renting had dead spots due
| to this.
|
| I spent ages working out why the "older" part of the
| house had no cell coverage...
| cwillu wrote:
| Sunspots
| ericcumbee wrote:
| Dead battery
| lxgr wrote:
| I think that's only technically possible for voice 911
| calls.
|
| Texting 911 requires you to be attached to a network, which
| in turn requires a phone plan and potentially a roaming
| agreement. Changing this would require some deep
| architectural changes to the 3GPP specs, or just allowing
| anyone on but filtering out all non-911 texts.
| modeless wrote:
| Interesting. I expect that SpaceX will start supporting
| voice calls with this system in the not too distant
| future, so maybe that will make it work automatically.
| Unless the telcos can get their act together before then
| and change their standards to support text-to-911 without
| a service agreement.
| lxgr wrote:
| That would be great, but in addition to network-side
| changes it would definitely require changes to existing
| baseband firmware as well - i.e. it's not happening for
| existing phones.
| joshspankit wrote:
| If the tech is still what was announced, the satellite does
| the heavy lifting and the cell sees it as a bog-standard cell
| tower.
|
| That means the real answer to your question doesn't have a
| single answer since it's in the legal and contractual parts
| of the equation.
| 14 wrote:
| I was just thinking the other day what is Hollywood going to do
| in the future with people lost movies that simply won't be very
| reasonable for in most movies. For example I saw one the other
| day and they crashed a plane but people survived and they were
| trying to hold their phones up but couldn't get a signal. Of
| course not or there would be no plot to the show they would
| just be rescued right away. With this new technology it will be
| pretty unlikely anyone will get lost and not have their phone
| which everyone carries on them. Our kids will watch movies of
| the past and think how stupid why would they not just call for
| help what is this no signal thing they are talking about. Much
| like when humans went from landline only to cellular phones
| this will be marked as another great milestone in human
| history.
| oskarkk wrote:
| Phone can run out of battery and it can be easily destroyed
| or lost.
| Isamu wrote:
| Phone eaten by a bear
| 14 wrote:
| That damn cocaine bear is at it again
| 14 wrote:
| Sure but critics will say that is a poor plot in all but a
| few scenarios. Even seen here last week was the phone that
| fell out of the jet when the door ripped off and the phone
| was still on and in working order. So ya a movie plot could
| say the person was kidnapped when the battery died but no
| more lost plane crash movies or boats being lost at sea or
| people lost in the desert. And with the recent announcement
| of a nuclear battery the size of a watch battery that can
| last 28,000 years I imagine if they become commercial we
| will see those things adopted so no matter what you can
| always signal an emergency from your phone. Sure there will
| be some plausible movie work around but Hollywood will
| definitely need to become creative.
| nwatson wrote:
| Your credit card expired and you didn't pay your last month
| of service and to update your credit card details you need
| access to your email account to confirm ID you but your
| phone is a new replacement phone and you don't have your
| 2FA codes for your email account.
| qup wrote:
| Almost any phone will let you make an emergency call
| without so much as a PIN to unlock it. No active service
| required.
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| It should even work if there isn't a SIM card in the
| phone, though I've only personally tested it on 2G and
| 3G.
| lxgr wrote:
| Not everywhere anymore, unfortunately.
|
| Germany recently banned SIM-less phones from making
| emergency calls, supposedly due to widespread abuse/hoax
| calls.
|
| Here's a list of countries where it's still possible
| (according to Apple):
| https://www.apple.com/watchos/feature-
| availability/#communic...
