Starlink v1.0 production satellites have 400% increase in overall bandwidth compared to version 0.9 starlink satellites. tarlink v1.0 satellites have antennas with twice as many steerable beams. They can serve more regions at the same time.
SpaceX is developing a low latency, broadband internet system to meet the needs of consumers across the globe. Enabled by a constellation of low Earth orbit satellites, Starlink will provide fast, reliable internet to populations with little or no connectivity, including those in rural communities and places where existing services are too expensive or unreliable.
Since the most recent launch of Starlink satellites in May, SpaceX has increased spectrum capacity for the end-user through upgrades in design that maximize the use of both Ka and Ku bands. Additionally, components of each satellite are 100% demisable and will quickly burn up in Earth’s atmosphere at the end of their life cycle—a measure that exceeds all current safety standards.
Starlink is targeted to offer service in parts of the U.S. and Canada after six launches, rapidly expanding to global coverage of the populated world after 24 launches.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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don’t be too dismissive, you’re ignoring the laser communication upgrades, first between satellites and probably later to ground stations.
the “threat” has been thoroughly debunked by the astronomical community, they already know how to deal with passing satellites and also note that even quintoupling the number of satellites in orbit doesn’t increase the odds of one passing the star your looking at by a significant amount, they sky really is that big.
The issue is mostly kept around by click bait sites and fear mongers.
the issues with ever increasing amounts of light pollution are a greater threat to terrestrial telescopes.
Thank goodness there’s a company rapidly decreasing the cost of satellites, cant wait till astronomers catch up and start putting up a fleet of their own.
I bet it will start out large and get smaller over time.
Could you work on better coherence on that last sentence? Something pains you about Musk and appears to be derailing your thinking.
Supposedly pizza box sized…don’t know if that is extra large, medium, or small pizza.
Dumb question, but does this require a large antennae on the roof? Or will local ISP’s have towers that connect and then pay SpaceX for the bandwidth they then on-sell to us? I work in an Australian telco and the amount of on-selling and bandwidth borrowing between the different companies is a real ecosystem! I can almost hear David Attenborough saying “The prey is about to fall for the predator’s clever camouflage – and there it is!”
i definitely could see Space purchasing Gogo inflight too.. they would be perfect partners to offer hi speed internet to airlines and private jets
Gwynne Shotwell did give a sideways hint though. She mentioned that “millions of people in the U.S. pay $80 per month to get crappy service.” https://spacenews.com/spacex-plans-to-start-offering-starlink-broadband-services-in-2020/
$80 a month sounds reasonable I think.
Gwynne Shotwell mentioned a few weeks ago SpaceX will work towards deploying laser interlinks late 2020. https://fox40.com/2019/10/26/spacex-reveals-early-users-of-satellite-based-high-speed-internet/
I still expect this to be marketed as a premium service for the next several years.
Institutional customers could even be the primary target in the early years. John Q. Public shouldn’t expect some “unlimited” data plan on the cheap.
It’s beginning to sound like the initial layer/shell will not have lasers, probably as an expidiency to get a minimum constellation up to start collecting revenue (as early customers would be fine with bent pipe ops). There was government bitching over the demisability of laser terminal mirrors during reentry, and Musk decided to go no laser (thus no mirror) to get initial sat approvals. Apparently SpaceX has brought some of the laser terminal work in-house from Mynaric specifically to handle the mirror issue. They have stated they will use lasercomm for crosslinks, so they haven’t given up, but the initial beryllium mirrors will have to be replaced with something else.
What an excitement, as if we don’t have internet. It is the Musk’s internet so it is progress. All the significant added benefits could be achieved with few more GEO satellites with far less sky pollution. Musk can extra-finance the initial development of his space endeavors like any other successful and growing business with a lot of potential, by taking loans and selling shares but out of greed he would rather pollute the world vicinity in order to keep maximum share and profit to himself!
https://futurism.com/scientists-spacex-satellites-threaten-astronomy-itself
10s of thousands of satellites when fully deployed. I would think that would provide a lot of bandwidth. From what I hear the connection should be faster than fiber because light is faster in a vacuum than a glass fiber.
It won’t be able to offer the throughput of fiber. Not everything is super sensitive to server ping and not everyone is in a remote location.
That being said it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that it could capture 10% of the cable market because it will offer a better service to rural users. It can capture 100% of the airplane, boat, drone market.
Starlink will make serious money. So much money that (I hope) Mr. Musk cashes out of Tesla and takes his Tesla money and Starlink money and just gets in to the space colony business.
Nothing will happen. What is the total network bandwidth of say AT&T vs Starlink in 1 year or 5 years?
If this service is becomes cheaper than cable … you do the math.
Interesting segment. People with an RV, boat, second home could be a very strong market especially if all they need is a second antenna that costs a few hundred one time and the service itself is transferable for the same monthly fee. That seems technically no problem to sell service packages that allow X connections at a time between Y antennas/addresses.
A sleeper market that just donned on me is people with RVs. There have to be 1,000,000+ people in the U.S. who travel about in their RVs who need an internet connection equivalent to cable and would be willing to pay… $100/month? Just spitballing.
I still have no idea how much they’ll charge for it.
I’m fairly unhappy with my current (Cable) internet service, and if I could trade up to a better one that was also portable, I’d be willing to pay a bit more.
Didn’t they already do that with the first two test Starlink satellites?
When do they start testing the laser cross-satellite communications?