Elon Musk: SpaceX will double Starlink's satellite internet speeds in 2021:
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter Monday that his company's satellite internet service, Starlink, will offer speeds close to 300 Mbps later in 2021. That's roughly twice as fast as currently advertised, and would represent a significant step forward for the service as it seeks to deliver high-speed internet to underserved regions across the globe.
[...] Latency, a measure of how long it takes your internet signal to travel to space and back, will also drop to around 20ms this year, Musk added.
[...] Musk went on to reply to another user who asked for a coverage map, telling them that Starlink will cover "most of Earth by end of year, all by next year." From there, Musk said, it's all about "densifying coverage," though he noted that the satellite internet coverage is best suited for regions with low to medium population density.
[...] The $99-per-month service, which also charges $500 as the initial equipment cost, is accepting preorders for customers in parts of Canada, the UK and the northwest US between latitudes 45 and 53 degrees North, as well as other select locations.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday February 23 2021, @08:41AM (15 children)
2016: all tesla cars have full self-driving capability, it'll be delivered in 2018. they had people prepay 10k during their car purchase for this future feature. still not delivered. people who paid for it back then, and have sold the car, have now lost 10k, because the still unavailable paid for feature cannot be transferred to another owner.
https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now-have-full-self-driving-hardware [tesla.com]
hyperloop? never heard of it besides some dinky proof of concepts. boring company? pretty boring indeed when big promises are made and you end up with a couple of short proof of concept tunnels instead.
spaceX - cool stuff, great they're doing it. just like tesla. but they miss every single deadline they on their own set, and underdeliver on every promise in the time they give. just like tesla.
the question is why do all this, when you can just set your own realistic deadlines? musk is just this kid dreamer, he lives in the future imirite? or, you know, it's a business strategy. let's say you're an LG guy, and they just came out with an awesome phone - right when it's time for you to switch. oh look, samsung has a phone that's better. on sale next month. so you wait. oh, it's another month, no biggie. ok, last month, then you can buy that awesome phone. and it is - 3 months. oh look, you're now comparing a 3 month old phone to a brand new one. And in 3 more months, LG's phone will be better than the samsung one. the one you ended up buying.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2018/06/06/elon-musk-has-been-missing-deadlines-since-he-was-a-kid/ [washingtonpost.com]
sorry musk. no, you will not have under 20ms latency, nor will you have double the bandwidth next year. nor will you get rid of this satellite internet of yours needing a ground base station every 500km. you do have competitors looking into the same type of service, and these "future is two weeks from now" lies, which you've done with every single thing you do, are just that - tusk tusk.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @09:08AM (7 children)
And yet he's done more to make the world a better place than both of us combined.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday February 23 2021, @10:00AM (1 child)
How do you know?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @10:10PM
Well clearly given your username, you have provided 0 value to humanity at least.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @04:08PM (1 child)
Yes who can forget his masterful work solving.... I mean, his pioneering models of... What I'm trying to say is his mathematical theory of... All of it, marvelous. Marvelous contributions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @05:57PM
I too think that falcon 9 are marvellous and so are interwebs coonehshouns with ping lower in dem woods than many people have in dem cities or da hood.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fakefuck39 on Wednesday February 24 2021, @01:10AM (2 children)
overpriced electric cars? no, we had those commercially on sale long before, and a bunch of automakers out there make much better ones in quality and value literally now. battery advancements? no, that was panasonic. cheaper space flight? like a bunch of other commercial companies started doing after the government started giving out contracts and grants for it?
name a single good thing Elon has done besides enrich himself and take taxpayer handouts? now, he's not a bad guy, and he doesn't do any really bad things. he's a businessman, he's making products and making money. but don't paint him as a hero doing good. the guy at the soup kitchen does more good in one day than musk did in one lifetime.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @03:42PM (1 child)
He's moving the entire world towards electric cars. No one can even begin to pretend like there was any momentum behind electric cars before Tesla and now every automanufacturer is racing to convert to 100% electric. That was Elon and his vision for Tesla. I don't car how successful Tesla is long term but I appreciate that he single-handedly jump started the EV market. That is inarguable. They are also the first company who pushed the concept of self-driving cars, seriously. Again, I don't know if Tesla will get there first or every, but now ever automanufacturer is racing to replicate it. This will ultimately save tens of thousands of lives a year.
They pioneered reusable rockets and have dramatically reduced the cost of space flight. He accelerated this by who knows how many decades and still has his eye on mars.
The fact that he can make money doing these doesn't make him a bad guy, it means that he can operate in our socioeconomic system and advance these projects.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Saturday February 27 2021, @12:56AM
there wasn't momentum because battery tech wasn't there. there were regular manufacturers already making electric cars. in fact, electric cars were the first cars, before gasoline cars. when panasonic, not tesla, finally made cheaper better batteries, electric cars became viable a'd tesla and others made more -to meet the increased demand. musk did nothing. zero.
i do agree, he was tje first with the self-driving scam. charging people for full self driving and never delivering. charging people for really broken self driving that's at levels of a drunken 5yo. google is who has advanced self-driving, which is still really shitty. musk steals people's cash and sells snake oil. saves likes? yes, that makes him a scamler and a bad gut. self drivng tech drives shittier than the shittiest driver on the road.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 23 2021, @11:11AM (2 children)
The "unrealistic" deadlines are not the problem (most of the times, it can be the contrary**), as they only need to be internal to the company.