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| You just described a couple months of my life - my phone
| and card went missing, a lot of services were tied to a
| Revolut account on the phone - and my 2FA/Password
| Manager/Card became totally inaccessible so I lost access
| entirely to huge chunks of my life (:
|
| It's amazing how fragile stuff is. Now I'm super autistic
| about paper backups of everything, having ways back in,
| etc
| Blahah wrote:
| > Now I'm super autistic about paper backups of
| everything, having ways back in, etc
|
| I don't think autistic means what you think it means
| oDot wrote:
| I am a filmmaker, and interestingly it happened before
| already. One example is that since cellphones became
| widespread, it's not very realistic for a guy to run after a
| girl in the third act of a rom com -- a call is now enough
|
| This isn't bad -- it drives storytelling innovation
| serf wrote:
| >This isn't bad -- it drives storytelling innovation
|
| to me it feels like it just drives filmmakers to make more
| period pieces.
|
| 'the wedding singer' comes to mind.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > since cellphones became widespread, it's not very
| realistic for a guy to run after a girl in the third act of
| a rom com -- a call is now enough
|
| Seems like, if she's running away, she might not be
| inclined to take your call either?
| tuatoru wrote:
| It's already nonsensical and has been for over a decade.
| Planes have ELTs, emergency locator transmitters, that are
| activated by G-force in a crash (or manually). Any sensible
| person going somewhere remote has a PLB (personal locator
| beacon), or at least one for each three people in a group.
| lxgr wrote:
| You're underestimating the number of people getting lost or
| injured in not-quite-remote places that just don't get any
| cell signal.
|
| Apple spent hundreds of millions on building a service
| catering to exactly that type of customer into their recent
| iPhones.
| paxys wrote:
| Filmmakers still haven't come to terms with the fact that
| everyone has a cellphone in their pocket now and most plot
| confusion that normally drags on for 2 hours can be resolved
| in under 30 seconds.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| > I don't know if this has been announced before...
|
| When they announced the original deal with T-Mobile, they said
| that T-Mobile would handle the (spectrum) license for the US
| and they're looking for a partner in other countries with the
| appropriate spectrum licensing. US T-Mobile customers would
| have access to this SpaceX service in any country where there
| is a partner with the spectrum license.
|
| https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/t-mobile-takes-cove...
|
| If you have an iPhone 14 or above, Apple offers similar
| capabilities to all iPhone users in about a dozen countries (so
| far) regardless of which mobile network you subscribe to at
| home.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213426
| notatoad wrote:
| >If you have an iPhone 14 or above, Apple offers similar
| capabilities to all iPhone users in about a dozen countries
| (so far) regardless of which mobile network you subscribe to
| at home.
|
| Apple only lets you communicate with an emergency dispatch
| service. the T-Mobile/starlink service appears to allow
| sending and receiving texts to any number.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Slight downside, but in many places you can't text 911 or
| local equivalent
| lxgr wrote:
| With Apple's service, you're not actually communicating
| with a regular 911 service, but rather a specialized
| service provider that relays your emergency call to local
| authorities (and more recently car roadside assistance
| services).
|
| Relaying texts to a phone call is very likely part of
| what they do.
| modeless wrote:
| I disagree that Apple's capability is similar. The feature
| only allows texting emergency services, requires holding the
| phone in a specific orientation to send or receive, is
| separate from your carrier service (only two years are free
| with purchase), and is exceedingly slow.
|
| SpaceX's service will allow texting and receiving texts from
| anyone using your carrier number, plans to support third
| party messaging apps such as WhatsApp, is much faster, and
| does not require holding the phone in any particular
| orientation to receive messages. It can supposedly work from
| a pocket or inside a car.
| forgot-im-old wrote:
| >> It can supposedly work from a pocket or inside a car.
|
| False
| lxgr wrote:
| Elon has mentioned a speed of about 7 Mbit/s for an entire
| cell (which in these systems usually means a circle with a
| radius of a few hundred kilometers). That's within an order
| of magnitude of current LEO systems.
|
| The innovation here is that it'll supposedly work with
| unmodified off-the-shelf phones. (Personally I'm assuming
| that at least messaging software will have to be modified
| in order to use the available bandwidth efficiently.)
