SpaceX Hits Two Milestones In Plan For Low-Latency Satellite Broadband (arstechnica.com)

SpaceX is about to launch two demonstration satellites, and it is on track to get the Federal Communications Commission's permission to offer satellite internet service in the U.S. "Neither development is surprising, but they're both necessary steps for SpaceX to enter the satellite broadband market," reports Ars Technica. "SpaceX is one of several companies planning low-Earth orbit satellite broadband networks that could offer much higher speeds and much lower latency than existing satellite internet services." From the report: Today, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai proposed approving SpaceX's application "to provide broadband services using satellite technologies in the United States and on a global basis," a commission announcement said. SpaceX would be the fourth company to receive such an approval from the FCC, after OneWeb, Space Norway, and Telesat. "These approvals are the first of their kind for a new generation of large, non-geostationary satellite orbit, fixed-satellite service systems, and the Commission continues to process other, similar requests," the FCC said today. SpaceX's application has undergone "careful review" by the FCC's satellite engineering experts, according to Pai. "If adopted, it would be the first approval given to an American-based company to provide broadband services using a new generation of low-Earth orbit satellite technologies," Pai said.

Separately, CNET reported yesterday that SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch on Saturday will include "[t]he first pair of demonstration satellites for the company's 'Starlink' service." The demonstration launch is confirmed in SpaceX's FCC filings. One SpaceX filing this month mentions that a secondary payload on Saturday's Falcon 9 launch will include "two experimental non-geostationary orbit satellites, Microsat-2a and -2b." Those are the two satellites that SpaceX previously said would be used in its first phase of broadband testing.

Comments

He thought about satellite radio

[jfdavis668]

But, since he doesn't have a car any more, he went with satellite internet instead.

Re:He thought about satellite radio

[93 Escort Wagon]

I dunno... I think the real problem with his satellite radio plans was the flagship “all Space Oddity, all the time” station.

I mean, I like Bowie as much as the next guy - but how about mixing it up a little bit? At least throw a little Modern Love into the mix on occasion.

I just hope that ...

[The Cisco Kid]

they plan to offer this on a competitive basis in all areas of the US (especially rural or suburban areas that currently have none or maybe just one existing broadband option, but even in areas that have both cable and phone options)

And that the pricing is within the reach of the average middle to low income person living in such areas.

Previously I've only seen experiments that focus on providing service to third world countries but ignore the bast under or unserved areas in the US (cough, project loon)

If this ever becomes fully available everywhere in the US, and is priced affordably, it may finally signal the start of the death of the monopolistic stranglehold the current broadband providers have on the market in the US.

That the current FCC seems to be approving of it, suggests to me that it WON'T. It will probably be priced similarly to other Musk offerings, so high as to only be affordable to people with 6 figure or higher salaries.

Because if there's one thing we know Pai protects, its the guaranteed mega profits of his corporate masters.

Re: I just hope that ...

[Gavagai80]

That's why, according to wikipedia, "it will be linked to flat user terminals the size of a pizza box, which will have phased array antennas and track the satellites." And there are also ground stations involved.

Re:I just hope that ...

[Rei]

The SpaceX constellation is essentially global, and the intent is to undercut most global wired broadband connections on both speed and price; it'll be capable of up to 1Gbps per user, and the costs of the service will be spread around the globe. Previously this would have been unthinkable, but over the past decade there's been both a massive advance in satellite capabilities (per unit mass) and a massive reduction in launch costs (per unit payload mass). And it's all to be in LEO (nearly 12000 identical, mass-produced, mass-launched satellites), not GEO, so latencies are as low as or lower than traditional net service.

They may well pull it off. It's become so clear that such a service is now possible to implement that SpaceX's biggest problem is getting theirs in place before the competition; Samsung proposed such a constellation in 2015, and OneWeb (funded by Virgin Group and Qualcomm) is actively working toward one.

One interesting theory that's been batted around is that Teslas (and presumably other cars) will quickly switch over to it for their connectivity rather than relying on 4/5G service. You can't switch phones to it because the receiver is a phased array antenna about the size of a pizza box - but you can certainly have such a receiver in a car.

Re: I just hope that ...

[Rei]

There are laws of entropy that govern how much actual data can be passed as specific frequencies

Indeed there are... in a given space. Which is why the satellites use narrow spot beams. Each beam from the lower planes targets only 52 square kilometers (a circle with a 4km radius), while the upper planes' beams are 550km^2 (a circle with a 13km radius).

While the satellites do direct satellite-to-satellite communications as well as satellite-to-ground, they're not designed to replace internet backbone services or major service provider connections; e.g. Google isn't going to be hosting its servers directly across the network. Rather, in addition to user terminals, there's also ground terminals ("gateways") that connect directly to internet backbones; the constellation is designed to provide "last leg" services. However, the distances between the user and the gateway that their data gets transmitted to can be very significant.

Re: I just hope that ...

[Rei]

Don't just inform SpaceX - inform OneWeb, Qualcomm, Samsung and Lockheed; I'm sure they'd love to hear your lecture on how you know more than them.