Promises to the market and selling on the base of the promises are the actual problem.
** See student syndrome [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @12:09PM (1 child)
Yeah, but speeds are basically what is being configured by the satellite and the ground link. It's up to them to change the top speed.
Latency depends on buffering here more than anything.
So, speed and latency is achievable since it's just a config change. I'm sure they've been testing it already especially since the are actually aiming at 10Gbps service.
https://uk.pcmag.com/networking/131250/spacexs-starlink-raises-download-speed-goal-from-1gbps-to-10gbps [pcmag.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 23 2021, @02:49PM
Yeah, naaah, mate. It's not only the Starlink that promises and actually I don't think Starlink overpromissed... yet.
It's Tesla (sold for an extra with "autopilot", which is not that autonomous as promised), SolarCity [wikipedia.org], "Not a flamethrower" which landed some buyers in jail [techcrunch.com]... thinks like that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @07:33PM (2 children)
Dont know, 300 sounds plausible. From the internet reviews people are getting between 30 and 150 already depending on cloud cover and when in the beta they ran the test. As well as adding in the laser link could reduce the number of base stations by a good amount. This seems realistic. Latency he is always going to be 20-40ms no matter what. That is just physics.
I think spacex started off very rough. But they are most certainly hitting their stride right now. Same for tesla. Re-landable/usable rockets 10 years ago would be madness talking. Yet they are doing it about every other week now and have slashed cost to about 1/4th what it was.
I do not own any stock or any of their other toys. He looks to be dreaming big and going for it. He has the money to make the bets. Even if they never go anywhere. Some he even has a bit of fun with. The boring company I can see being bigger later on. Digging tunnels has become this weird expensive thing. For example the NY subway should have been done decades ago. Yet they are still at what 70th and they need to goto 2nd and are again asking for a few more billion? Some competition here is not a bad thing.
Pre-selling auto driving was a dick move though. He should refund those people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @08:19PM
The New York subway is a case study in mismanagement and corruption. A big part of why they keep asking for more money is because both the Governor and the Mayor treat them as their own personal piggy-bank, so they only actually get to keep a small fraction of the funds they officially receive. Between that and a union that insists that all work be done in the slowest, most inefficient way possible in order to pad hours, and it is amazing that anything gets done.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Wednesday February 24 2021, @01:12AM
all of that is realistic. including the mars rockets and the self-driving. my issue is with blatant lies on when he says it's going to happen. he's a smart guy, yet he continually gives ridiculous unrealistic timelines to the public for his products, which he knows are lies. that is my issue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @11:17PM
Sure, no dispute there, yet he's doing relatively well. Why? Cause the incumbents in the markets he's been in are a lot worse and just sitting on their ass milking past achievements. And they lie too, look at VW saga. All the telcos in my neck of the woods "exaggerate" as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @08:51AM (2 children)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-22/elon-musk-loses-15-billion-in-a-day-after-bitcoin-warning [bloomberg.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @09:46AM
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/01/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-says-stock-price-is-too-high-shares-fall.html [cnbc.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @12:04PM
I'm sure he's laughing at these crazy headlines and at your exaggerations too. The stock price fluctuates and I'm sure he doesn't care at all about it anymore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @02:31PM (2 children)
The article doesn't offer much about what they actually have working.
1000 birds serving 10000 customers between 45 and 53 North. Available service will increase from 100 to 300Mbits.
For the change from 100 to 300, will the road change, or only the speed limit.
So, where does one go to see what they actually have? (Speeds and feeds.)
I'm betting they are limited by ground station to sat b/w.
Is there a map of the ground stations?
Perhaps a set of IP addresses to traceroute?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @04:10PM
But think about it - wherever you drive in your new Tesla (200 mile radius) you'll be able to stream spotify at 300mb/s.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @08:41PM
Ground stations provide the connection to the internet backbone so they are a bottleneck just like with any other ISP. If Starlink's laser based satellite-to-satellite system works out then they will have a lot more flexibility in where they locate those stations than any ground based network, but they still need regulatory approval and a licence for each station.
I don't know of any maps. It seems that Starlink doesn't publish that information, and frankly I can't blame them. With all the hysteria around cellphone towers I shudder to think how the derp brigade is going to react to 'space rays' or whatever nonsense they come up with.
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Tuesday February 23 2021, @05:56PM
I am on, when I drive to my provincial capitol the sign in one spot says "you are now half way to the north pole, stop for a while on your trip and visit us". So I am either just north or south of the cut off line, I think its just north for me now I picture the map in my mind...
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