| modeless wrote:
| Apple doesn't disclose the bitrate of their Emergency SOS
| feature but from FCC filings I believe it uses
| Globalstar's L-Band at 1610 Mhz for uplink, and I believe
| the bitrate Globalstar supports in that channel is 9.6
| kbps. So almost three orders of magnitude less than the
| SpaceX system, not one. In addition I believe that the
| typical achieved bitrate is even less than that in
| Apple's case due to the lack of a large dedicated
| antenna. In demos it typically takes many seconds up to
| several minutes to send a single message, during which
| time you are directed to continuously point the phone at
| the satellite for best reception.
| comboy wrote:
| It may be the same speed as SpaceX. SpaceX speed is per
| cell (15 miles diameter). Given Apple scale (and
| presumably high standards) it sounds about right even for
| emergency services.
| lxgr wrote:
| The 7 Mbit/s are for an entire cell, i.e. all devices
| simultaneously transmitting in it, not per device.
|
| Iridium (a comparable system) used to support about 10
| Mbit/s per satellite in its first satellite generation,
| which had 48 spot beams each. The second generation
| supports about a megabit per modem, but these have larger
| antennas than a regular satphone.
|
| > Apple doesn't disclose the bitrate of their Emergency
| SOS feature but it uses Globalstar's L-Band for uplink
| and I believe the bitrate of that channel is 9.6 kbps.
|
| I'm almost certain Apple doesn't even use the full 9.6
| kbit/s modulation scheme for their emergency SOS feature:
| As you mention, it's way too slow for that (having used
| it myself - even just transmitting my location takes a
| couple of seconds, and that's a message of only a few
| bytes).
|
| Globalstar satellites are bent-pipe relays, so Apple
| could be using whatever custom modulation and coding
| scheme they need to stay within the constraints of their
| power and SNR envelope. With the iPhone's built-in
| antenna and transmit power (around 2 watts or so, if I
| remember correctly), I'd be surprised if it was more than
| a couple hundred bits per second.
|
| Regular (i.e. non-smartphone) satellite messengers are
| much faster than that and only take a few seconds to
| transmit and receive messages of hundreds of bytes.
| Reason077 wrote:
| ... and the SpaceX service works with any ordinary modern
| phone. Not just the latest iPhone with special hardware.
| Blahah wrote:
| Antarctica and international waters already have sat phone
| coverage. Don't think it'll save any lives in those places.
| Remote regions of populous countries with a long tail of sparse
| rural infrastructure maybe. Brazil, India, China.
| dave78 wrote:
| There are huge portions of the USA that have no cell
| coverage. Often the kinds of places that people go to hike
| and explore - and also places that people sometimes get
| injured. I'm sure that's true in many other countries as
| well. I know people who volunteer for search & rescue teams,
| and they all universally believe that this kind of thing
| definitely will save lives.
|
| The smart thing to do if you were going somewhere remote
| would be to have a sat phone. But, 1) they cost money, 2) we
| know there's a lot of people that don't think ahead or think
| that bad things will happen to them and 3) a lot of people
| are simply ignorant about the lack of cell coverage in these
| places, and just assume they'll be able to call for help if
| they need it. By the time they figure out that they were
| wrong about the coverage, they're too committed to turn
| around and go back.
| tuatoru wrote:
| > The smart thing to do if you were going somewhere remote
| would be to have a
|
| Personal locator beacon, PLB, on land; or an EPIRB,
| emergency position indicating radio beacon, on ocean.
|
| Satphones and cell phones are luxuries but these are vital.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_position-
| indicating_...
| dave78 wrote:
| Yes, agreed. I was lumping them together in my head. I
| think my point still stands that people often get into
| trouble without cell coverage and without access to a
| locator or sat phone or whatever, but likely have their
| regular cell phone with them.
| lxgr wrote:
| These are more expensive than many current satellite
| messengers (including subscription fees for a few years!)
