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FCC Green-Lights SpaceX Satellite Plans (axios.com) 50

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
SpaceX scored a regulatory victory at the Federal Communications Commission Tuesday, overcoming opposition from Amazon and other satellite companies on a key change to its plans for a satellite network that will beam internet access across the globe. From a report: SpaceX needed FCC approval to move forward with its plan to provide internet access in hard-to-reach areas. SpaceX asked the FCC for permission to lower the orbit of its future Starlink satellites.
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FCC Green-Lights SpaceX Satellite Plans More

FCC Green-Lights SpaceX Satellite Plans

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  • SpaceX needed FCC approval to move forward with its plan to provide internet access in hard-to-reach areas. SpaceX asked the FCC for permission to lower the orbit of its future Starlink satellites.

    First it was rocket tanks, next it will be satellites.

  • Good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @12:43PM (#61319994) Journal

    This single event (Starlink) will FORCE ISPs world-wide to get their assess in gear. Either build out your networks and charge fair prices, or go out of business. Rural America's broadband situation is a joke, and I'm tired of land-based ISPs that hold geographic monopolies charging outrageous rates for terribly slow service.

    • There will always be a market for wired infrastructure.

      • Yes, shitty landlords will always need a lowest cost solution.

      • Yeah, wired latency will still be lower (though only for fiber), and speeds will always be greater (physics sucks that way). But I do see, like everything else, quite a bit of the wired deferring to Starlink, simply because it is "good enough"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      It'll force rural ISPs to get in gear, maybe even suburban ones, but that's about it.

      However, it's already having a competitive impact. Xplornet (Canada's largest ISP) suddenly announced a huge improvement in their plans shortly after Starlink started rolling out ( https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/... [iphoneincanada.ca] ). Of course, the problem most people have with Xplornet is the quality of the service itself, so customers may not care if their 5 megabit service is sold as 10 or 50 megabit. They're still just getting 5.

    • Land based ISP have a trick in their pocket. (Excess unused bandwidth) The same cable that has been hooked to my house for 20 years (and other peoples homes for around 50 years) Went from pure analog TV, to Internet Speeds of 100kbs (late 1990's), 1mbs (early 2000's), 10mbs (2010's), to 100mbs today (and 200mbs is what I suppose to have but I don't see too much traffic at that speed). I can buy speeds to around 1gbs currently from my ISP and I just need to pay more money.

      If Starlink becomes popular and i

      • It's definitely not as simple as "flipping a switch." Most of those old HFC systems have a lot of issues with noise and ingress and crappy drops and that stuff is going to need to be fixed before they can start giving1 Gbps to everyone. Or maybe they just hire you to come in and "flip the switch" for them instead....

        • Well you seem bitter, and missing the point that upgrading land base networking infrastructure is much simpler than space based. However a lot of these ISP are selling us slowed down internet, and have high speed as a monetary add on, because people will pay $80 a month for 200mbs, even though the network can support faster, if people don't need it, why bother giving it to them, where you can charge twice as much for a gig, where that add on cost is just pure profit.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by torkus ( 1133985 )

        Last mile, sure. A lot of that cable is aged but sufficient in many cases to continue supporting broadband. A lot of it isn't though and they've run lots of new drops during installs over the last 20ish years of cable modems. I rather doubt a 50 year old cable TV drop would work for a cable modem.

        However, they've updated a LOT of their distribution network and core infrastructure. You just don't see it because it's not in your face or your house.

        There's generally significant spare capacity in most areas

    • Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)

      by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @01:14PM (#61320156)

      Cable companies are developing 10 Gigabit broadband (DOCSIS 4.0) in response to this. Starlink won't be able to compete with existing urban broadband services, their main customers will be the tens of millions of people living in rural areas all over the world, plus airlines, military, and ships -- maybe even trains and long haul truckers bored in the autonomous Tesla Semi.

