I was waitlisted a while back but because of all the Elon bullshit when I got my email saying it was available I opted to just stick with Viasat.
Thats the thing.
Outside of the Ukrainian war, I’m not seeing much good use of this Starlink constellation.
-
Urban areas are already built to 5G, meaning high-speed wireless internet at far cheaper prices than satellite could ever hope to deliver.
-
Suburban areas have high 5G coverage, though it isn’t perfect yet. As well as aging 4G (okay), but also a plentitude of fiber options from Verizon and Comcast. No, it isn’t perfect, but the crappiest Comcast connection is still better than the best Starlink could ever offer in terms of price and reliability.
-
Rural areas are already covered by Viasat. Which is going to be more efficient due to the simple nature of only needing like 5 to 10 satellites in the 100-year orbit height… rather than 60,000+ Starlink satellites in the 5-year orbit height.
Ukraine gets a benefit because Russians are actively trying to jam the communications, so ~5 to 10 satellites could get disrupted, but its a lot harder to jam 60,000 satellites floating around. So yes, Starlink did manage to find a niche… only to have the lord of the communications openly claim that Crimea belongs to Russia and shutdown a Ukrainian operation.
So suddenly, Ukraine can’t trust Starlink anymore. So who the hell wants to use this constellation?
I find your comment to be a bit North America focused. Surely there are many places in the world where that stuff is handy.
You realize that the Ukrainians are spending $2500 / month per terminal, right?
This isn’t a cheap system. Yeah, focusing on America where we have subsidies for rural internet (Government to pay part of those costs) is for a damn good reason. I’m not sure who can afford this in practice.
It is said that the terminal costs $1,300. And I’d expect that the communications will be hundreds+ / month. There’s not actually a lot of people around the world who can afford that, but shoot. You can tell me which countries you think this is a good business idea for.
As I said earlier: Ukraine has crazy requirements where the Russians are conducting electronic warfare (and other… warfare…) where the costs are worth it. Anyone else? Because Viasat is right there at like $100/month. Unless you NEED a way to escape the Russian jamming of traditional satellites, why would you pay Starlink’s crazy high costs?
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/05/10/1051973/russia-hack-viasat-satellite-ukraine-invasion/
“Rural” includes oceans. So airplanes who are flying across oceans use Viasat right now, and its likely cheaper and more available than Starlink in practice thanks to the far fewer satellites that Viasat needs to launch and maintain. Yeah, 10 satellites are way, way cheaper than 40,000+ satellites. Who’d a thunk it?
Rural areas are already covered by Viasat. Which is going to be more efficient due to the simple nature of only needing like 5 to 10 satellites in the 100-year orbit height… rather than 60,000+ Starlink satellites in the 5-year orbit height.
Latency sucks with Viasat. You won’t play multiplayer games on it, and even web browsing will be sluggish with how many round trips displaying just a single page requires nowadays.
No wireless communication will beat physical connection ever. Period. There’s not argument in it to be had.
All of wireless bandwidth can be crammed in a single fiber optic cable. All of it, with room to spare. And then you realize you can run as many as you like in parallel while in wireless communication only one device can talk at the time.
Cables are here to stay.
