Posted on 11/01/2020 11:02:50 PM PST by Enlightened1
Could rural Montana be the next Silicon Valley? Check internet speed off your list of reasons why not.
Even though Elon Musk’s SpaceX says its expanded “Better Than Nothing” test is still a beta version of Starlink’s eventual capabilities, at least one early Starlink internet service customer says he is getting better than expected speed. Starlink says it should give you between “50 and 150 MB/s with 20-40 milliseconds of latency.” Starlink customer “FourthEchelon19” is getting 161 megabits/second download and 23 megabits/second upload speed.
In rural Montana.
That’s good enough to stream 4K YouTube videos with zero buffering. And it’s making people with hard-wired “high-speed” internet jealous.
“I love how you're getting a better speed from f-ing space than I am with a hardline connection from Spectrum at 80 dollars a month,” one respondent says on Reddit.
In fact, according to the speed test by Ookla, that’s faster than 95% of the United States ... and Starlink costs just $99/month. That’s a little hard to fathom given that Starlink is bouncing signals to orbit before returning them down to earth. While Starlink satellites are in “low-earth orbit,” that’s still 342 miles or 550 kilometers above the planet’s surface.
Whether those speeds will stay as high as thousands of others join the service is a good question, but the Starlink satellite constellation is also only partial right now, with something like 800 currently in operation, and thousands yet to come. Confirmed end-user speeds are commonly from 60 megabits/second to well over 100 in an unofficial listing.
The best, however, is 203.74 megabits/second with only 18 milliseconds latency.
There are other questions, of course.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
It’s not for “big pipe” use, it’s for “no pipes” locations (until further expansion).
Oh sure, so all those dental floss tycoons can have fast Internet.
I have seen them too.
1) person is standing out in the open right by the 5G transponder
2) no obstructions and full line of sight
Put a tree in between the phone and 5G antenna and tell me what you see. Go inside a structure and report back.
The wavelength of 5G has virtually no penetration. It is impeded by a window sheer. Speeds are dropped exponentially by any obstructions.
Under ideal conditions 5G on paper looks great. Under real world conditions, not so much. I honestly think 5G is going to face plant like laserdisk movies.
Its been several years since I played online games with my kids such COD. If I remember correctly if your latency got much above 10 to 15 ms game play suffered for everyone in your game. (Teammates and opponents) the dreaded “lag”... Has that changed? Is 20 to 80 ms now acceptable?
bkmk
Compelling argument.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/9sxr3c/starlink_network_topology_simulation_predictions/
Elon will go up there in his Space Tesla and upgrade them to 100 gbps.
Yep - had DirecTV and their Dish-based internet for a while because our area had no other choices - whenever it got cloudy over the Gulf of Mexico the internet went out and a few more clouds took the TV out.
Lo orbits are still way above storms. Rain will suck.
I read that as supporting my argument. No more restricted than terrestrial links, in fact less so.
I live in Silicon Valley and in most parts of it we’re stuck with Comcast.
Which SUCKS.
They all stink and are 2-3x overpriced.
The rain and wind effects are as much about the aim going off. 2200 yard shot is a lot harder to make than a 34 yard shot. Same goes for a sat out 22000 vs 340 klicks. Signal strength will of course drop so more dropped packets in a storm leading to slower link, but we are talking world class sniper vs someone almost legally blind being able to hit the target. Wind and rain shake the antenna (gun) a bit.
On top of that at the Ka band (most rain attenuated of the bands being used) there is a about a free space loss of 152 db with 10 db antennas on both ends for Starlink and 188 db for DTV so for the same wattage transmitter/receiver/antennas DTV signals are 3981 times weaker than Starlink. Rain fade ranges from 5% to 20% for rain/snow/ice.
Pre-pandemic my cable co advertised speeds up to 150 Mbps for my tier.
Most times, however, it would hover around 10 to 30 Mbps and sink to less than 5 Mpbs on weekends.
They seemed to have lifted those speed bottlenecks since the pandemic.
Starlink’s $99 is a tad pricey to compete with cable, but they are certainly worth considering. IIRC, there is an initial outlay of around $500 for equipment and wiring in addition to the $99/monthly.
All those satellites will ruin the sky for anyone photographing the stars. It will be one long line of bright lights.
Any StarLink IPO will be delayed until statistics are available from a few years operation, based upon a large portion of the 12,000 node constellation actually in service. Need to show numbers to back up valuation. Expect 2023 to 2024 for announcement.
The schools in West Texas which received ground stations, should initiate service possibly by January of 2021, as posited by the “Odessa American.” Some service should be available country wide by mid-year, the intermittent interruptions in service to decrease, as continued launches fill gaps within the orbital planes of the constellation.
The ability to see 4 or 5 LEO satellites at any given time will also provide an advantage over one satellite at GEO.
Electronic image capture for Astrophotography presents opportunity to remove tracks. Software processing of individual frames will reject the out-of-bounds pixels; and, will combine the frames to reduce noise and enhance contrast.
Perhaps PixInsight?
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