      They could get 1 million customers within 5 to 10 years, which would bring in $1 billion dollars per year in revenue which would justify the launch costs of these satellites.

      Iridium brings in $500 million a year by offering bandwidth of just a few kilobits (thousands of times less than what Starlink would provide). $1 billion a year is an easy target given that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by torkus ( 1133985 )

        10Gbps broadband is a shiny toy but I question how useful it's going to be. Bandwidth requirements have gone up, true, but most services quote numbers they QoS to speedtest, etc. and everything else gets a whole lot less.

        If you need it, you need it, but most people today can/do get by just fine on 100Mbps today. 1Gbps isn't going to cramp most households for a long while, especially with all the BS data caps ISPs are putting in place.

        I think starlink's customer base in 10 years will be at least an order o

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nbvb ( 32836 )

        Right -- you won't see DOCSIS 4.0 until -- at the earliest -- late 2024.

        SpaceX will be live for years - and iterated several times - before the first DOCSIS 4.0 customer. Dense urban areas have not, are not, and won't be a target for Starlink.

        But boy - the rest of that wide open land sure looks up for grabs.

    • This single event (Starlink) will FORCE ISPs world-wide to get their assess in gear. Either build out your networks and charge fair prices, or go out of business. Rural America's broadband situation is a joke, and I'm tired of land-based ISPs that hold geographic monopolies charging outrageous rates for terribly slow service.

      They don't want to provide broadband to rural locations. It's expensive and the ROI is shaky, especially without subsidies.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gmack ( 197796 )

      That is the part I like most about all of this. In previous years my local telco would only supply my apartment building with 40 Mbps at best. Since the original Starlink announcement, they have announced fiber rollouts and enabled 1500Mbps down / 1000 Mbps up for a little over $120 CAD. I took the next package down for 1000 down/ 750 up.

    • rural based america nneds to pay the market rate and fair cost towards it's infrastructure or do they want government programs to implement socalism ?

      • rural based america nneds to pay the market rate

        Then we all bear the cost of rural children growing up to be dumb and uneducated.

        Like schools, the Internet is a public good [wikipedia.org].

        do they want government programs to implement socalism ?

        We already subsidize rural roads and postal services. At least the postal service seems much less important than Internet service. 99% of my postal mail is advertising crap that goes straight into the trash.

        How about we fund universal broadband by taxing junk mailers?

  • I want those satellites to be orbiting 50ft above my house for the ultimate low-latency satellite based internet!

  • Looking forward to broadband on flights and in the ocean.

    • Then we can play "Among Us" with other passengers on the flight!

    • If you've ever tried internet at sea, it is horrifically slow with reading email tolerable, maybe a tiny bit of web browsing on light-weight sites.

      With StarLink, the cost should be so much lower you could get actually usable internet speeds on the ship for not an unreasonable fee... and if the equipment got even just a bit smaller, you could imagine mounting it outside on a balcony to have your own private service link out in the ocean.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gmack ( 197796 )

        My thought lately, is that I could do my job from anywhere. I could buy a yacht and work from the Caribbean or the middle of the Atlantic.

        • I could buy a yacht and work from the Caribbean or the middle of the Atlantic.

          The thing I wonder about with smaller boards is, how stable does the dish need to be? A smallish yacht seems like it might move too much to have the dish be usable, but I'm not sure... maybe someone makes a gimbal system that would stabilize it enough for operation.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gmack ( 197796 )

            I had pondered building a gimbal. That's a price I'm willing to pay to escape noise central.

            • You don't need a gimbal, since it is a phased array antenna you just need accelerometers (or a gyro) to keep feeding attitude information to the driver. Not sure if it comes with accelerometers already, but if it doesn't you may need to attach your own accelerometers and software hack it. My guess is they already have accelerometers -- or at least will offer it as an accessory -- because shipping big revenue source.

              • The antenna array is designed to work in moving vehicles.

