Starlink and the future of communication at sea

[Jon Hacking]

Originally Posted by Lance Monotone

Whomever said Starlink is a long way off, it's in beta now and I would expect it to be available to the average consumer within a year or two (my bet is late this year). As to rural vs urban users, unless SpaceX imposes some sort of geolocation blocking or simply refuses to sell service to billions of city dwellers (not the best business model), it won't matter where you are on the planet. The satellites are everywhere in the sky, they don't discriminate.

Lance, while I agree with you about when service should be available, StarLink operates on a cell principle. They've divided the world up into cells (areas) & last I heard the military has dictated that only 1 beam be on a cell at a time. Presumably they think that more than that will fry our brains. But folks hold cell-phone up to their ears all the time, & the signal density from that has to be several orders of magnitude higher than any signal from space. Signal strength goes down as the cube of the distance. (OTOH, Maybe that explains some of the crazy US politics we've seen lately)

With only one beam on a big city or metropolitan area, if too many customers are in that area, performance will degrade. Maybe StarLink will just rely on the better prices & service available in cities to keep the number of customers down in those areas, or maybe they'll have to do something else to limit customers in a cell. It would be interesting to know how many customers a single beam can support. And StarLink performance may be considerably better &/or cheaper than that offered in some populous 3rd world cities. Not sure what they'd do about that...

[Discovery 15797]

I'm not betting against Musk. And I definitely would like to see global coverage, and better speeds, but I'm not holding my breath.

Originally Posted by CarlF

How often are you more than 50 miles from land?

I get more than 50 miles from land quite often; it is not unusual in the Pacific.

Originally Posted by CarlF

It could completely change cruising communications - TV, email, telephone, Facebook, this forum - all as fast and as available on the boat as ashore - or at least that's the promise.

That's funny...I go cruising to get away from TV, email, telephone, facebook, this forum, etc. IMHO these are land based trivialities and completely unimportant on a cruising sailboat.

My TV is the sky and the ocean, email is small exchanged on Iridium that I check 1 time per day, my telephone is my ham radio when I turn it on, facebook is better replaced by the personal interactions I have with the people I meet, and this forum is replaced by other cruisers I encounter.

Oh, and as for costs...I'm betting that the folks on Nauru won't be running to sign up for the service at $100 per month. And honestly, after 20 years in high tech...when I don't have an Internet connection I really don't feel I'm missing too much...if anything I feel more free and have less stress.

[Jammer]

Originally Posted by Lance Monotone

As to rural vs urban users, unless SpaceX imposes some sort of geolocation blocking or simply refuses to sell service to billions of city dwellers (not the best business model), it won't matter where you are on the planet. The satellites are everywhere in the sky, they don't discriminate.

There are inherent limits in how much total bandwidth they can deliver in a particular area because they only have so much spectrum and can only get the beam from the satellite so tight without making the satellites physically larger. Starlink will always be primarily a rural and remote area service as a result.


In urban areas they'll end up with some short-term service like fairgrounds and some oddball locations like historic districts where it's impossible (or expensive) to run wires under the street.

[Dsanduril]

Based on their revenue projections Starlink is looking for somewhere between 25 and 50 million subscribers at full build out. That may not be a terribly large base for a terrestrial ISP, but that’s a ton of data to deliver from space.

Just for comparison Iridium has just over one million subscribers.

[JulianECB]

I have high hopes for it.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by JulianECB

I have high hopes for it.

Given the dominance of terrestrial mobile cells , I can’t see a space based system working financially. There’s simply not enough subscribers , by definition , in remote areas ( or the sea ) , to make it pay.

[CaptTom]

Originally Posted by Jammer

There are inherent limits in how much total bandwidth they can deliver in a particular area... Starlink will always be primarily a rural and remote area service as a result.

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Given the dominance of terrestrial mobile cells , I can’t see a space based system working financially. There’s simply not enough subscribers , by definition , in remote areas ( or the sea ) , to make it pay.

It seems to me some sort of hybrid system is where we're headed. Terrestrial cellular where available, satellite where it's not.

My Google Fi plan already does something like this. It can use either WiFi (VoIP) or cellular, and switches back and forth seamlessly based on some internal logic to figure out which is the "best" option, whatever that means.

I see no reason Elon can't partner with the cellular providers the way Google did. In fact, how about having a satellite receiver on a boat, RV or rural home which acts like a personal cell tower. When regular cell service cuts out, your cell phone seamlessly cuts over to that "tower." Add the same logic to your WiFi router and you have a total data/voice solution wherever you go.

Of course this is all just speculation. We only know what Elon has said, not necessarily his end game. If he even has one.

[Jammer]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Given the dominance of terrestrial mobile cells , I can’t see a space based system working financially. There’s simply not enough subscribers , by definition , in remote areas ( or the sea ) , to make it pay.

I would expect Starlink will eventually outcompete most of the terrestrial wireless ISPs. That is over 7 million customers in the USA alone. (source)


They will also displace the existing satellite ISPs including the low-end high-latency residential services as well as the commercial VSAT services including the marine broadband ones. I would expect pricing to be significantly higher for these than their fixed residential product once they are beyond the beta period.


