Yes, but:
Oh look, it’s on sale!
We all know why CNBC. You could have just posted the title.
Because the drug addled used car salesman who’s currently about to default on his Twitter loans decided to embrace his roots and started throwing up seig heils and is currently having a crack team of 4chan incels dismantle a government while he threatens the world and works to make what he’s doing here happen everywhere.
Dude is a comic book villain. Villain of the week level. No real staying power. Either he’ll go broke or die from a ketamine overdose before Xmas. And what a gift that will be. I hope it happens on video.
die from a ketamine overdose
Please stop, I’m old and I can only get so excited.
For the dishes: I don’t know the details of the 2 systems, but is there no way to retrofit the Starlink dishes to use Eutelsat’s constellation? I mean if we exclude the legal IP mess for reverse-engineering the electronics and software.
This is why I will never be rich. I never see business opportunities to buy tons of stock and act upon them.
You also need a ton of money to invest or you’re just getting pocket change.
Commission fees are less than a buck. The rules don’t change just because you have little money.
Pocket change is better than no change.
invest in community run broadband instead
Yes, but the surge is for Ukraine and Europe is gearing up to defend itself. It’s easier for Ruzzia to take out community broadband than it is satellites in orbit around earth.
And it’s harder to do both at once.
Increased by 3.9X.
Of course it did, While we are at it, are there any programmes that aim to clean up space junk ?
People neglect that problem. There is so much garbage flying out there at such high speeds that unless something is done, we will never be able to have functional satellites or space launches again.
Elon’s StarLink WILL accelerate the Kessler syndrome, also reminder that the Nazi literally put a tesla-sized space-junk in space
I actually remember that. When I saw the car in space I thought it was a reference to the 1980 movie Heavy Metal. This was when I first learned about Elon.
Sat internet is so overhyped. As it’s limited by physics cell towers will always outperform them. Simple as that.
- cities - cables and 5g
- country side - 4g and cables in high concentration areas
- middle of nowhere or war zones - low orbit sats.
This is purely a security issue not a consumer one.
Infrastructure can be a real problem in some places.
I’m currently on a mountain and since they upgraded to a hybrid satellite/cable system the speeds have skyrocketed. Laying cable/towers is just not viable, especially with dense rock peaks blocking line of sight.
Also I have coworkers in Nigeria who lose internet multiple times a day (and often don’t have the bandwidth for a video call) but most of them have bitten the bullet and paid the high up-front cost to get starlink at home. And now can do HD video calls with zero interruption (unless they have power issues, but that’s a whole other thing).
So I think there’s a lot of use-cases for sattelite, especially for people who aren’t considered worth the investment in non-sattelite infrastructure.
It’s just unfortunate that yeah, space junk is going to one day (suddenly) be a massive problem.
Edit: ah I may have replied to the wrong comment
So much space junk….
It’ll be interesting to see what the Canadian telesat LEO system will be capable of. They’re supposed to be launching satellites next year and are using a higher orbit so will need much fewer satellites than starlink.
“European Starlink rival” is a bit far fetched when there’s merely rumours that they might be able to offer a similar service. But that’s the stock market for you.
They have both GEO and LEO satellites. Not on the scale of Starlink (for LEO), but they do have a network.
I am not commenting on the nature of the stock market or anything like that. Just pointing out that they do have a working network, it’s not 100% speculation (like you see with crypto schemes).
Alphane_Moon just convinced me to take out a huge loan with my house as security, and invest in Eutelsat. I suggest everyone else does the same.
Now they have to offer a similar service. No pressure then 😊
They do offer a better service, albeit marginally - better download speeds, lower latency, slower upload speeds though. Problem is their antennas - they cost 8.000€ compared to 300€ the starlink ones…
Eutelsat are aimed at a different market: infrastructure. Their intended customers are larger and more demanding: research outposts, small villages, oil rigs, mobile phone towers, ships, and so on, as opposed to Starlink who focus on consumers directly, which is much more low-stakes. I’m genuinely curious if Eutelsat can move into Starlink’s territory.
They will surely do in the future. For example in Spain the government is subsidizing satellite internet through Hispasat for remote communities. I’m sure many other governments do the same in their backyard. If EU throws starlink contracts out the window and start subsidizing EU satellite related businesses and startups things will definitely improve for everybody and the more contracts they sign the lower the prices will go for their clients.