                A quick Google query pops up several pages that say it has built-in accelerometers. So it should work on a boat.

                A bigger problem will be the salt spray. Salt can quickly corrode electronics. Even if you coat the circuits with epoxy, the salt will corrode the connectors.

          • It's a phase array, so it just needs accelerometers to know its position relative to the nadir. It shouldn't need a gimbal unless the boat is wildly rocking in the high kilohertz range it shouldn't be a problem. If the boat actually is rocking with that intensity you would have bigger problems.

            • It's a phase array, so it just needs accelerometers to know its position relative to the nadir.

              Great point, though I wonder if the current units do have anything like accelerometers...

              Would be really interesting to have someone with a base unit test that out and see what happens.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by torkus ( 1133985 )

            To paraphrase Musk: it'll work just fine on a plane, compared to how fast the sats are moving a plane might as well be standing still.

            I can buy a gimbal stabilizer for my phone for like $100 so even if it the pitch/yaw was somehow to much to overcome via the 'dish' itself, it's a trivial thing to fix.

            • it'll work just fine on a plane

              Yeah I wasn't really worried about planes since as you say, they mostly lack any pitch/yaw mid-flight and are stable. If I can have a drink sitting out loose on a tray I figure a satellite dish would be fine.

              I can buy a gimbal stabilizer for my phone for like $100 so even if it the pitch/yaw was somehow to much to overcome via the 'dish' itself

              I guess I'm thinking of pretty small boats I've been on that have pretty serious pitch/yaw even in just 4ft seas, but probably anyth

  • How can that be a bad thing? Also, screw you astronomers!

  • I'm assuming that this only really falls under FCC because of the need for uplinks. I'm sure that Starlink could incorporate outside of US jurisdiction, launch from European or Russian launch vehicles, and supply broadband access to whoever they wanted outside the US without the FCC having any say.

  • Tough week for Bezos

    • Poor guy, he has only $150 billion dollars ..he must be so depressed, I hope he can afford a shrink on that measly money.. woe is him.

      • Don't get me wrong, i have no admiration for the Bezos type. But I wonder if that kind of money makes a difference for this type of guys, I think it's also about recognition, and this week is not a good one for him, Let's assume a minute he doesn't do all this for money, and that he's really serious about getting someone on the moon and provide universal internet/satellite coverage. Then it's a particularly bad week for him, no ? He's losing that "market" despite having so much money in the bank.

  • I have a question for someone more knowledgeable than me.

    If you monitor the location of the SpaceX satellites you'll see a coverage around the globe and a bunch in a row.
    https://satellitemap.space/ [satellitemap.space]

    People are calling them satellite trains. Why are they like that? What purpose does that serve? Are they going to remain that way?

    • Those are satellites in the process of moving to their final orbits. They're released sequentially in a short time window after being launched then slowly spread out over a few months.

      BTW SpaceX have an incredible origami-inspired packaging system to fit that number of sats in the Falcon 9 fairing.

  • As an amateur astronomer, Starlink poses a significant challenge to having clear dark skies. Nothing causes more eyerolling to a group of astronomers than a roaming pack of Starlink satellites.

    That said, I also live rural on my farm. My internet speed at home averages around 17Mbps down, 10 up, and I'm capped at 1Tb of data transfer (up/down). Try running that with two gaming boys, and no cable TV - all streaming services.

    I'm paying 2X for home internet for early 2000's speeds compared to what I'll get w

  • The only way to take down a monopoly is bringing up new technology. SpaceX has freed NASA from Roscosmos contracts for launches (and now Rocket Lab, Blue Origin are pushing SpaceX), Internet Radio killed Sirius/XM satellite duopoly, again Internet communications killed telephone rates (cartel?)

    So, the best way to respond to a monopoly / duopoly / cartel is just saying "f-u, we don't need your services anymore".

    Hopefully many other things (like healthcare) will be disrupted (tele-medicine is already reducing

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