Some existing private wireless networks such as those operated by power companies, pipelines, other utilities, broadcast radio, and possibly in some cases public safety organizations, may also start using Starlink for backhaul. Many of these systems are older microwave systems reaching their end of life. Many have capacity limits that preclude new uses without costly upgrades. Some use telco point-to-point circuits that are extremely expensive.



And then they will start to pick off customers in small to midsize towns where the existing options are cable and DSL and there is no carrier willing to invest in fiber.


Finally the market will grow. There are substantial numbers of people who would prefer to live in more rural or remote areas but cannot do so because they need good internet in order to keep their job. I expect a land rush in what were formerly seen as retirement or vacation properties.


Plenty of money to be made even with the major urban areas all eventually going to fiber

[dannc]

Originally Posted by Jammer

I would expect Starlink will eventually outcompete most of the terrestrial wireless ISPs. That is over 7 million customers in the USA alone. (source)

And there are plenty of people who WANT/NEED a wireless ISP but they can't get it due to geography and/or lack of towers.

In other words, there are more than 7 million people who would be on a wireless ISP if only the could access a tower. It is a common problem in rural areas.

Originally Posted by Jammer

And then they will start to pick off customers in small to midsize towns where the existing options are cable and DSL and there is no carrier willing to invest in fiber.

Finally the market will grow. There are substantial numbers of people who would prefer to live in more rural or remote areas but cannot do so because they need good internet in order to keep their job. I expect a land rush in what were formerly seen as retirement or vacation properties.

We can't get cable so our only way to get a landline Internet is via DSL from a company with a horrible reputation across the US. We are lucky in that we CAN access a cell tower to get to an ISP but it is expensive and can be hit, or miss, but it is far better than the DSL service.

Ireland has been trying to figure out how to get fast Internet access to it's rural areas for years. Just saw a story where a family finally got fast service to replace their "slow" service of 7 mbps or there a about. I WISH we could get 3 mbps, we have been living for years with 1.5 mpbs. We are NOT an exception either.

Starlink, mixed in with the new realities of the pandemic, is likely to push people BACK to rural areas. Which is really needed since so many rural communities are in decline in many countries. Back to Ireland, they set up a microwave based Internet service to one of the islands to provide access but to hopefully bring in population and stop the population decline. It seemed to be working and this was before the pandemic.

The pandemic has certainly pushed up the housing area in rural areas. That has already happened and supposedly will continue as companies realize they do not have to maintain expensive office space of employees. Companies were already reducing space for employees before the pandemic and some are going to really reduce office space as working from home becomes more prevalent. I already see this happening.

Starlink is going to get lucky and time the market correctly because of the pandemic.

Later,
Dan

[Rol1964]

There’s a definite link between Alzheimer’s disease and lack of social interaction in the aging years as well. Might be beneficial for you to reach out to someone (even if it’s via the internet) to exercise the old bean on occasion. Starlink sounds great. Keep the technology coming!
Can’t beat them and no use trying.

[AKA-None]

As a poor astronomer I find all that crap annoying and why does everyone need to get away from it all if you can’t get away from it all?

[Aguabago]

The capability would be very useful for lots of people for lots of purposes. For example, I support my cruising budget with occasional online business, which means I often have to find a mobile data signal. And I can't count how many times I have looked at YouTube HowTo videos to fix something on the boat or for some boat project; would be great to have access to that info "out there".

But I suspect this will be expensive, so most budget sailors will be weighing in on less expensive options. And to quote the article: "It will be some years before SpaceX’s service is fully operational". There have been similar discussions for decades.

And you _can_ get decent satellite data now if you have a super yacht or cruise ship budget ...

[redneckrob]

Originally Posted by Discovery 15797

I suggest that it will be a few years off; esp. before it's better than Iridium and provides solid offshore use.

Right now it is in limited beta (they call "better than nothing") mostly in the PNW & parts of Canada (which is why I mistakenly assumed the sats were geostationary).

Also, they will have to bring the prices way down to be available to the average consumer; esp to customers outside North America and the EU.

I don't mind paying a few hundred a year for PredictWind...getting reliable weather is important to me.

There is not much else on the Internet that is worth $1200 a year.

Where, exactly, are you able to get high speed internet for appreciably less than $100/month? That's the going rate for broadband anywhere that it's not subsidized. If that seems out if line than it applies equally to all broadband that all 100 million or so of us use in the U.S., it is not at all specific to Starlink.

[Lance Monotone]

Off-topic but SpaceX-related, are any of you following the Starship development?

[CarlF]

Early on Elon said that he wanted to get Starlink going in the islands ASAP to be available for hurricane recovery efforts. With Florida beta supposedly coming this March, I wouldn't be surprised to see it throughout the Caribbean by summer hurricane season.

Here's a map of the US ground stations. You can see that the Florida station covers most of the Bahamas. The range of each ground station is pretty large. One or two should do the Caribbean.

Pricing continues to be $100/month for unlimited data (at promised speeds of 150Mbps+). Those are the speeds people are seeing in beta.

I don't really care when Starlink works in mid ocean. Just free me from cell phone data pricing and let me have fast reliable internet anywhere I anchor so I can watch the Red Sox someday actually beat the Yankees