On a related note: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/insecure-satellite-internet-is-threatening-ship-and-plane-safety/

I thought supposidly Star-Link was to be a Free service for people that do not have access to the internet?! How fast they Shifted there priorities. I knew he was FOS anyway Nothing is FREE in this life.

nz3777:

I thought supposidly Star-Link was to be a Free service for people that do not have access to the internet?! How fast they Shifted there priorities. I knew he was FOS anyway Nothing is FREE in this life.

When did anyone ever state that Starlink would be free ..?

I read somewhere that was original plan to provide free service to poor countrys ( something of that nature) I cannot recall where I read it but iam pretty sure.

You read something on the back of toilet paper rolls... No, Starlink was never supposed to be free. Quite the contrary, it's designed to be a "money printer" for SpaceX, so they earn enough to afford building the Mars Colonization System. Speeds aren't great, but it's better than what I had a few years ago on ADSL/VDSL (16mbps/1mbps), so I would pick this any day compared to what I endured for 6 years where I lived in a rural area...

thats with only 600 satellites in orbit ? this is interesting ! very interesting !

35-60 mbps would be huge if all you had access to was DSL or similar. My friend that lives in a rural area gets like 12 at best right now. That's on the limit of my "I'd rather have no internet than slow internet" level.

Won't be playing or winning many first-person shooters with those ping timings... 😉

I just realized something, but Starlink could end up being fantastic for phones. I'm sure it'd be possible to use those satellites as a replacement for GPS, and since the signal can be accessed from anywhere, that could eliminate the need for cell towers as well. Since it is internet from anywhere, you could in theory eliminate the need for wifi as well. So, you could basically replace all of the radios inside a phone (except Bluetooth) for just a single Starlink radio. That sounds pretty cool to me, because it could reduce the cost and physical size of the SoC or PCB, which then would leave room for a bigger battery. Of course though, I have doubts that Starlink can work through buildings. I'm not sure if they plan to sell repeaters you could put into buildings.

nz3777:

I read somewhere that was original plan to provide free service to poor countrys ( something of that nature) I cannot recall where I read it but iam pretty sure.

I don't recall hearing it would be free, but rather, it's supposed to be an affordable option. It is the most idealfFor places in rural areas where wired/fiber infrastructure can't realistically be achieved.

raystormer:

The beginning of skynet ....

*sigh* no... it's not. It's not the beginning of any fictional doomsday event.

scoter man1:

35-60 mbps would be huge if all you had access to was DSL or similar. My friend that lives in a rural area gets like 12 at best right now. That's on the limit of my "I'd rather have no internet than slow internet" level.

Careful what you wish 10mbps is enough for 1080p netflix YouTube etc even online gaming the time that you would feel it in your akin is when you about to download 80 gb threw steam is the time you leave your pc for 2 nights on 😛 .... I would take even 4mbps instead of having no internet !

geogan:

Won't be playing or winning many first-person shooters with those ping timings... 😉

Well no but if it falls down to 10ms at the time the full satellite network is in place then it will not be a problem!

I will see if I can find the Original post I read about Starlink, I am 90% Sure it said Elon Musk was giving the service for free. Which to be honest did not make any sence to me people like that do not do Anything for free otherwise they would not have the things they do today. Bill gates-Off topic I heard donates alot of $$$$ to charitys ect....Musk does not seem to be the same way from what I can see. I dont hate him just saying.

Expecting a company launching satellites into orbit! and then provide the service for free is insanity. The company would go bankrupt and....no service for the consumer and all of that effort would have been in vain. Everybody loses. Maybe you are referring to Loon? It is supposed to be cheap but still not free. Again, free doesn't make sense. 😛

schmidtbag:

I just realized something, but Starlink could end up being fantastic for phones. I'm sure it'd be possible to use those satellites as a replacement for GPS, and since the signal can be accessed from anywhere, that could eliminate the need for cell towers as well. Since it is internet from anywhere, you could in theory eliminate the need for wifi as well. So, you could basically replace all of the radios inside a phone (except Bluetooth) for just a single Starlink radio. That sounds pretty cool to me, because it could reduce the cost and physical size of the SoC or PCB, which then would leave room for a bigger battery. Of course though, I have doubts that Starlink can work through buildings. I'm not sure if they plan to sell repeaters you could put into buildings. I don't recall hearing it would be free, but rather, it's supposed to be an affordable option. It is the most idealfFor places in rural areas where wired/fiber infrastructure can't realistically be achieved. *sigh* no... it's not. It's not the beginning of any fictional doomsday event.

