StarLink Maritime Way Over Price

[goboatingnow]

Interestingly , was reading how India has blocked starlink and plans it’s own competing geostationary service. Starlink had to refund its customers deposits.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Interestingly , was reading how India has blocked starlink and plans it’s own competing geostationary service. Starlink had to refund its customers deposits.

Indian Govt. says Elon Musk’s Starlink not a licensee; asks to refrain from booking satellite internet services [November 27, 2021]

”... The services of the company (Starlink) will compete with that of Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea in broadband and it will be a direct competitor to Bharti Group-backed OneWeb...”

More: https://www.thehindu.com/business/In...le37715795.ece

[jahnje]

Originally Posted by capt jgw

The way I understand it is the satellites for the stationary/RV system have to be in sight of a ground station to work, hence 12 miles or so from land. Offshore requires the laser linked satellites that bounce the signals around to sats that can see the ground stations. I think the plan is to eventually have all laser linked sats but they're not there yet. For those of us not crossing oceans, the RV service is fine and only a little more cost than cellular which doesn't work everywhere. Right now my boat's in St Charles, MO and not only does the marina satellite internet suck, but my ATT phones don't work at all. Don't know if Verizon is any better there. That's why I'm looking at Starlink too.

I the last month that I've had the RV version. I've used it in the middle of Missouri, Current River area. Shenandoah National Park VA, Outer Banks NC, and Gamble Rogers FL. As well as at Home in Rural So IL. If you've got a clear view of the northern sky, which has obviously been best on the East Coast, there's really no comparison. It's been great. I've been able to stream video, while do latency sensitive work, while the kids with me streamed whatever they needed to. Sure I can sort of hotspot that off my phone, but verizon will throttle my hotspot data after about a day of that. FL had good cell coverage at the beach , NC did not, and VA had none. So was it worth it as far as tenting goes? Absolutely. It's reliable and consistent, and doesn't seem to get bogged down when everybody and their cousin goes in for the night to watch some netflix. Truly, the first time I've every really been able to remotely work from anywhere.

[wagsea6b]

Originally Posted by Jon Hacking

Wagsea, you're not quite correct, although this is how the system has been running up to now, so you can be forgiven your confusion.

Yes, without the lasers, the bird you're talking to has to, itself, be able to talk to a ground station. Since the birds are up ~300nm, & their phased arrays can direct their beams out ~45-deg from the direction they're pointing (which is always straight down) they can span a max-distance hop of ~600nm, but practically, you have to be within about 400nm of a ground station for that system to work reliably.

The laser system apparently took some time to work out, as the v1.0 birds didn't have them. They've been launching the v1.5 birds (that DO have 4 laser interconnects) since late last year. Of the ~2,600 operational birds up now, about 1,000 of them don't have the lasers, but they're expected to be deorbited until the whole constellation will be laser equipped.

The v2 birds are too big to be launched with Falcon9 & will be launched with Starship, & they'll apparently be "about 10x as capable", although Musk didn't elaborate on that point.

But part of Musk's stated goal is to beat the speed of the undersea fiber from NY to London, by using the lasers. It may be expensive to equip those birds with lasers, but once they're installed, it doesn't cost much to use them.

Musk apparently intends Starlink to use them extensively, & to not use the ground-based internet until it has to. So the birds will actually examine the data to find out where it needs to go (as all ground-based routers do today) & then send it (by laser) to the bird servicing the closest ground-station to that destination. That is, he's going to create an entire new internet connectivity grid in space.

So yes, boats in mid-ocean will HAVE to use laser-equipped birds, but eventually, it appears that most of the Starlink traffic will use the laser-mesh.

Great explanation, thanks!

[witzgall]

RV owners gravitate to locations where cell coverage is non-existant.

Chris

Originally Posted by Student_Driver

I don’t understand the use case for the RV version. I must be missing some facts. Wouldn’t my cell phone wifi hot spot give me coverage virtually everywhere covered by the RV version of Starlink?

[NPCampbell]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Indian Govt. says Elon Musk’s Starlink not a licensee; asks to refrain from booking satellite internet services [November 27, 2021]
More: https://www.thehindu.com/business/In...le37715795.ece

”... The services of the company (Starlink) will compete with that of Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea in broadband and it will be a direct competitor to Bharti Group-backed OneWeb...”

OneWeb might be a competitor to StarLink "IF" it ever gets off the ground. They've already gone through bankruptcy once. They lost their ability to launch satellites with the Russia ban. Now they are going to rely on a pseudo-competitor, SpaceX, to launch their satellites.

[NaClyDog]

Originally Posted by NPCampbell

You are both right. B = bytes, b = bits. 8640 Gb = 1080 GB

Sorry but I have to disagree with you as well.


The b's are used to measure speed. The B's are used to measure amount. When's the last time you bought 10Gb of data? You would buy 10GB.

[Jon Hacking]

Originally Posted by NPCampbell

OneWeb might be a competitor to StarLink "IF" it ever gets off the ground. They've already gone through bankruptcy once. They lost their ability to launch satellites with the Russia ban. Now they are going to rely on a pseudo-competitor, SpaceX, to launch their satellites.

OneWeb currently has 428 of it's birds in orbit & operational, or 66% of its planned constellation. So I'd say it's already "off the ground" although I don't know how well its partially complete constellation works or how many operational birds are required for it to achieve operational mass.