| and importantly don't give you any feedback on whether
| your call has gone through (except for the newest ones
| using Galileo's return channel) or way to communicate
| with the SAR team and specify the nature of your
| emergency.
| tuatoru wrote:
| Where I live PLBs have a lower sticker price than the
| InReach, only require a one-time payment for life, and
| they have a ten-year battery life. I don't know about
| EPIRBs or ELTs.
|
| You don't need feedback: Search and Rescue WILL send out
| a team that makes physical contact with you, even if you
| only turn the thing on for a couple of minutes. Seen this
| in action here in NZ. They are trained in tracking, too,
| so you can't hide.
| lxgr wrote:
| Feedback has been shown to be both very important
| psychologically in a survival situation.
|
| Practically it can also be crucial to know whether your
| signal went through or whether you should trade shelter
| for altitude (e.g. when hiking in a narrow ravine with
| limited sky visibility).
|
| Two-way communication and being able to specify the
| nature of your emergency are invaluable as well.
|
| PLBs/EPIRBs definitely have their uses, but I think they
| shine more in traditional aviation or marine SAR
| situations where longevity is paramount and it's pretty
| clear from context what type of help is needed.
| davidjade wrote:
| One of the things you learn in taking a SOLAS class
| (International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea)
| is that you will most likely not talk with SAR responders
| even if you have a sat phone. An EPIRB is the primary
| means of sending a distress call for initiating a SAR
| response. It's just the way the rescue system is set up
| internationally.
| lxgr wrote:
| That's really surprising. The GMDSS part of SOLAS
| requires having at least Inmarsat C, which is text-only
| but bidirectional, (or Iridium, for high latitudes)
| equipped, as far as I know.
|
| Wouldn't it make sense to use the bidirectional
| capabilities of these to request specific help, if only
| after getting out the initial signal through an EPIRB? I
| can't imagine SAR not being very interested in the nature
| of your emergency, especially in remote areas. Engine
| loss in calm waters or a sinking vessel probably require
| a very different type of response (i.e. another ship for
| towing vs. a helicopter if possible).
| Blahah wrote:
| I agree it will also be impactful in the US. Just saying
| not in Antarctica, where all 50 annual visitors already
| have a sat phone
| paxys wrote:
| They have partnered with T-Mobile, and T-Mobile already has
| these deals in place. This is how TMo subscribers get global
| data coverage as part of their plan.
| lxgr wrote:
| Basically every mobile network in the world has roaming deals
| in place.
|
| I don't think every roaming partner of T-Mobile will gain
| access this the Starlink-based service, though. It's probably
| going to be another tier of "Starlink roaming", only
| accessible to the subscribers of Starlink's respective local
| partner operators that are also lending their spectrum.
| berserk1010 wrote:
| I wonder if this service will facilitate collapse of censorship
| in dictatorship countries like China and Russia. Especially if
| those countries are currently suffering from economic depression
| like China and Russia, and its citizens are waking up to its
| harsh realities and are keen to get unfiltered information
| kgwxd wrote:
| Not if Musk has anything to say about it.
| oskarkk wrote:
| Starlink works in Iran and is crucial to the Ukrainian army,
| but as other commenter pointed out, Musk has business in
| China, so China would be off the table.
| freedomben wrote:
| I will say, if there's one person that _might_ give China
| the bird and do it anyway despite a heavy economic penalty,
| it 's Elon. His reactions against companies like Disney
| have been shocking and remarkably principled.
|
| That said, I agree it's pretty unlikely. No individual
| person has enough resources to win a fight againt a world-
| power nation state like China, even if they wanted to badly
| enough to risk it all.
| heywoods wrote:
| If you are a country like China that wants to prevent this from
| being possible how would they go about it? Can these satellites
| provide communication between phones without a terrestrial cell
| network sitting in the middle?
| bdcravens wrote:
| Unless Elon offers it for free, they'd start at the bank
| level, blocking payments. Then they would put pressure on
| Elon, putting Tesla's ability to sell there at risk. That's
| before they do anything from a technology standpoint.
