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SpaceX Worried Fake Competitors Could Disrupt Its Space Internet Plan
Jason Koebler writes: The biggest impediment to SpaceX's plan to create a worldwide, satellite broadband network might not be the sheer technological difficulty of putting 4,000 satellites into space. Instead, outdated international and domestic regulations on satellite communications could stand in the way, according to a new Federal Communications Commission filing by the company. The company's attorneys wrote that the FCC might make it too easy for competitors to reserve communications bandwidth that they will never use. "Spectrum warehousing can be extremely detrimental and unprepared, highly speculative, or disingenuous applicants must be prevented from pursuing 'paper satellites' (or 'paper constellations'), which can unjustly obstruct and delay qualified applicants from deploying their systems."
I already bought all the spectrums.
Nobody is going to pay for internet with the inherent latency of a signal travelling to high orbit and back.
"Disingenuous"? Seriously? What the fuck does the submitter think this is, Hacker News? We don't use that word around here.
This is how spectrum should work everywhere. Have it work like the homestead act.
The concept being that the land is free or you buy it but ONLY if you actually do something with it. Actually acquiring the land requires living and working on the land for a certain number of years and putting it to some use. I believe the term at the time was "improving it". Build roads, put houses on it, build farms, etc. And you own the land.
Spectrum should work the same way in that to qualify for ownership or to maintain a lease on bandwidth you actually have to use it. It really should be first come first serve. And not just someone sending a beacon up there that beeps on a frequency every 10 minutes. Actually do something with it.
And if you stop doing something with it then you should lose the lease.
The whole thing should be regional as well. This doesn't apply to space communications so much as radio and cell towers and tv stations. But if I'm in rural Alaska for example... just to pick an extreme example... why would the FCC tell me to not broadcast on a frequency that no one uses? The fact that I'm not paying for it or that some other service bought the national rights to that frequency are besides the point. They in that context don't actually broadcast to that area. So... why do they have a lease to do it?
This is one of the bigger issues I have with the FCC in that it is very urban centric in its conception of policy and it is very inflexible as regards seeing that unused spectrum is returned to the "radio wave commons."
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Nobody has ever done that on ANY budget.
Were trusting the FCC to do the right thing? This could work if SpaceX was in any other country besides the US...
Space debris
The Joint Space Operations Center, part of United States Strategic Command (formerly the United States Space Command), currently tracks more than 8,500 objects larger than 10 cm in LEO. However, a limited Arecibo Observatory study suggested there could be approximately one million objects larger than 2 millimeters, which are too small to be visible from Earth-based observatories.
Low Earth orbit
Musk believes he can launch and maintain a constellation of 4,000 satellites in low earth orbit and still make a profit while others are pursuing simpler and cheaper broadband solutions, which can be deployed more rapidly and with less environmental impact and no one sees a problem in this?
Musk and Bezos hate each other and Bezos has been known to go out of his way to try to stop Musk from getting things done. I bet this is what that's really about.
That certainly would be a strong indication the game has changed, eh? SpaceX probably will launch several satellites per rocket. So it's not quite as ambitious as it first sounds, though still should be a big step over the current state of the art.
SpaceX is launching 6x ORBCOMM-2 LEO satellites with a Falcon 9. The ORBCOMM-2 LEO sats are like 3x as large as their first gen sats. So yeah it depends on how big the satellites are and how many they can launch at once.
gonna be in LEO...ffs
SpaceX is using fake fake competitors to disrupt opposition to its Space Internet Plan. Musk must be a big Animal House fan.
1 buy up potentially valuable property
2 don't use it to prevent others from entering the market
3 Profit from the lack of competion
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
1. Use the I am actually doing it to gain FCC priority.
2. Buy up more bandwidth than Spacex needs.
3. Keep others out of industry
4. Profit
or.
Realize that so many satellites are not profitable and blame lack of spectrum as the cause.
Well, the Iridium constellation was built using a manufacturing technique that dropped the cost per satellite down to $5 million apiece. With 20 years of advancement in automation and technology, it should be possible to build a comparable satellite for much less, especially if you amortize the development costs over more units. And it probably really helps to have your own launch company that will become more competitive on a per launch basis with more guaranteed launches on its schedule.
There's a certain kind of entrepreneur who sees possibility as a matter of willpower -- people who think they can will any desired reality into being with enough money and shouting. I don't think Musk is one of those. I think he's one of those that turns his ideas into a big model and figures out when he can do them. Yeah, I know, Hyperloop, but so far he's just throwing billionaire pocket change at that.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Despite what some might think, Spacex's satellite internet will be more expensive DSL, cable, or LTE in cities or suburbs. Spacex will get the people out in the boonies, or the 3rd world countries, which can't afford to build any infrastructure. They will have to use text only email and text messages, but text can go a long way in some places. As for the people in the boonies, big telecom doesn't want to serve them, and will probably be happy that someone else will take care of them.