Lastly, junk is, by definition something that is useless. A satellite constellation providing internet services to the entire globe is pretty much the opposite of "junk". Furthermore, unlike "space junk", the constellation's satellites are all designed for deorbit procedures at end-of-life. Lastly, even if they didn't deorbit, they're LEO; "junk" doesn't persist at LEO for protracted periods of time like it does at GEO. ISS loses up to a tenth of a kilometer altitude per day (although it's an exceptional case because of its large cross sectional area)

Vertical Integration

[mentil]

Seems Boeing is also making a swarm of LEO broadband satellites. Given they also have launch capability, they're likely to be the only company theoretically capable of competing with SpaceX. However, between Boeing and SpaceX, only one of the two companies has 'affordability' in their vocabulary. At best, Boeing will stave off antitrust complaints about SpaceX being able to undercut anyone else. From what I could find, SpaceX's swarm of >4,000 satellites will be far greater than what the competitors are planning, leading to higher max throughput, and ability to serve consumers via economies of scale. That said, SpaceX isn't really a broadband/satellite-making company, so they could screw up somewhere.

Re:Vertical Integration

[Rei]

OneWeb also exists (Virgin Group and Qualcomm). But they've hitched their horse to Blue Origin, so they better hope that Bezos pulls a rabbit out of a hat ;)

Latency

[fred911]

"SpaceX expects its own latencies to be between 25 and 35ms, similar to the latencies measured for wired Internet services. Current satellite ISPs have latencies of 600ms or more, " https://arstechnica.com/inform.... Possibly dated information. But one has to wonder, even if you've fixed a latency issue, how is packet collision handled when ground stations can't hear each other? There's only so much bandwidth allocated. Should be interesting.

Re:Latency

[Henning Rogge]

"SpaceX expects its own latencies to be between 25 and 35ms, similar to the latencies measured for wired Internet services. Current satellite ISPs have latencies of 600ms or more, " https://arstechnica.com/inform.... Possibly dated information. But one has to wonder, even if you've fixed a latency issue, how is packet collision handled when ground stations can't hear each other? There's only so much bandwidth allocated. Should be interesting.

Just the same as satellite phones and other "internet over satellite" (with uplink) providers... Time-division multiple access.

Ground stations have to allocate some time/frequency space over a "management slot" before they are allowed to transmit their normal data.

Re:Latency

[Rei]

1) Satellite networks already have inter-satellite communications. It's not new.

2) It's much easier than mesh networks on Earth. It's not an improvised network; you know exactly where every craft should be, down to incredibly fine accuracy, and they're all built specifically to operate with each other. And there's no random physical obstructions.

My understanding is that it's a "last mile" solution where the last mile can actually be several hundred. The signal goes up to the satellite and straight back down to the nearest ground station.

The last part is your error. It does not go to the "nearest ground station" to the user. It goes to the latency-weighted nearest ground station to the server which the satellite can reach. Furthermore, it's hopped directly into backbone traffic instead of filtering up through a progressive series of IPs. For example, if I traceroute anywhere out of Iceland, there's six hops within Iceland, then the traffic goes to London, then there's two hops, and then it hops onto a series of backbone routes to wherever it needs to go in the world, whether that's China, the US, elsewhere in Europe, etc. With the SpaceX constellation, the first 8 hops would disappear and be replaced by one hop through the satellite and one from the ground station to the most appropriate backbone; a single satellite could reach to North America, Europe, or North Asia from here.

For all the cases where the signal has to go via more than one satellite, you're fucked

You for some reason are assuming that the satellites have slow packet processing, or abnormal processing delays. Or perhaps you're mistakenly thinking that the physical distance traveled is longer? These are LEO satellites; for most traffic, it's shorter, as it doesn't involve snaking around the world wherever backbone lines happen to be laid.

more so when everyone is trying to do the same thing

Only a very small minority of traffic is routed satellite-to-satellite.

The reason I'm being so definite in my criticism is that we know that mesh networks don't work well (plenty of literature on the topic)

Wow, that totally makes you an expert on satellite communications, and makes you know more than SpaceX, Qualcomm, Samsung and Lockheed.

Re:Give me numbers

[wbr1]

TFA, not TFS states 25-30ms. If you have questions, maybe take time to actually read rather than shitpost. But, this is /.

Re:How much lower latency? What speed?

[b0bby]

The most interesting part of the article was towards the bottom:

SpaceX has said it will offer speeds of up to a gigabit per second, with latencies between 25ms and 35ms. Those latencies would make SpaceX's service comparable to cable and fiber. Today's satellite broadband services use satellites in much higher orbits and thus have latencies of 600ms or more, according to FCC measurements.

The demonstration satellites will orbit at 511km, although the operational satellites are planned to orbit at altitudes ranging from 1,110km to 1,325km. By contrast, the existing HughesNet satellite network has an altitude of about 35,400km, making for a much longer round-trip time than ground-based networks.

Internet Serivce Anywhere On Earth

[DickBreath]

This could mean good internet service at any point on the earth's surface. From the middle of the ocean to the most rustic remote unabomber cabin.

On the highest mountain. In Antarctica. Even the most inhospitable places like New Jersey.

Re:Give me numbers

[torkus]

I mean, completely ignoring the article and referring to basic definitions of GEO and LEO

GEO: 36,000km (72,000km round trip minmum)
LEO: 1,000km (2,000km round trip minimum)

Light flitters about at 300,000km/s

Basic math here says GEO requires 240ms just to bounce a signal to GEO and 6ms for LEO.

So THERE. It's two orders of magnitude better and I've fed a troll today to help prevent their extinction.

Missed Naming Opportunity

[zenbi]

Starlink?! There will never be a more opportune time to name a service "Skynet"!