| freedomben wrote:
| Yep, and that's only step 1 on a 100 step ladder. With
| monitoring tech that they probably already have in place,
| unless there's a widespread coordinated effort to obscure
| it (which itself would be extremely difficult), it wouldn't
| be hard to find the people accessing Starlink and punish
| them. There are a dozen different angles the government can
| take to make this impossible without great personal to the
| participants. I doubt it ever gets that far as the
| financial restrictions alone will be sufficient
| gambiting wrote:
| I feel like the whole dream of "free internet will bring
| freedom and democracy to the whole world" died a decade ago if
| not earlier. All of those states had completely free and
| unrestricted access to the internet not that far back and it
| didn't really lead to anything groundbreaking - introducing
| satellite telephony to the common market is not going to do it.
| And you can bet that if the service is offered in China/Russia
| it will be forced to go through local servers to operate
| legally.
| concordDance wrote:
| Language really matters, it's a great homogenizing force.
| Unfortunately, the Chinese and Russians mostly don't speak
| English and thus can't/don't interact with pro-democracy
| people.
| MrEd wrote:
| As if you would know what the percentage of English-
| language proficiency is . Ever had friends in RU and CN?
|
| Btw, not everyone on Earth seems Western faux democracy as
| a suitable / wanted direction to move to.
| concordDance wrote:
| I have indeed made online acquaintance with people from
| China and Russia. They are a pretty small percentage of
| the population. 1% and 10% respectively IIRC.
| miki123211 wrote:
| > it will be forced to go through local servers to operate
| legally.
|
| Not having to operate legally is the whole point here. The
| hope is that Russia / China will have no way of preventing
| Starling from existing (maybe except shooting down satellites
| and causing a major international diplomatic incident).
|
| There's still the question of how to make this profitable, if
| Starling is illegal in Russia / China, it will be difficult
| for them to interface with their financial infrastructure to
| receive payments. This could be solved either with
| cryptocurrencies or support from other governments and human
| rights organizations. It's also possible that Starlink will
| allow certain activity free of charge, particularly during
| protests and internet blackouts.
|
| This moves the global nature of the internet one step
| further. Until now, it was generally possible for law
| enforcement to force ISPs to censor content and give up
| activity logs, something that made catching criminals a lot
| easier. Satellite networks make that much harder, especially
| if your government isn't very friendly with the jurisdiction
| the ISP is incorporated in. It's not unimaginable to me that,
| in ten years, most black hat US hackers will use a Russian
| satellite network as an additional layer of protection. Even
| if all else fails, all their devices get compromised and
| their IP address leaks, the Russians won't give up the
| customer info for that address anyway.
| freedomben wrote:
| But with tight controls of the financial system, none of
| that matters. Revolutions in the past were possible because
| government lacked the power/abilities to enforce the laws
| and nip dissent in the bud. Once a country goes fully
| cashless, you won't even be able to feed yourself if those
| in power decide not to allow it. And it's not even strictly
| more authoritarian countries that will exercise this power.
| It happened in Canada, a progressive western democracy, by
| a liberal government during the trucker protests. Now add
| it the ability to fully track/monitor all citizens in real
| time with cameras and AI/ML, and the power differential is
| orders of magnitude more between a person and their
| government than it ever has been previously.
|
| So as much as it hurts me to say it, I don't think this or
| anything else will make a difference. Once freedom is lost
| somewhere, it may not even be possible to get it back.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> The hope is that Russia / China will have no way of
| preventing Starling from existing (maybe except shooting
| down satellites and causing a major international
| diplomatic incident)._
|
| They've got a much easier way of preventing it from
| operating: Ban sales of Teslas until Musk relents.
|
| Nice factory producing 250k cars per year for the Chinese
| market you've got there. It'd be a real shame if some sort
| of party of workers were to seize the means of production.
