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Once again the flailing Australian National Broadband Network is in the news with a couple in Melbourne being quoted up to 1.2 million dollars to connect to the NBN. The primary reason for this is the the house in question is seven kilometres of fibre would be needed to connect the property. With the copper network being switched off around Australian, even in places where it is still viable, the only option is to switch to the NBN unless a competing network already exists. The NBN has stated that it can cost $30,000 to run fibre for a "few hundred metres". It is getting to the point where it can be cheaper just to move house if the internet is bad.
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Australian Couple Quoted 1 Million to Connect to the NBN
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For recreational use only.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:08PM (16 children)
It's only a matter of time before satellite based ISP service becomes an actual option.
For example Iridium Next. (their new constellation of satellites, not their old constellation) These are LEO satellites (eg, low ping times) and cover any point on the earth. (South pole, middle of ocean, desert, mountain, territory in unfriendly countries, etc)
Or SpaceX's plan to have LEO satellites provide ISP service.
And other ISP service that exists today. On a week cruise in early 2017 I had good internet service for only $10 / day / device. From the middle of the ocean. That's not a sustainable price for regular ISP service. But the technology is there, and will only get better / cheaper.
IMO, it's a matter of time
Then Comcast, AT&T, etc will be crying and whining!
Well, they're already whining.
Are we tired of whining yet?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:13PM (1 child)
Or apparently one that already exists? [finder.com.au]
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:29PM
Last I checked, large uploads and downloads weren't economic on satellite because of its roughly $5 per GB rate, in the same ballpark as cellular.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Snotnose on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:14PM (5 children)
Not when latency matters. Round trip from ground to bird to ground is probably gonna be 100ms, add in all the other delays and you're looking at some mighty large TCP windows. Say goodbye to gaming, Skype, and possibly streaming video/audio.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:15PM (4 children)
Don't confuse LEO and GEO satellites.
LEO satellites are not very far up. Practically scraping the ground. That's where the L in LEO comes from.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:29PM (3 children)
I worked on the TCP/IP code for Globalstar. G* used LEO satellites, I calculated that if the bird was on the horizon you had a 250 ms round trip. We were happy with a 100 ms delay but prepared for much more.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:05PM (1 child)
Yep, you are right. I hadn't thought that through. Straight overhead, 90° elevation, you have a short distance. But at any bearing out towards the horizon, you have a much greater distance.
That is an interesting problem to look forward to.
Of course, downloads can still have great throughput with sliding window protocols. (With "great" defined as whatever bandwidth you can get out of some new satellite system designed for internet.)
But you can never make up for latency. And some applications require low latency to work well.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:49PM
> And some applications require low latency to work well.
"You see, officer, it's just a misunderstanding: my ISP is so slow that if I click on the teen porn, I get MILF porn, and if I click on the MILF porn, I get granny porn. And I really wanted teen porn"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:06PM
Maybe I'm being over optimistic in hoping that satellite based ISPs could free us from the tyranny of ground based ISPs.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:35PM (2 children)
Been using satelite internet for over a decade. Microwave point-to-point is a better solution here, or just run a fibre sensibly (which costs peanuts if you have permission on the land)
Do these people not have electricity? Why can't the fibre run on the same poles?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:41PM (1 child)
That's just it, they can, and it would be cheap.
Some corrupt higher-ups just want to buy new yachts.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:16PM
Or they want to protect rural people from the evils of the intarweb tubes.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:14PM (4 children)
Are there ways to make satellites work well? The way I understood it, satellites just do not do upload. So you have dial-up upload paired with high latency because of the distances involved.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:20PM
It depends on the bandwidth of your upload connection.
As I mentioned, somehow, I had good internet service in the middle of the ocean on a cruise for a week.
Iridium's Next is aiming for speeds more sensible than they presently can offer. Their Next system is obviously already designed, as some of those SpaceX launches have been Iridium launches carrying a dispenser which releases ten satellites in a single orbital plane.
I don't know what Iridium's competitors offer.
But I believe it is inevitable. Eventually. Hopefully soon. But eventually is likely to be a certainty.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:43PM (2 children)
I have heard of the type of satellite service you are talking about. From GEO satellites.
LEO satellites do upload. While I cannot go into specificity, your mobile device would be assigned a certain channel and time slot both for upload and another for download. Handoffs occur frequently because LEO satellites are only in view for several minutes.
The issue is building a service that does this at more practical speeds suitable for the internet rather than for voice.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:08PM (1 child)
The problem with uploads is the strength of the signal you can generate. Directv or somesuch, not a problem. Your phone? Problem. You can see this with sat phones. You'll be able to get a signal but can't make a call simply because the phone can't reach the satellite.
Handoffs aren't a problem. A satellite connection won't handoff any more often than a car going down the freeway, or in city driving surrounded by tall buildings. Now if you're in a plane on your phone then handoffs are a problem. You might have line of sight to a cell tower, but your puny phone has to pass through the plane and travel many a mile to be heard. We did a study in the early 90s that showed that by the time the handoff was complete it was time to do another handoff. Not a situation a carrier wants to be in. Most of the systems I've looked at have a path ground -> satellite -> plane -> satellite -> ground.
As for who is doing satellite internet, take a look at Viasat. They started with connecting planes to the internet but they're also looking at home internet service as well.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:10PM
Don't sat uplinks have to be on frequencies that are not used for any other porpoise to prevent drowning out your signal?
We haven't even talked about doppler shift, which would be significant. And the doppler shifted frequencies would have to be part of the allocated spectrum reversed for use by the satellite system.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.