Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 18 submissions in the queue.
posted by chromas on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-ping-in-your-general-direction dept.

Ajit Pai caves to SpaceX but is still skeptical of Musk’s latency claims:

The Federal Communications Commission has reversed course on whether to let SpaceX and other satellite providers apply for rural-broadband funding as low-latency providers. But Chairman Ajit Pai said companies like SpaceX will have to prove they can offer low latencies, as the FCC does not plan to "fund untested technologies."

Pai's original proposal classified SpaceX and all other satellite operators as high-latency providers for purposes of the funding distribution, saying the companies haven't proven they can deliver latencies below the FCC standard of 100ms. Pai's plan to shut satellite companies out of the low-latency category would have put them at a disadvantage in a reverse auction that will distribute $16 billion from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF).

But SpaceX is launching low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites in altitudes ranging from 540km to 570km, a fraction of the 35,000km used with geostationary satellites, providing much lower latency than traditional satellite service. SpaceX told the FCC that its Starlink service will easily clear the 100ms cutoff, and FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly urged Pai to let LEO companies apply in the low-latency tier.

The FCC voted to approve the updated auction rules yesterday. The final order isn't public yet, but it's clear from statements by Pai and other commissioners that SpaceX and other LEO companies will be allowed to apply in the low-latency tier. The satellite companies won't gain automatic entry into the low-latency tier, but they will be given a chance to prove that they can deliver latencies below 100ms.

[...] SpaceX met with commission staff over the last few days of May, telling them that its broadband system "easily clears the commission's 100ms threshold for low-latency services, even including its 'processing time' during unrealistic worst-case scenarios." We contacted SpaceX today about the low-latency change and will update this story if we get a response.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by tizan on Thursday June 11 2020, @05:08PM (8 children)

    by tizan (3245) on Thursday June 11 2020, @05:08PM (#1006424)

    What killed satellite based cell phone is how cheap it is to maintain and upgrade a bunch of cellular towers in rural areas

    Question why is it not cheaper to put a series of wifi relays (just like WISPs do ) and connect it to fibre when there is one available ? The hardware is cheap ...should be cheaper than receiving from LEO ...100km vs 1000 km (and on earth you can pump as much power in the emitter as physics allow as compared from a satellite which is solar panel driven). Ok it is not as cool as bouncing your signal to LEO but i suspect it should be cheaper and easier to maintain and upgrade... Unless the cost of putting towers with power is more expensive than putting satellites in LEO (and replacing them every 5 years or so).

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday June 11 2020, @05:48PM (6 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Thursday June 11 2020, @05:48PM (#1006445)

    My understanding is that cellular towers themselves still need to be wired up - so it's a huge infrastructure reduction compared to wiring every house, but still a LOT of infrastructure to reach, say, rural Africa or South America, and I'm pretty sure providing access to such severely under-served areas is part of Musk's stated mission. Presumably with something akin to cellular towers distributing the orbital signal across villages using much cheaper radio hardware, but without the expense of laying hundreds of km of hardware to connect to the outside world.

    Cellular towers also aren't a particularly viable option in terrain with lots of mountains or valleys, where the necessary line-of-sight is extremely limited so that each tower can only serve a very small area. Pretty much everywhere has good line-of-sight with the sky.

    Finally, cellular towers don't offer one of the big "money-maker" features that Starlink is expected to provide to "premium" customers - extreme low-latency communications around the world. Current ocean-crossing fiber-optic cables were mostly funded by high-frequency traders, parasites skimming billions of dollars from the stock markets due to their ability to make purchases and sales a few ms faster than the competition. Orbital communication can potentially provide a HUGE latency reduction there, since the speed of light is almost twice as fast through vacuum as through cable - the increase in signal path is more than compensated by the faster signal speed.

    • (Score: 2) by tizan on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:45PM (1 child)

      by tizan (3245) on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:45PM (#1006501)

      Might be in the mission statement....I can't imagine people in rural Africa or South America cares about latency unless it is a hospital where they are doing remote surgery....most people care about bandwidth and any connectivity....if somebody is offering 50 MBit/s for $10 with 2s delay or 50 MBit/s with 2ms delat for $80...guess what remote area people will buy.
      Just like the military bailed out the satellite phone business ...i suspect it will be them again who will be the target customers ...too few normal customers in Southern Indian Ocean.

      Just like cell phones my guess is all the money is made with earth bound technology because the people (60% of world population ?) who want broad band internet connectivity are in urban areas...including Africa, Asia etc...Rural areas is subsidized by government or has military purposes

      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday June 11 2020, @07:40PM

        by Immerman (3985) on Thursday June 11 2020, @07:40PM (#1006547)

        Sure, different features will attract different customers. The high-frequency traders are the big cash-cows, and latency is pretty much all they care about.

        Rural people in wealthy countries will have another option which may well outperform terrestrial services, and will collectively be another huge chunk of income.

        The military is an obvious customer - for remote bases, sure, but even more significantly, having high-seed low-latency internet infrastructure already in place from the moment they deploy has *immense* tactical value - especially given their increasing dependence on drones remotely-operated by soldiers in the US.