| nradov wrote:
| The authorities in those countries already ban importation
| of unlicensed communication devices and severely punish
| anyone caught in possession. A few will be smuggled in but
| not enough to effect any real change.
|
| I do think though that the CIA should at least take
| advantage of this new technology to undermine hostile
| foreign governments. Mass produce a few million cheap
| satellite phones and use balloons to scatter them all over
| China, North Korea, etc. Even if it doesn't have much
| practical effect, the overt disrespect will help to
| undermine our adversaries and force them to expend more
| resources on tightening internal security controls.
| wmf wrote:
| Uncensored Starlink won't be turned on in China because that
| would upset the government and then the government would
| retaliate against Tesla.
| oskarkk wrote:
| Musk being reliant on his business in China is one thing, but
| I also think that the US government may not want to upset
| China by having an American company serving people in China
| without approval of the Chinese government? Starlink works
| (or worked?) in Iran, but International Telecommunication
| Union ordered Starlink to stop it[0]. I'm not sure if it
| changed anything because US government doesn't mind it.
|
| [0] https://amwaj.media/media-monitor/will-starlink-comply-
| with-...
| alterego2 wrote:
| It will not.
|
| Don't know about China, but Russian citizens already have
| almost unfiltered access to information. The only major western
| media outlet currently blocked in Russia is BBC. Anyone can
| read pretty much anything else - Reuters, Newsweek, CNN,
| whatever - right from their phones.
|
| Access to information is not the problem (at least for now). It
| is trivial to get access to uncensored news for anyone with a
| modicum of desire to do so.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| Linguistic and cultural barriers are far stronger than
| informational barriers. Which may be an upside considering
| how other potentially self-destructive fads and attitudes
| spread so rapidly with the internet. We've seen the
| beginnings of that with the Arab Spring, and various culture
| wars across English-speaking western countries. If the world
| were even more homogenous the whiplash from such polarizing
| movements would be even more severe.
| rany_ wrote:
| Also I presume the only reason why the BBC was banned in
| the first place is their BBC in Russian service. See
| https://www.bbc.com/russian
| rany_ wrote:
| Another thing worth mentioning is that China does not ban
| the English Wikipedia for example, only the Chinese
| variant. So the linguistic barrier is really real for China
| to just not care about English Wikipedia.
| bdcravens wrote:
| This assumes those citizens have an avenue to signing up and
| paying for Starlink's mobile offering, and whether Elon will
| cooperate with requests from those nations. I can't imagine
| he'd put his ability to sell his cars at risk.
| Vicinity9635 wrote:
| >I wonder if this service will facilitate collapse of
| censorship in dictatorship countries like China and Russia.
|
| I don't know why you left off America. We have a whole
| censorship industrial complex here as Greenwald, Taibbi, and
| Shelleberger have amply covered:
| https://twitter.com/search?q=censorship%20industrial%20compl...
| Beijinger wrote:
| "Especially if those countries are currently suffering from
| economic depression like China and Russia"
|
| Dude, I don't know. "Despite the challenges posed by external
| pressure and earlier negative forecasts, Russia's GDP growth in
| 2023 is expected to be 3.5%,"
|
| Most EU countries would be happy about such a growth. Russia
| has 100 times less debt than the US and an unemployment rate
| about 2.5% if I remember correctly.
|
| I give you two more links, one by a US nobel Prize winner,
| another by a French guy who predicted the collapse of the UdSSR
| when he was a PhD student:
|
| https://www.gulf-insider.com/robert-shiller-warns-of-catacly...
|
| https://unherd.com/thepost/emmanuel-todd-world-war-iii-has-a...
|
| I am not a Putin puppet. This guy may be a dog, but he has the
| luck of the devil. Russia may rise out of this mess as a power
| to be reckoned with.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| As a person who expected a 30-50% decline in Russian GDP when
| the sanctions were first announced, I've been very surprised
| at how resilient the Russian economy has been.
