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SpaceX Seeks Approval For Up To 1M Earth Stations for Its Satellite Service (geekwire.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the satellite-internet dept.

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."

13 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Revolutionary by Dan+East · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If SpaceX pulls this off, it will revolutionize connectivity around the world. Many, many ISP monopolies (companies that have a stranglehold on small isolated populated areas due to buying up their telco or cable) will FINALLY have to compete. There are vast stretches of the United States with utter crap internet offerings. This is going to shake up everything from internet, to the cell phone carriers, to the "internet of things".

    There are many multi-billion dollar companies that stand to lose tremendous amounts of money from this, while the general population of the world stands to gain a great deal of freedom and choice. Again, if SpaceX pulls this off, it will be one of the milestones in modern human history, and it will make SpaceX unbelievably wealthy.

    --
    Better known as 318230.
    1. Re:Revolutionary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

    2. Re: Revolutionary by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yea but then you have one big monopoly in the sky... remember when googles motto was do no evil?

      A business is only a monopoly if people are forced to use it. Like, for instance, today's rural Internet access. If you're lucky, there is broadband cable available to your neighborhood. But because there is never more than one provider outside large cities, a satellite alternative would be good competition.

    3. Re: Revolutionary by treymichaelcook · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    4. Re: Revolutionary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Except that is exactly what phased array antennas do.

    5. Re: Revolutionary by Kjella · · Score: 2

      You're assuming they'd continue to co-exist, that's not what happens in a natural monopoly. When you have a large fixed cost to build the infrastructure and a very small marginal cost to serve another customer it'll either spiral up (more customers -> lower cost/customer -> more customers -> monopoly) or down (less customers -> higher cost/customer -> less customers -> bankruptcy). If rural ISPs lose any significant fraction of users to Starlink that could easily set off a chain reaction where they shut down and Starlink is the new monopoly in town.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  2. Re:Is anyone else concerned... by mentil · · Score: 5, Interesting

    LEO has enough atmospheric drag that without regular boosts, debris/satellites will deorbit and burn up within a few months. There won't be a permanent debris field in LEO. Furthermore, satellites are small. At the same altitude, they're all traveling at the same speed to maintain orbit. Reaching end to end on the surface of the Earth, imagine how many cars could drive with a few cars' lengths between them. Now reduce that to 1 cars' length because you know the satellites are never going to slam on their brakes. Also LEO has a larger diameter than the equator, so bump that up by a bit. It's a very large number. Then there are other orbit angles and slightly different altitudes...

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  3. Re:Bring It On by 110010001000 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Good point. SpaceX is owned by an ex-Paypal executive.

  4. Problem for Astronomical Photography? by irchans · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder if thousands of satellites will mess up astronomy. Right now, when I take a 30 minute exposure, it is very unusual for a satellite to pass through the frame destroying the image. (Maybe a few times per thousand hours of observing.) But with thousands of satellites or potentially one day millions of satellites...

  5. Problems with satellite internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    1. Re: Problems with satellite internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      These are LEO (low earth orbit) which, compared to the existing satellite providers, definitely solves the latency issue, and I imagine helps with the weather problem.

    2. Re:Problems with satellite internet by treymichaelcook · · Score: 2

      LEO satellites are much closer to the Earth than the existing internet satellites, which are way up in a geostationary orbit; that and the much larger number of satellites fixes most of the issues you mentioned. Being closer means the latency should be in the 25-50ms range, comparable to existing cable, and the larger number of satellites should mean much higher bandwidth and data caps for each customer. It will also help with the weather issue. Another thing to consider is that Starlink will also end up making the rural cellphone service your parents switched to better - Starlink will be highly suitable for the backhaul on rural cell towers.

  6. Re:Is anyone else concerned... by treymichaelcook · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.