        As for the rest of the rural world - don't think "broadband internet" so much as "any internet". Whether you're in the South Pacific, Eastern Russia, Northern China or India, most of Africa, heck, even much of Canada and Australia... all those parts of the world that are dark at night ( https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/earthday/gall_earth_night.html [nasa.gov] ) your internet options are somewhere between "slim" and "none". And Starlink is going to have a whole bunch of satellites overhead that are just sitting idle until they get back over populous areas. They can provide high-speed internet to those areas practically for free, and still make a profit.

        You make a good point about rural areas being subsidized though - and even with subsidies they're still grossly under-served. But that's one of the beauties of satellite service: it perfectly complements terrestrial services since it actually sucks for urban areas - too many customers too close together all trying to share a handful of satellites. Urban areas are prime candidates for wired service, with a minimum of infrastructure needed per customer, and wireless is really only an advantage for mobility.

        You overstate the case about about latency though, even if people don't actually know they want it. Try browsing the internet with a 2s (round trip) latency - you'll often be looking at 10-20 seconds before the page "settles down" since so very many things today have "page loads X, which loads Y, which loads Z..." each of which adds another 2s delay, and all of which has to complete before the final layout can be determined. Heck, even a simple page would take a minimum of six seconds to appear after you click the link: 2s to convert the domain name to an IP address, another 2s to start receiving the web page, and a final 2s to start getting the images used on the page.

    • (Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday June 12 2020, @07:43AM (3 children)

      by pTamok (3042) on Friday June 12 2020, @07:43AM (#1006790)

      Terrestrial infrastructure can be cheap compared to satellite, so long as it is left alone to do its job.

      Unfortunately there are people who regard property ownership as fluid concept who regard terrestrial infrastructure as a resource to be mined for profit. So fuel for power backup generators is siphoned off, the backup generators are resold (sometimes for parts) without the original owners consent, electrical items have their copper reclaimed without the original owners consent, and so on. If money can be made from unattended infrastructure by repurposing it in way that the original owners are unhappy with, it will be. Some such infrastructure requires permanent guarding (Not only the 'towers', but also the power cables over long distances, and fibre-optic cables over long distances. Opportunistic thieves will steal/damage fibre-optic cables because there is a possibility that they contain copper). This is expensive.

      It becomes rather challenging to supply a (reliable) telecommunications service, or indeed any telecommunications service when your carefully installed infrastructure is purloined. It's also difficult when idiots and ignoramuses set fire to it because they believe 5G infrastructure causes COVID-19.

      One benefit of satellite-delivered communications is that it is difficult for terrestrial-based resource-strippers to practise their art. For people in poorly served regions, an available connection (even at a high, but affordable price) is better than no connection at all.

      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday June 12 2020, @01:24PM (2 children)

        by Immerman (3985) on Friday June 12 2020, @01:24PM (#1006847)

        >Terrestrial infrastructure can be cheap compared to satellite
        It can be, but much depends on the specific situation, and the cost of launch. If you're in a region where a cell tower will only cover a few dozen to a few hundred people, either due to rough terrain or extremely low population density, the economics of land-based infrastructure become a lot less attractive. Most of the world has less than 20 people per km2: http://www.luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen, [luminocity3d.org] and in much of those areas people are lucky to earn a few dollars per day - it makes the economics of providing internet access... unappealing. Unless of course they can piggyback on the same infrastructure that's serving more wealthy and populous areas.

        >Unfortunately there are people who regard property ownership as fluid concept
        What, not everybody supports an artificial concept specifically invented to allow a handful of people to lay claim to a majority of the wealth? (a.k.a. strong property rights) Baffling!

        • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday June 12 2020, @04:57PM (1 child)

          by fustakrakich (6150) on Friday June 12 2020, @04:57PM (#1006948) Journal

          Unless of course they can piggyback on the same infrastructure that's serving more wealthy and populous areas.

          Well, that's the rub, isn't it? Access to that infrastructure has to be wide open, unfettered. We can't let political sanctions and such get in the way of that. Gonna tell Iran, or anybody else they can't hook up? A system like this, in the hands of any single entity, is too vulnerable to attack from too many angles

          --
          La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
          • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday June 12 2020, @08:36PM

            by Immerman (3985) on Friday June 12 2020, @08:36PM (#1007065)

            Why would we tell Iran they can't hook up? Every government in the world is online, even North Korea, where the government are the *only* ones online.

            I see the ability of the government to control the access of their subjects to be a much bigger threat - and that is done *everywhere*.

            Having only one such system is indeed a vulnerability - with Starlink being US based, it will probably be subjected to US censorship and surveillance, which is something every potential user around the world should consider. But they're just the first, they already have a couple wanna-be competitors. And if you're not in the US (and not in a militant or other political group of interest to the US), then that surveillance is probably far less of a worry for you than the surveillance your own government is likely doing via your domestic ISPs.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @08:56PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @08:56PM (#1006590)

    What killed satellite phones was the size of the antenna and the battery required to power it. They also don't work well in high density urban environments.