SpaceX Worried Fake Competitors Could Disrupt Its Space Internet Plan 115
Jason Koebler writes: The biggest impediment to SpaceX's plan to create a worldwide, satellite broadband network might not be the sheer technological difficulty of putting 4,000 satellites into space. Instead, outdated international and domestic regulations on satellite communications could stand in the way, according to a new Federal Communications Commission filing by the company. The company's attorneys wrote that the FCC might make it too easy for competitors to reserve communications bandwidth that they will never use. "Spectrum warehousing can be extremely detrimental and unprepared, highly speculative, or disingenuous applicants must be prevented from pursuing 'paper satellites' (or 'paper constellations'), which can unjustly obstruct and delay qualified applicants from deploying their systems."
Too late (Score:1)
No, you did not (Score:2)
Not a problem (Score:1)
Re: Not a problem (Score:1)
Except that the whole fucking point is that it's NOT high orbit.
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
That's why SpaceX is planning to put these satellites into a lower orbit [arstechnica.com] at around 1200 km.
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They should talk to SCTV. They had a satellite orbiting at a couple of hundred feet. Negligible latency for that orbit!
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I think you're missing the fact that SCTV was a Canadian comedy television show, best known for launching the careers of a who's-who of Canadian comedians, from John Candy to Rick Moranis.
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Informative)
Did you read the summary? It said 4000 satellites. To need that many satellites to ensure global coverage it must be a LEO satellite constellation. So the latency won't be worse than a transatlantic trip via fiber optic. The article says a 750 mile orbit so the round trip is 1500 miles. According to Google 1500 miles/speed of light is 8.05 ms. If they include caches on the satellites for web traffic the latency can be even less.
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With satellite-satellite routing (as they are planning) it can actually be faster than fibre.
Light in fibre goes at around 2/3 the speed of light in free space.
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OTOH, if you're saving me 5 ms when seeing the
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8 ms sounds good, but if caching adds 100 ms to it then I lose.
I agree, with FPS gaming and other "twich" games, you're at a disadvantage.
That said, this is still useful for about all other applications, unlike geosynchronous orbit Internet which has latency of 1000ms or so. When you get to levels that high, you can still stream movies and browse web pages, but VoIP and teleconf is unusable, and even casual games become unplayable (poker, etc).
Still, it is a big deal. I know a lake near me that has no options for broadband other than geosynchronous Internet with a very
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I used to work for a company that bailed on satellite communication and rented bandwidth on transatlantic cables precisely because of the satellite lag.
It's a lot more to do with all the electronic layers in the way than light in glass vs. space.
Optimized satellites and ground feed dishes could make up for much of the difference...but that speed-packaging tech could be used by intercontinental cabling companies too, keep in mind.
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LEO satellites have the potential of lower latency than some landline broadband connections. Some ISPs (Cox is one I can name off the top of my head) have their first hop border router up to a 1.5k miles from your geographical location. LEO satellites can operate comfortably at a quarter of that distance.
Re: Not a problem (Score:3)
I just got hughes sat Internet service, up and down latency of around 600 ms. Really stinks. Speed is good though so no gaming but that's not what I need anyways. That will make you miss shitty cable for sure.
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Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
It's manifestly not true that nobody would pay for global Internet access if it had latency, even up to geosynchronous orbit. Most Internet applications are *throughput* sensitive, not *latency*. If it's good enough for television, it'd be good enough for Netflix if you could pay for the bandwidth.
You know what *is* latency sensitive? Telephony. And certain brands of satellite telephone services have employed geostationary (i.e. very high orbit) satellites for years. Yes there's some delay, but it's tolerable. Round trip to geostationary orbit is just a tad longer than 1/4 second.
IIRC SpaceX's satellites are planned to be 1100 km up. Since "Low Earth Orbit" is from 160 to 2000 km, that'd put those satellites pretty close to smack dab in the middle of LEO.
Do it like the homestead act (Score:5, Insightful)
This is how spectrum should work everywhere. Have it work like the homestead act.
The concept being that the land is free or you buy it but ONLY if you actually do something with it. Actually acquiring the land requires living and working on the land for a certain number of years and putting it to some use. I believe the term at the time was "improving it". Build roads, put houses on it, build farms, etc. And you own the land.
Spectrum should work the same way in that to qualify for ownership or to maintain a lease on bandwidth you actually have to use it. It really should be first come first serve. And not just someone sending a beacon up there that beeps on a frequency every 10 minutes. Actually do something with it.
And if you stop doing something with it then you should lose the lease.
The whole thing should be regional as well. This doesn't apply to space communications so much as radio and cell towers and tv stations. But if I'm in rural Alaska for example... just to pick an extreme example... why would the FCC tell me to not broadcast on a frequency that no one uses? The fact that I'm not paying for it or that some other service bought the national rights to that frequency are besides the point. They in that context don't actually broadcast to that area. So... why do they have a lease to do it?
This is one of the bigger issues I have with the FCC in that it is very urban centric in its conception of policy and it is very inflexible as regards seeing that unused spectrum is returned to the "radio wave commons."