A man can dream
Bye bye future space launches once we have full or partial Kessler syndrome.
Bye bye earth based astronomy.
But dang this tech is so much better than Hughesnet
<ButtonPressingMeme>
Kessler syndrome doesn’t really apply for purely LEO satellites. They all burn up in a single digit amount of years.
It’s not something to worry about yet.
On the contrary, I think it is something to avoid. Imagine letting a single person ground all space launches for 9 years. And all the pollution that adds to the atmosphere. All the junk landing on people’s farms or houses.
It doesn’t work that way. I dislike Elon as much as the next sane person but we don’t need to invent new reasons to dislike him on top of all of the bad reasons that exist.
What evidence do you have? I’m going of of what experts are saying on the fediverse:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacexs-starlink-could-cause-cascades-of-space-junk/
It does work this way, and Starlink is waging a PR campaign that it’s no big deal.
This is true at 500km altitude, but not so at higher LEO altitudes.
Unpopular opinion: we don’t need freaking internet from satellites, just get cat6 in every home and everyone is happy. I’m sure the cost would be lower then having to launch 999999.91 satellites to have similar speeds
cat 6 in every home lol. you have any idea about range of cat 6? I mean, any?
~50m for cat6, ~100 cat6a, enough to get you to a switching box where you connect to fiber.
This would work in the US on the coasts and in the cities.
Even the eastern parts of the west coast states the math gets bad. Running cables over/mountains to service the poorest 10% of the states population.
Getting into the square states you have 10s of thousands of miles of mountains and deserts to get to a vanishing small number of people. There are twice as many people in my city as there are in the entire state of Wyoming and we are the third largest city in Texas.
Are you really going to run cables all over an area of the alps but the size of France to bring service to a number of people equivalent to one midsize city? Most of it is protected national Park people don’t even live in.
Most of Nevada is uninhabited desert with some of the hottest temperatures on earth.
We can leave half of Texas empty and still have service for 95% of the population.
It’s not as simple as “just do it” over here. We have huge problems, but the challenges are legit.
I know that cable is not a solution for everyone but most of the humans like to live in communities, yes there’s are exception. Wiki says US population is about 80% in urban
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States
You realize the most significant use of satellite internet right now is Ukraine, right? Like you’re aware that this has almost nothing to do with the US and is about starlink/Elon fucking with Ukraine and the internet they provide the military fighting in a war. Right? Like you’re not that oblivious, right? You’re not jumping in here suggesting they lay cat6 in a warzone are you? Cus that would just be foolish and make you look like a jackass, which I’m sure you’re not.
Obviously I’m not suggesting Ukraine should use cat6 or fiber, but those are exceptional situation and that’s a military use case.
I meant for day to day use, most people already live in urban area are satellites don’t make sens
So again, this isn’t for day to day use. It’s for extreme situations, like being on top of a mountain where laying lines is difficult and warzones where explosions are constantly destroying your infrastructure.
You’re speaking out of your ass. Even if we just talk about the US, “most people already live in an urban area” is false. Have you seen the Midwest?!? Rocky mountains? Appalachian mountains? You’re so beyond ignorant of the issue and you just keep doubling down.
You should stop before you continue to expose your gross ignorance on the subject.
Oh so now there’s also fiber is there?
Obviously there is fiber, copper is usually “last mile”. Its cheaper to have a long fiber and short copper. Copper more or less anyone can install, fiber is more specialized.
I’m not proposing to reinvent the wheel, just continue what has proven to work.
You don’t seem to be getting it. Where is the fiber coming from? These properties almost certainly have only copper the whole way, so in order to upgrade them to decent internet they would have to completely relay the fiber line, and unlike copper, fiber requires electricity so then they have to lay an electrical line as well. It’s like a whole thing.
It’s only economically viable to do that when there’s going to be a large population density at the other end for small rural locations it really isn’t worth it.
Your opinion is not unpopular, it is simply uninformed.
Copper at decent speeds requires more signal amplification then fiber
Single-Mode Fiber (SMF): Max Length: Up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) or more without needing signal boosters or amplifiers
The Australian government is heavily criticised for half-assing fibre internet because they did copper to the house in most cases. We still, a decade later, have one of the worst internet in the western world.