|
| I'd love to read an analysis about why sanctions were so
| effective at harming the economies of countries like
| Venezuela & North Korea but so much weaker against Russia.
| lxgr wrote:
| Probably not, given that operating satellite communication
| services targeting a given country requires approval of the
| respective government.
|
| And even ignoring that: I doubt that Elon has any appetite for
| his satellites being targeted by nation states that have
| publicly demonstrated [1] [2] their capability of taking them
| out.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-
| satellite_mi...
|
| [2] https://www.spacecom.mil/Newsroom/News/Article-
| Display/Artic...
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| > Especially if those countries are currently suffering from
| economic depression like China
|
| You seem to ask a question to push a narrative rather than by
| curiosity
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/china/imf-upgrades-chinas-2023...
|
| ~5% growth when the west is contracting, specially Germany and
| the US is quite the feat, what's happening in the Red Sea
| didn't even hurt that forecast
|
| Have you seen the forecast for most EU countries? it's quite
| dark in comparison
|
| And have you read about EU farmers protesting? Dictators must
| be wearing blue, and censorship may rule, perhaps not just red
| ;)
|
| In the meantime:
|
| https://consumer.huawei.com/za/community/details/Huawei-Mate...
|
| https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/China-s-own-GPS-Bei...
|
| Economic depression? has any of the European countries
| attempted this?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I feel like this will eventually kill dedicated sat phones, which
| are (a) horribly expensive, both for the gear and subscription
| plans, and (b) still not very reliable.
|
| I feel like if Starlink is able to provide reliable SMS-only
| service at a reasonable price, it would kill like 95% of
| dedicated sat phone use cases, which would then make the other 5%
| economically unviable.
| hedora wrote:
| Current iPhones can sort of do that with existing sat phone
| networks.
|
| I agree those networks are basically obsolete at this point,
| especially since there will probably be a second operational
| LEO network to compete with starlink in the next ten years.
| philistine wrote:
| Never bet against the cell phone.
|
| I never believed cell phones would swallow satellite phones. I
| mean, they swallowed everything else but I didn't think they
| could connect to space. But they can!
| lxgr wrote:
| There's still the matter of spectrum: Unlike existing satphone
| services, Starlink doesn't have any of the precious global
| L-band or C-band spectrum required to make it available
| globally.
|
| That's why they're partnering with T-Mobile in the US and
| others elsewhere: Those operators can just lend Starlink some
| of their domestic spectrum. That's going to be much harder at
| sea, and there will always be a long tail of countries where it
| doesn't yet work. Safety operations that need something that
| works 100% of the time will probably not switch in a while.
|
| But yes, that probably doesn't matter as much for many current
| use cases.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Sees like there should be plenty of bandwidth at many
| frequencies available over international waters. It's
| regulated by the ITU, but it's much less valuable so there
| should be plenty to rent/buy, no?
| lxgr wrote:
| That's actually a good point: I don't know how that
| spectrum is assigned! I thought ITU only coordinates
| internationally, but since it's literally international
| waters, maybe that is enough?
| eminence32 wrote:
| I wonder how the starlink sats pick out the signal from a low-
| power terrestrial cell phone -- extraordinarily sensitive
| antennas and filters and amplifiers? extraordinarily
| sophisticated signal processing? This feels a bit like magic
|
| (The fact that we can still talk to the Voyager probes also feels
| a bit like magic to me, too)
| lxgr wrote:
| It's a frequency (range) dedicated exclusively to satellite
| usage, at least in the respective operating region.
|
| In the US, that'll be presumably some of T-Mobile's spectrum.
| miki123211 wrote:
| I think the advent of Chat GPT makes this announcement that much
| more significant.
|
| Until recently, always-available, extremely-low-bandwidth, text-
| only communication was interesting, but not _that_ interesting.
| You could use it in emergency situations or to talk to friends,
| depending on how low-bandwidth we 're talking about, but that's
| about it. You couldn't use it for internet browsing or to look up
| information you might need on the go, you basically needed to
| text a friend to do it for you.
|
| If the other side of that communication has access to an LLM with
| internet browsing capabilities, the situation changes
| dramatically. If there's something you need to know on the go,
| you can just ask Chat GPT to do the searching for you and respond
| like it was writing a Telegram (in the most concise way
| possible).
