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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 Instead, outdated international and domestic regulations on satellite communications could stand in the way, according to a new Federal Communications Commission filing by the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."
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."
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That's why SpaceX is planning to put these satellites into a lower orbit at around 1200 km.
Did you read the summary? It said 4000 satellites. To need that many satellites to ensure global coverage it must be a LEO satellite constellation. So the latency won't be worse than a transatlantic trip via fiber optic. The article says a 750 mile orbit so the round trip is 1500 miles. According to Google 1500 miles/speed of light is 8.05 ms. If they include caches on the satellites for web traffic the latency can be even less.
With satellite-satellite routing (as they are planning) it can actually be faster than fibre.
Light in fibre goes at around 2/3 the speed of light in free space.
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?
SpaceX is using fake fake competitors to disrupt opposition to its Space Internet Plan. Musk must be a big Animal House fan.
It's manifestly not true that nobody would pay for global Internet access if it had latency, even up to geosynchronous orbit. Most Internet applications are *throughput* sensitive, not *latency*. If it's good enough for television, it'd be good enough for Netflix if you could pay for the bandwidth.
You know what *is* latency sensitive? Telephony. And certain brands of satellite telephone services have employed geostationary (i.e. very high orbit) satellites for years. Yes there's some delay, but it's tolerable. Round trip to geostationary orbit is just a tad longer than 1/4 second.
IIRC SpaceX's satellites are planned to be 1100 km up. Since "Low Earth Orbit" is from 160 to 2000 km, that'd put those satellites pretty close to smack dab in the middle of LEO.
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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.
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Despite what some might think, Spacex's satellite internet will be more expensive DSL, cable, or LTE in cities or suburbs.
Unless it happens not to be. But I get that internet in the boonies and third world is a market.
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.
Depends how long term they're thinking. SpaceX could turn that into competition for their core markets. A little obstruction now could pay dividends later. Aerospace is particularly notorious for playing this sort of game.
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.
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.
They should talk to SCTV. They had a satellite orbiting at a couple of hundred feet. Negligible latency for that orbit!
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I just got hughes sat Internet service, up and down latency of around 600 ms. Really stinks. Speed is good though so no gaming but that's not what I need anyways. That will make you miss shitty cable for sure.
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.
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I think you're missing the fact that SCTV was a Canadian comedy television show, best known for launching the careers of a who's-who of Canadian comedians, from John Candy to Rick Moranis.