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First, under 30 MHz, waves can propagate out of an area somewhat erratically, so it's never just a regional thing. I'm inclined to agree with you re: UHF and beyond, though.
Second, once you got spectrum, how long do you have to deploy or lose it? You might not be in a position to jump into use of spectrum you weren't assured of getting, and may need time to alter equipment (and put up matching antennas) if you end up with a second-choice allocation, even if you did buy in advance.
Third, bandplans are regula
Re:Do it like the homestead act (Score:4, Interesting)
What do you think is a reasonable amount of time to wait for a company or individual to exploit a frequency? A year? Two years?
And then of course there is losing the rights if you don't broadcast there. The warm up and cool down time should be similar.
I think two years of warm up time is the most I would give anyone. If you can't go live within 2 years then I don't want to give you rights to spectrum. I might be willing to make exceptions for really extraordinary projects like Musk's. But what am I offering then? Three years? Four? Four seems right on the edge of excessive even under extraordinary circumstances. If you can't go live in four years then I'm not giving you a lease.
And what is more with stuff like that, if you need four years because you're not going to go live until then... then I see no reason why people can't use that spectrum until then. So when you're project finally goes live they might have to get out of the way. But until then... who cares what they're doing because you're not using it.
Most of my stipulations refer to terrestrial use however. In rural communities especially they could have broadband internet served rather cheaply using unused radio frequencies. No need to run fiber. Just put up a broadcast tower and there is plenty of spectrum to serve the 500 people in the area with high speed internet.
You could even stretch that radically by using high directional broadcasts.
I saw something from a company called "air fiber" which boasted something like 3 gigabits at 10 miles. I could be getting the numbers wrong. The point is that it was a lot of bandwidth that could be pushed over a long distance without hurting anyone.
The FCC should make a point of getting out of the way of that stuff and not treating every part of the country like it is a major city with locally congested airwaves.
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The time to get a working constelation up is more like a decade. and you need to know you have the spectrum before you start, because you can't change it later. Air Fibre is point to point, on licensed spectrum. It is entierly possible becasue of the FCC rules.
There are lots about radio that you are missing. Read more. it is an interesting topic. After all that you may still hate the FCC, but for different reasons.
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As to hating the FCC... well, that's quite likely regardless. I'm not inclined to see such organizations as necessary evils. And only to the extent they're actually necessary. When they do something that doesn't actually need to be done they just become straight evils... no hyphen.
As to it taking ten years to get Constellation up... do they need to know what frequency they'll be using NOW? Can't they just know roughly what range they'll have and then get more specific when they're closer to launch? Changing
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I mean that "I am inclined to see such organizations as necessary evils" not "I am not inclined".
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Given that 90% of the US population lives in or close to metro and dense urban areas - for all intents and purposes every part of the country *is* essentially a major city with locally congested airwaves.
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Then cede 90 percent of the land which isn't cities to a different authority. You won't mind apparently.
The government has to serve the interests of everyone. If you say "well more people live in cities" that's fine but that doesn't excuse ignoring the rest of the country.
That attitude is why we have a federated government in the first place. Your city has its own government. Then your county has its own government which includes your city and the suburbs around it. And then your state has a government whic
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If the rest of the country were being ignored, you'd have a point.
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If your policies do not address needs and conditions in an area then you are ignoring them. What is more you just tried to defend a policy of ignoring them.
Re:Do it like the homestead act (Score:5, Interesting)
Its sensible. It encourages maximum exploitation. That is the point of regulations like that.
That was the point of the homestead act. They wanted to settle vast stretches of land IMMEDIATELY. That meant offering it basically for free. Anyone that went out there willing to work could within 5 years own a big stretch of land. The big finance interests couldn't just buy it all because they were required to actually develop it. Such interests are rarely capable of actually doing that enmass. They can develop something. But if given a chance they'll try to buy it all and then develop it slowly.
That is one of the problems with the way cellphone spectrum is sold. It shouldn't just be sold to three companies. It should be closer to wifi in that anyone can set it up. HOWEVER, you do require them to interlink their systems, allow rival users to roam on their network, etc. There is more than enough spectrum for everyone.
We don't need 3 companies owning all the spectrum It is absurd. The leases on spectrum should be specific to the region like conventional radio stations. If I lease a bit of spectrum in Florida for a radio station, I don't own that same frequency in California. I don't even own it in all of Florida.
Force the FCC to sell the cellphone spectrum piecemeal. In little 5 or 10 square mile zones. And require that they actually use it to maintain the lease.
What is more, if cell phone coverage in my area is shit, I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to put a cell tower literally at my house that operates as a completely normal cell phone tower. Not only would I get great coverage there but all my neighbors would suddenly get good coverage as well.
Yes require me to get a license and a lease from the FCC etc. that's fine. Just make it something that a person can actually do... legally. The technology will take care of itself.
I've seen some DIY cell tower kits that cost no more than a couple thousand dollars. That's chump change. Link it into a respectable internet connection and you've got a cell tower.