I didn't think OneWeb was really a competitor to Starlink at all, or if so, only tangentially. My understanding was that OneWeb wasn't going to provide service to individuals, only to Telcos or possibly big corporations. I imagined this to be, say, the backhaul for a remote cell-tower. A bit disappointing, really, as I'm hoping for a bit more competition to Starlink (always good for us consumers).

I suppose an argument could be made that ANY internet service could be considered a competitor to OneWeb, & certainly to any terrestrial internet provider, & that's why the Indians got upset. But that also seems a bit of a stretch. None of the companies Gord's post mentioned are really providing the same service as Starlink.

Personally, I think the Indian officials are just looking for more $$ than Starlink wants to offer them, & they don't care that this might screw their people. Starlink apparently offered systems to several schools. This could not only have helped the teachers & students (a lot!) but could then act as community centers of internet availability, which is more than Musk has offered any country (that I've heard of) except Tonga & Ukraine, & those were emergency relief operations. And maybe offering them anything at all was part of the problem, & the officials then thought they could get more.

But I also know from personal experience that the Indian telcoms are both arcane & very difficult to work with, at least, on the personal level. I would think that the Indian elites, who would be the real users & beneficiaries of Starlink in India, would pressure those in charge, but I certainly don't know how the system works there other than it's very different from most places, as much of India often is.

[mark_morwood]

Originally Posted by Jon Hacking

I'm sorry, Mark. Perhaps I wasn't very clear. I already know most of what you posted, as I've been following this whole industry for a while (do you remember Teledesic?). What I meant to ask is:

"Why does Inmarsat require SOLAS & Starlink Maritime doesn't?"

Sorry, I missed that.

I think it's already been answered, but my understanding is that Inmarsat doesn't require SOLAS, SOLAS/GMDSS accepts/approves/requires Inmarsat as a valid communication mechanism for offshore voyages along with MF/HF radio with DSC as part of the GMDSS. SOLAS/IMO/GMDSS does not currently approve/accept Starlink Maritime for their requirements though I imagine it is possible that at some time Starlink may work with the IMO to become an accepted part of GMDSS.

[mark_morwood]

Originally Posted by NaClyDog

Sorry but I have to disagree with you as well.


The b's are used to measure speed. The B's are used to measure amount. When's the last time you bought 10Gb of data? You would buy 10GB.

Sort of. The problem is people often get the case wrong of B or b.

Data: (in Bytes or bits - most commonly Bytes are used, but bits are also valid)
GB, Gb, MB, Mb, KB, Kb

Speed: (in Bytes or bits per second - most commonly bits are used)
GBps, Gbps, MBps, Mbps, KBps, Kbps (or Mb/sec or Mb/s)

[Jon Hacking]

Originally Posted by NaClyDog

Sorry but I have to disagree with you as well.

The b's are used to measure speed. The B's are used to measure amount. When's the last time you bought 10Gb of data? You would buy 10GB.

Salty, I'll grant you that speed is generally (but not always) measured in bits/sec, & amount is usually measured in Bytes.

But technically, [b] is bits & [B] is bytes, & it doesn't matter if it's referring to speed or amount. However, there are many non-technical types, especially marketing types, who don't understand this, & don't always use the correct one, especially since it's such a subtle distinction.

For calculations like this particular sub-thread, which crosses the line between speed & amount, either can be used, & the distinctions are then important.

[NPCampbell]

Originally Posted by NaClyDog

Sorry but I have to disagree with you as well.


The b's are used to measure speed. The B's are used to measure amount. When's the last time you bought 10Gb of data? You would buy 10GB.

When's the last time you created a boolean field in a table and described it's width as .125 bytes?

The abbreviations are standardized by several orgs. Being an EE, I quoted the IEEE.

[NPCampbell]

Originally Posted by Jon Hacking

OneWeb currently has 428 of it's birds in orbit & operational, or 66% of its planned constellation. So I'd say it's already "off the ground" although I don't know how well its partially complete constellation works or how many operational birds are required for it to achieve operational mass...

The other companies mentioned are cellular data providers. OneWeb was listed as a "competitor" because they are providing satellite based broadband.

I am only critical of them because after 11 years they have achieved a revenue of: $0.00. They just came out of bankruptcy, Russia just ate their last launch AND kept their satellites and the history of satellite web providers, not run by Elon Musk, is littered with corpses (Teledesic, SkyBridge, etc).

[wholybee]

Originally Posted by NaClyDog

Sorry but I have to disagree with you as well.


The b's are used to measure speed. The B's are used to measure amount. When's the last time you bought 10Gb of data? You would buy 10GB.

They both measure size. b=bit and B=byte. 1 byte is = 8 bits.
Speed is often given as Mb/s or Gb/s, but MB/s and GB/s are both valid and sometimes used for higher data rates. Hard drive speeds are often given in MB/s for example. Omitting the /s or some other designation of time would be incorrect if you were measuring speed.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by mark_morwood

Sorry, I missed that.

I think it's already been answered, but my understanding is that Inmarsat doesn't require SOLAS, SOLAS/GMDSS accepts/approves/requires Inmarsat as a valid communication mechanism for offshore voyages along with MF/HF radio with DSC as part of the GMDSS. SOLAS/IMO/GMDSS does not currently approve/accept Starlink Maritime for their requirements though I imagine it is possible that at some time Starlink may work with the IMO to become an accepted part of GMDSS.

Iridium never bothered