Anyone know what kind of latency one might expect from this kind of broadband?
Also, will cell phones be able to hook into it? Maybe this might be the answer to some of the more rural broadband issues that @krayzkrok and @cliffski @cliffski2 have to deal with.
Hmm, don’t know but light travels at 3 x 10^8 m/s. So 300km is 1ms. So is that one ms up, one for the satellite to turn it around, 1 down?
I had a similar setup a couple of years ago (I suspect this will be more sophisticated though). I got decent bandwidth but latency was always the issue.
I would love to be able to tell Comcast to go screw themselves and sign up for this.
@Charlatan these are in very low Earth orbit, so I’m hoping the latency would be way, way lower than the “one satellite serves the entire US” deal that is currently used by broadband satellite.
Pretty sure previous satellite internet has been based on satellites in geosynchronous orbit, which is significantly farther away.
Hey if they can solve the latency issue then I will happily tell Comcast to screw themselves too!
How’s Elon’s followthrough on stuff like this though? He’s busy tweeting about Tesla, making Powerwalls, Solar Roof Shingles, Rocket Ships, and boring holes through the earth. Can he also handle throwing satellites into space and running an ISP too?
If he says they can get the rollout done in 2020, then I believe him, except it will maybe take an additional year, so 2021.
This is the big question. I mean they just launched 60 satellites. Which sounds like a lot, but they need 30,000 to get the right amount of coverage. That’s a lot of launches.
Whoa. According to reddit by way of Elon, latencies of 20-30 ms. If their prices are decent, I am ditching Comcast. Can’t wait!!! (20-30 is my guess since they’re always going to sugar coat latency times).
You think it’ll only be 1 year delayed? Oh you optimist you!
Yeah, I’d put a 10-year countdown for a full rollout of LEO satellite internet at this point. IMO we’ll for sure have 5G to the home before that.
Some extra competition is always good, particularly after the Google Fiber failure.
I’m sure 30,000 extra things floating around the planet won’t complicate space travel for everyone else at all.
Is the signal affected by weather?
It’s pretty much a screaming nightmare for ground-based astronomy too. Especially since Starlink won’t be the only network like this - near Earth orbit is going to be spectacularly full of bright objects cluttering every line of sight.
Elon will give astronomers remote controls to move the satellites out of the way when they need a view of space.
This is begging for a pun but I can’t think of one.
Won’t the internet end up catching all the interfish?
The plan is to blanket the globe equally, so it won’t matter if you’re in the US, Australia, or Antarctica. And you just happen to reside in 2 out of 3 of those :)