I think satellites are likely much cheaper to deliver internet to a whole continent than trying to run bloody copper.
oh I didn’t know there’s a fiber box in 100m at any place in the country! tell that to my ISP who cant serve any internet through the landline telephone cable because it’s too far from distribution! oh and also to all the customers of microwave wireless networks.
and this doesn’t even need to be on the countryside! It’s a problem here even in villages that the ISP is not allowed to run any cables on the high voltage electric poles!
You do if you’re fighting a war against Putin and the ketamine troll is threatening to turn off your internet.
There are remote areas where cable won’t reach. For example, I need surveillance on a remote farm and I would love to get internet there.
I understand, but that is the exception. Even in your case probably getting 4G / 5G to that area would be cheaper / easier long term. Also Europe has a relatively high density compared with other continents
I’m in Italy and outside cities, the Internet is still horrendous. And as I said, if you have a remote farm or garden, which are fairly common here, then you are on your own. Sim based internet is a thing, but there are monthly limits which are risky when you need surveillance and automation to be always live.
4G or 5G would still be a better cheaper alternative, I’m not sure what bandwidth a starlink / whatever other alternative but my guess is that is much lower then a classic cell tower.
Cell towers usually have multiple directional antennas, smaller coverage but much cheaper to maintain. Also can be fixed, can be upgraded to next generation. Satellites are pretty much one time use, can’t be upgraded, can’t be fixed, if something goes wrong the solution is to burn and send another one.
Cable will reach anywhere. There is not such a place that cable “will not reach”. Is there a profit incentive to serve you as a customer in a capitalist system? Maybe not. But cable will reach.
Not sure if you are in Europe, but in the US there are places where you could walk the width of Germany and see 100 houses. It does not serve to be technically correct here. Also, how would that work with boats / other vehicles and places without infrastructures?
There are exceptions, but in most cases (in Europe) hardwire should work fine. The problem is that starlink is advertised for any use case.
Their are villages in rural England who don’t have fiber. It wouldn’t be cost-effective delay it for the six customers that require it.
Well, cable will not reach a warzone which is a rather pertinent use for a satellite communication system at present.
You’d need signal boosters at regular intervals, which need power… so now you’re running multiple cables.
But you can’t run them too close together as the power will induce noise in the data cable.
And after a long distance even the power needs boosting.
And to protect the cables, you’d need to bury them or put them on poles. Separately.
At a certain point, cable becomes the expensive option…
Usually fiber is used between cities and in cities and copper is for the “last mile”. Usually there is a switching box for the street / building complex
You still need signal reconditioning for fibre too, which needs power…
I know where you’re coming from, but not everywhere is populated enough, so these alternatives exist.
You need it every 100km
I know plent of places in my European country where cable does reach, but was made for landline phones and cannot carry any data for internet because its so far from the nearest distribution center. even wireless like microwave can’t sustain more than a quality camera feed
One broken cable can result in a city/town without internet. Speaking from experience.
Also satellites have other uses like GPS
I doubt they use the same satellites for GPS
Now get rid of the home and the cable, how do you cover 99.9% of the earth? Nomads need satellite, and so do rural homes too far from an isp fiber/copper endpoint But yes, if starlink has it done, why double the satellites to do it again with a different name? Because it’s easier to launch 1000 more satellites than dismantle the system that enables such feats.
Cat 6A caps out at like 330 ft. Also thats a ton of copper.
Fiber optic nonprofit utilities makes more sense in cities and in rural areas we should just subsidize cell phone data plans.
I didn’t say that cat6 should be used everywhere, usually is just for “last mile delivery” get it from your home to a switching box that has fiber.
Bring back ethernet jacks on phones!
Exactly! Amazon can ship it to you for like 10 bucks. Problem solved!
supporting this motion
Not unpopular but I think they are just trying to grab some of SpaceX market share in this space (no pun intended). I agree cable is better but these folks are trying to make money.
What will they launch on? Star Link is barely feasible because they can launch at cost on falcon 9.
Look up Ariane 6. It’s still more costly than the Falcon 9 but who in their right mind would trust the numbers Elon is sharing? Seems like they both cost around 100million $ per launch. Elon is claming 30million per launch and that he will make it cost 2 million…
Yeah I’m familiar with Ariane 6. It costs almost double what SpaceX changes external customers per launch, not even counting that their internal rate would be even lower. Plus you’d need more launches since the payload capacity is lower. You’d end up paying 3x or more the cost. At that point, why not just buy falcon 9 launches? Otherwise it seems like there’d be very little way to compete.
Good. Fuck Starlink.