Sorry, SpaceX, you know I love you but you're trying to cook the rules to get yourself a sweetheart deal. There's a big difference between speculating on radio spectrum and speculating on, say, silver: if you buy some silver and don't use it, a few years later you've still got some silver. If you buy spectrum and don't use it, a few years later the FCC takes it back and you've got nothing. Spectrum is a perishable resource, so nobody's going to bid on spectrum unless they really are going to make a communications network, or they plan to "flip" it and resell it to a viable user like SpaceX.
And short-term speculative bidding is *good* for the American public. Remember, this radio spectrum is our public property, and it's worth serious money. If SpaceX convinces the FCC not to allow "paper satellites", and demonstrates that it's the only bidder that's for real, then it can bid $0.01, win the auction, deploy its constellation, and keep all the profit. Allowing speculative competitive bids forces SpaceX to raise its bid, meaning the FCC, and thus the American public, gets to take a share of SpaceX's profits.
Analogy: Suppose your town decides to auction off some public park land to local developers. The biggest developer says, "only developers that can actually build a condo at least 20 stories tall should be allowed to bid." They are the only such developer, they bid $0.01, build a gigantic condo, make a fortune, and you and your town is left with no cash and no park.
The game hasn't changed at all, this is still as much a fantasy as the Iridiums. Musk is obviously looking for stupid people to finance this silliness, and the only reason why he's irked is that 'competition' means he'll have to justify his numbers better.
is to tax it. That makes it a money drain if you just sit on it.
Table-ized A.I.
and the only reason why he's irked is that 'competition' means he'll have to justify his numbers better.
I don't see that at all.
Once my volcano island is operational I had planned to put one ton of buckshot in counter geostationary orbit, this is even better.
Is it really a FCC problem? I thought that spectrum management in space was done by the ITU.
... the free market will sort all these things out. You mean it might not be true?!?!eleven?
Seems like with that many statellites, one would need to use cellular technology and reuse the spectrum from satellite to satellite.
Perhaps the antenna requirements do not permit this?
Without cells, having 4k sats might mean a LOT (1k?) of frequencies.
I can see that this might be a problem for any allocation system.
Is there any info on what spectrum is actually being asked for?
Not sure if this is a case of a nobel SpaceX trying to right a wrong or a spoiled kid trying to have it their way.
It could be either or a bit of both. There is not enough info to know and it may depend on the observer.
The area of the earth is 4,000^2xpi square miles, so even with 4,000 satellites there is one for every 12,000 square miles. OK, perhaps the very high latitudes don't need to be covered, and you can get that down to 10,000 square miles. For the United States, the average population density means that on average, you'd have 500,000 people covered by one satellite. Europe, Japan, China, Indonesia, and many other countries or regions have significantly higher population density. For cities, this is just a non-starter.
Now, Musk is not a stupid guy, but I just can't see how this works.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
AO-73 is about 700 miles up, (roughly what Mr. Musk is proposing) and it has a ground foot print that as I write this appears to cover most of Oceania. Your 12,000 square miles would be a ground foot print with a radius of roughly 62 miles given that AO-73 currently covers all of Australia, and then some It seems like any given area will be covered by multiple satellites at any given time.
Most large cities are surrounded by large rural areas, or large bodies of water (or both) so there will be multiple satellites accessible by any given location to help balance the load.
If a company bids and wins a chunk of spectrum they'd have X amount of time to do something with it, say 2 years. After that, if the company isn't using it, it would go back into the pool to bid on again. Possibly there could be some extension if the company could demonstrate that it was actively working (i.e. "Hey look at this 15 satellites we've got queued up to launch...") to use the spectrum.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I think leaving out the polar regions would account for more than 1/6th of the surface area if using equatorial orbit.
Of course, they may be using polar orbits and choose to leave out orbits over the ocean or land that doesn't have much population.
Or, they could use Tundra orbits and just drop the satellites on top of the areas they wish to provide coverage to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
Some geosats provide Internet service to tens of millions of square miles per individual satellite, and you can't see how these satellites would do the same for a few thousand square miles? I don't get your objections.
Musk isn't planning to compete with wireline broadband providers in big cities, he's planning to go after the market of rural areas (all over the world) where population densities are too low to make wireline broadband make sense, or even in suburban areas where the density isn't high enough for good broadband. The potential market there is enormous. Even ViaSat alone has more than 650k ISP customers on their geosat, and their prices/latency/etc are pretty terrible compared to what a LEO satellite could offer.
in the cities, you use cell or wifi, hand off to satellites in the wilderness. get global coverage that way. The special sauce has to be that it works with other, more conventional tech where appropriate.
Those were speculums, not spectrum that you bought.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They continue to fix markets and issues.
Space launch in the developed world, had pretty much stalled with similar prices.
SpaceX had to fight Boeing, L-Mart, OSC, ULA, and Blue Origin who all tried to block SpaceX at every turn.
Now, SpaceX is not just forcing launch prices down, but will shortly create a new massive market for sats since theirs will be so cheap to purchase.
And here, they are fighting against the games that the big telcos will play.
No other person is shaking up the world markets the way that Musk is doing it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.