It needs a pretty large antenna so it's not something we'll see in the near future.

He said it would be free for DEVELOPING nations. It was never going to be free in areas where people can afford to pay for Internet. For everyone else, it was designed to be mostly supported by stock market traders who could get a few milliseconds shaved off transaction times, and those profits would be used to subsidize pricing for everyone else, to varying degrees. One of the big points of the system is that it would be a way to reach potential talent from places where it would never be found otherwise. How many potential geniuses are left tending mud crops in backwaters around the world because they never got the chance to learn anything or communicate with anyone? Starlink and Tesla solar are social equalizers, intended to bring the potential of people who would otherwise never be found to light. That's why they plan to make it free for developing nations. These initial speeds are really impressive, given that the constellation size isn't even at what Starlink considers the minimum needed to start beta testing the service. The fact that there are people using it already is actually a bit shocking, as Tesla said it would take until Q4 before there were enough sats in place to start. As more sats enter the constellation, speeds should continue to go up (as you will be able to hit more sats and pull data from them simultaneously) and latency should drop sharply. As the number of ground stations and constellation nodes increase, the hop time to get as close to the destination server before leaving the constellation drops. The entire point of Starlink's tech is to keep your data moving amongst the constellation (where it's effectively going the speed of light) as much as possible before dropping the signal onto a ground station where it needs to go through conventional networks for the last hops. As for the antenna size, it's supposedly about the size of a large pizza box, and setup is supposed to be literally as simple as setting it down and plugging it in. You will be able to build one into a house, car, boat, or plane with minimal changes. You can bet that as soon as the network is ready to handle it, Teslas will have one built right into the frunk lid. 🙂

Don't really care about Starlink as a whole just another one of Musk's over promise, under delivers, although this in theory did sound great right up until it turns out you need a base station to actually use the system. I assume that perhaps some sort of portable system may eventually turn up similar to a sat phone at which point it truly will be internet anywhere on the planet as opposed to internet anywhere on the planet provided you have a base station, mounted to a building or fixed structure correctly set up and connected to a power supply. Anyway the question I have is this, what if someone like China decides it doesn't like a private American company providing it's people with unmonitored Sat based internet? In the past given that most tactical sats where launched by governments it was pretty safe to assume that while countries had weapons that could shoot down satellites various treaties regarding weapons in space, space being an international waters sort of situation and the potential threat of repercussions if someone did shoot down a government satellite pretty much meant no one would go to the trouble. Now you have a commercial company sticking it's junk in to space what's to stop a government from another country who isn't happy with what they are doing from just shooting them down? Not like Musk is going to turn round and declare war on China... mind you some of the sh*t he posts on Twitter he may be just stupid enough to do that.

42000 new boxes in oribit and in the space and we still not have proper space garbage collection. I hope that it will not accidentally crash some rocket.

nz3777:

I will see if I can find the Original post I read about Starlink, I am 90% Sure it said Elon Musk was giving the service for free. Which to be honest did not make any sence to me people like that do not do Anything for free otherwise they would not have the things they do today. Bill gates-Off topic I heard donates alot of $$$$ to charitys ect....Musk does not seem to be the same way from what I can see. I dont hate him just saying.

Ive read that too

It will be interesting to see how this develops as the system gets refined. I've been keeping a close eye on this as it expands. Very exciting even if it fails. Just so much to learn. Also look on the bright side. At least people can't burn down the satellites if they know a person, who knows a person, who might of said 5G is unhealthy but no reasons given. o_O

For people with no internet or low speeds, looking great. I wouldn't trade my 120 download 12 upload with less than 20 ping for this though.

So how much is this going to cost? How monitored will you be when using it? What caps will be in place if any? For some reason I really don't like this.