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SpaceX Seeks Approval For Up To 1M Earth Stations for Its Satellite Service (geekwire.com)
SpaceX just filed a new earth-station license application with America's Federal Communications Commisions, seeking blanket approval "for up to a million earth stations" for customers of their Starlink satellite internet service, reports GeekWire:
Those satellites have already received clearance from the FCC, and SpaceX plans to launch the first elements of the initial 4,425-satellite constellation this year, using Falcon 9 rockets.... Eventually, SpaceX wants to build up the network to take in as many as 12,000 satellites in low Earth orbit...
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said the Starlink project aims is to provide high-speed, reliable and affordable broadband data services to consumers in the U.S. and around the world, including an estimated 3.8 billion people who are underserved by existing networks. When he unveiled the project four years ago in Seattle, he said revenue from the internet service would pay for his vision of creating a city on Mars.
The application assures regulators that the earth stations will "incorporate advanced technologies to enable highly efficient use of the spectrum and enhance the customer's broadband experience."
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said the Starlink project aims is to provide high-speed, reliable and affordable broadband data services to consumers in the U.S. and around the world, including an estimated 3.8 billion people who are underserved by existing networks. When he unveiled the project four years ago in Seattle, he said revenue from the internet service would pay for his vision of creating a city on Mars.
The application assures regulators that the earth stations will "incorporate advanced technologies to enable highly efficient use of the spectrum and enhance the customer's broadband experience."
My parents live in a rural area and had a satellite internet service through Dish Network called Wild Blue. There are a few problems with satellite internet that I feel one would need to solve before making a true replacement for wired or wireless internet.
1) Weather dependent - Our satellite internet could go out if it was too cloudy, raining, snowing, any kind of a storm, or sometimes on mostly sunny days when a group of clouds just happened to pass through. Very annoying, but not truly awful.
2) Latency issues - Satellite internet typically has a half second delay as the information is beamed up and down. This makes gaming on it difficult at best. Streaming wasn't a big thing for us, so I can't really comment on that. The delay was also very annoying for just browsing web pages though.
3) Cost and data cap - It was very expensive for us, along the lines of $80+ a month for what could be considered slightly above DSL speeds with a low rolling data cap. Which was enough to browse the web and do a few other things, but still horrible for downloading large files. Windows update used to cause headaches when they would release a patch that would take up 10%+ of our monthly data cap.
4) Finding a spot - One thing to note is that Wild Blue required a space about 3-4ft from the house with a clear view of the southern sky. Which we had, but I talked to the technician and he was telling me that places like New Hampshire were impossible to use satellite internet because of this restriction.
It is an option for people living in rural areas and it can be a good one when nothing else is available. My parents moved off of satellite when Verizon brought out their wireless internet for residential homes and were happier with the new service. If those issues outlined above can be solved then it might be a better option than some others, but I don't hold out the highest hope for some of them.
Just my experience and thoughts on the subject.
What exactly is the throughput of each satellite?
Earth surface area is 510e6 km^2. Full equal earth coverage would have each of those 12k satellites will serving 42.5e3 km^2 or a circle with radius 115km. That is going to put massive numbers of people under one single satellite. This can be improved if the network is concentrated between ~50deg latitudes but there is still going to be the issue of, for example, all of New York city served by one link.
This is a potential boon for undeserved rural areas, oceans, the third world. I don't see any way this can compete with wired ISPs near developed urban areas.
To add some math about the amount of available space - the Earth has a surface area of 510 million square kilometers. Give each satellite a comfortable 25x25km block (625km^2) area in its orbit, and each plane can hold over 800,000 satellites. Add in that in the LEO orbits these satellites are in will bring any debris or broken satellites down in 10 years or so, and things will be fine.
Nothing stopping other companies from setting up their own satellite networks, well unless SpaceX starts refusing to launch satellites for other networks, and other launch providers can't match the SpaceX price. Anyways though, there will still be competition from other land based internet services; for that matter, Starlink could actually end up improving those ground based networks - many cell phone providers will be very interested in using Starlink to provide the backhaul on their 5G cell phone towers, for example.