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posted by Fnord666 on Friday April 24 2020, @08:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the internet-in-space dept.

Elon Musk says SpaceX Starlink satellite broadband beta testing starts in a few months:

This week [SpaceX] launched another batch of 60 satellites to bring the total size of its growing Starlink broadband constellation to more than 400. While it has the go-ahead to launch more than 12,000 satellites in the coming years, Musk said Wednesday that a "private beta" test of the service will begin in about three months, followed by a public beta about three months later for testers at northern latitudes.

In response to a Twitter user, Musk said Germany qualifies as far enough north, which could mean that much of northern Europe, Canada and the northernmost parts of the US may be eligible to try the service.

There is only so much bandwidth per satellite, so your pizza-box-sized transceiver would experience more congestion and lower throughput in an urban area than it would in a rural setting.

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  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 25 2020, @02:26AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 25 2020, @02:26AM (#986807)

    They need to be deobited. Period. There is enough bandwidth on earth. Buy out the telcos and get this fitted right

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday April 25 2020, @04:58AM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday April 25 2020, @04:58AM (#986842) Journal

    You won't get that bandwidth in the middle of nowhere, or on a boat, or a plane [spacenews.com].

    Also, they will all be deorbited after 6 years or so.

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    • (Score: 2) by crafoo on Saturday April 25 2020, @02:47PM

      by crafoo (6639) on Saturday April 25 2020, @02:47PM (#986951)

      That's what I'm interested in. ANY internet connection on my sailboat. I'm tired of arm wrestling old sea gypsies at marinas for bandwidth.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Saturday April 25 2020, @06:07AM (4 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Saturday April 25 2020, @06:07AM (#986851)

    A yes, I'm glad to know that such a preeminent AC in the field can definitively state that the billions of rural farmers in Africa, Asia, South America, etc. that don't have grid power, or even necessarily cell phone coverage, already have plenty of internet bandwidth.

    Low-infrastructure electricity has become easy to deliver anywhere - solar panels are cheap and mobile. Decent internet bandwidth, so that people in remote villages can access the vast array of valuable educational and communication resources that you take for granted, has not.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by quietus on Saturday April 25 2020, @08:06AM (3 children)

      by quietus (6328) on Saturday April 25 2020, @08:06AM (#986866) Journal

      If they don't have grid power, will they really benefit from internet social media? Or will a bunch of books, pens and paper, maybe some better roads and easy access to drinking water too, be better for them?

      Look, I get it. We all like a bit of scifi. But if your stated aim is to help the rural poor, you should ask whether the monthly StarLink fee will be really worth it, to them.

      As a further remark ... StarLink might be a solution for a typical US problem. I do know a little about Morocco. Seeing burka clad women whip out smartphones all the time kinda breaks the couleur locale [nperf.com]. As to the rest of Africa, about 215 million mobile phones [idc.com] were sold in 2018, with 41 percent of them smartphones. That supposes that there's quite some 3G coverage, which is sufficient enough for internet access.

      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday April 25 2020, @02:48PM

        by Immerman (3985) on Saturday April 25 2020, @02:48PM (#986952)

        If you really want to help people, one of the the best things you can offer is education so they can better help themselves. They're the only ones that really know their problems and their priorities. And the internet gives you access to a big fraction of the total knowledge of humanity, much of the most useful stuff it in the form of instructional videos where you don't even need to know the language to get a lot of benefit.

        Another great thing you can do is offer communication, so that they can collaborate more effectively.

        Better roads don't do much good for people who mostly can't afford cars, so the return (benefit) on investment is abysmal. Communication is much cheaper to provide, and delivers immediate dividends. Being able to get word of how markets are doing is an incredible value to a farmer that's going to need to travel for hours or days to get there. A nicely paved road to walk on offers much less benefit for much greater cost. We've already seen that with cell phones in many places, but the infrastructure get too expensive to deploy effectively in mountains or canyonlands where the only long-distance line of sight is likely to be with the sky.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 25 2020, @04:18PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 25 2020, @04:18PM (#986990) Journal

        If they don't have grid power, will they really benefit from internet social media?

        One of the common themes I see here, is that one doesn't need grid power to use Starlink.

        Or will a bunch of books, pens and paper, maybe some better roads and easy access to drinking water too, be better for them?

        You can get a bunch of books by internet.

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday April 25 2020, @08:14PM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday April 25 2020, @08:14PM (#987082) Journal
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