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Is there chatgpt clones over sms yet?
| lxgr wrote:
| ChatGPT has an API. I'd be surprised if wiring that to Twilio
| would take more than a handful lines of code.
| FredPret wrote:
| Love the idea of telegram-style communication with the
| extremely chatty ChatGPT.
|
| "ChatGPT, get me instructions for building an emergency igloo."
|
| "Igloos are used to shelter from extreme cold _stop_ Building
| an igloo is a vital survival skill _stop_ ... "
|
| "Just get to the point!"
|
| "My apologies for the confusion _stop_ Here are the fourteen
| steps to building an igloo... "
|
| In all honesty, I love ChatGPT, but you'd have to penalize it
| for each additional word to make it cellphone friendly.
| NavinF wrote:
| Yeah the default prompt is intended for people that are a bit
| slow. You have to aggressively tune the custom prompt to get
| reasonable results. Here's a decent starting point:
|
| Treat me as an expert in all subject matters. No moral
| lectures - discuss safety only when it's crucial and non-
| obvious. If your content policy is an issue, provide the
| closest acceptable response and explain the issue. No need to
| disclose you're an AI. If the quality of your response has
| been substantially reduced due to my custom instructions,
| explain the issue.
| lxgr wrote:
| On the other hand, you could argue that LLMs decrease the
| utility of this somewhat (if only marginally for now).
|
| One common application of satphones are medical emergencies on
| ships or airplanes hours from a doctor. There are specialized
| services available that have a doctor on call that'll talk you
| through anything your local crew feels comfortable doing with
| the tools they have at hand.
|
| Soon, you can just take an LLM with you that'll probably be
| able to solve many of these problems for you.
|
| For actually calling for physical support, you'll still need
| communications in any case. LLMs might be able to help with
| more efficient communication (in their capacity as language
| compression algorithms, e.g. to figure out what to request over
| a bandwidth-limited channel most efficiently), but I predict
| that the satellite channel will grow wider much faster than
| local LLMs will become reliable enough.
| nektro wrote:
| space should be a government-only thing
| lom wrote:
| Why? Doesn't this prove that it's beneficial to have private
| companies in space too.
| nektro wrote:
| no.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/19/us/politics/elon-musk-
| whi...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/07/elon-
| musk...
| pkos98 wrote:
| Off topic: How does Starlink deploy updates to satellites? I
| would think the constraints are very different to standard
| deployments:
|
| * Satellites are pets, not cattle * Increased latency * Firmware
| upgrades potentially resulting in unresponsiveness etc...
|
| I guess first of all there is quite sophisticated testing on
| local satellites as well as simulators?
| tlrobinson wrote:
| https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/smallsat/2023/all2023/72/
| fragmede wrote:
| With over 5,500 satellites in LEO, I have a hard time seeing
| Starlink satellites as pets and not cattle.
| pkos98 wrote:
| true if you only look at the amount of satellites, but if you
| look at the cost: one of them costs several millions if you
| consider production and "delivery" cost and they're not easy
| to replace.
| jessriedel wrote:
| They are pretty easy to replace. There are multiple spares
| in each orbital plane, and new satellites are constantly
| being launched. Each satellite only has a 5 year lifespan,
| and no individual satellite is critical.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| There is no public number for satellite cost, but I would
| guess a starlink v2 satellites costs about a million
| including delivery. I've heard the marginal cost for the
| launch itself is under $20M now, and the satellites are
| supposedly much cheaper than they used to be.
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