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The leases on spectrum should be specific to the region like conventional radio stations. If I lease a bit of spectrum in Florida for a radio station, I don't own that same frequency in California. I don't even own it in all of Florida.
The big problem I see with this is the fragmentation it would cause. Quite frankly, the US already has issues due to their major mobile phone networks using different frequencies. Having different frequencies for the same network, within the same country would just exacerbate that.
I would argue that where the frequency is used for a standardized protocol, they should be required to allow others to use it, providing they are compliant with the appropriate standard. Allowing other frequencies to be allocated
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Either commit to 100 percent coverage or accept that areas you're not providing service for should be able to use frequencies there that you use in other places but not there.
There's no reason to give someone that kind of blanket lease.
What is more, the fragmentation is a technological problem that is quiet easily addressed.
First, we can have catalog frequency. That is one frequency EVERYWHERE that specifies what frequencies other services are using in the area. As your device moves it will periodically lis
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Either commit to 100 percent coverage or accept that areas you're not providing service for should be able to use frequencies there that you use in other places but not there.
There's no reason to give someone that kind of blanket lease.
Allowing others to use the same frequencies in a compatible manner would achieve the same benefits (improved coverage, since anyone can operate a tower) without the fragmentation. Not to mention that the cost of negotiating spectrum rights in each state/area would be significant, to say nothing of the fun issues that crop up along boundaries.
What is more, the fragmentation is a technological problem that is quiet easily addressed.
First, we can have catalog frequency. That is one frequency EVERYWHERE that specifies what frequencies other services are using in the area. As your device moves it will periodically listen to that frequency and update its database for that area as to what is used by what. This ensures that every device will at least be aware of what frequencies are in use and by what.
You have now added a second antenna to the device, increasing power consumption and complexity, not to mention the additional logic needed to decode the messages.
Second, the next technological problem is making your device adaptable enough that it can shift to different frequencies and possibly even different protocols. Most devices already do this especially smartphones. My smartphone has a bluetooth radio, a wifi radio, an FM receiver, a GPS receiver, a 2G radio, a 3G radio, and a 4G radio. I think it can also handle either CDMA or GSM. So that is already a very wide range of frequencies and many different protocols.
While
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Software defined radio doesn't have infinite antennas.
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Or each allocation should be auctioned for a 1-year lease.
Unless you pay for another year.
The problem with "first come first served" is and has always been that 99% of the time you're shortchanging either buyers or sellers (in this case, taxpayers are the sellers), and you're creating either shortages or surpluses. Ask Venezuela how their subsidies are doing.
Re:Do it like the homestead act (Score:4, Insightful)
The point is not to get money. The point is for people to not have leases they're not using.
When they did the homestead act, the point was not to raise money. the point was to rapidly settle and exploit large tracts of land.
That is my attitude towards the spectrum. I want it saturated. It want it used everywhere. Not owned everywhere. I want it used everywhere.
That means in low demand areas spectrum should be either given away for free or sold at a very low price.
In high demand areas you can sell it to the highest bidder that will ACTUALLY use it. If you're not ACTUALLY PERSONALLY going to use the spectrum then get the fuck out of the auction hall before I order an officer to mace you just for contempt.
vast swaths of the spectrum go unused because they're owned by people that don't use them. You should lose your lease if you do that. I don't care if you paid for it. The terms of the lease should be ACTUALLY using it.
The point of the FCC was not to generate revenue but rather to organize and civilize the use of radio spectrum. Ideally we should have 100 percent saturation with every frequency being used by someone.
In the case of very urban areas, it is going to make sense to let people bid those frequencies up so that more valuable uses of the frequency take a preeminent position. However, in areas that are less built up... suburban or rural areas... you should have so much open bandwidth that people can run their own 4G networks for example if there is room for it.
By all means have them integrate with the the national regs so that anyone with a 4G modem can link to it so long as they pay the roaming fees. I think most people that set up such a thing would be quite happy to operate under those conditions.
And you'd FULL national 4G coverage if you did that.
Which isn't so much of a big deal in urban areas that take that for granted. But you could have rural areas where their only broad band option would be something of that nature. If it is hosted by company in their own community for their own community... the rates might be reasonable and the maintenance expenses of a few 4G broadcast towers versus running fiber up every dirt road for 20 miles in every direction is no comparison.
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A similar scheme was tried with water rights for irrigation in Western NSW. Water rights were parcelled up with land use, and as average irrigation use was much less than the permit size the full allocation was never used.
Upon deregulation the price of water was allowed to float and commercial interests moved in. Small owners put their allocation up for auction and the large interest bought them all.
This led to an immediate shortage of water in the system due to the water rights being over sold.
I forsee a s
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I don't see the connection.
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But you're suggesting a price floor of $0 or whatever the application fee would be, and because price floors cause surpluses [wikipedia.org], your idea would not achieve 100% spectrum ownership, much less 100% saturation..
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Price floors only cause surpluses if the price floor is above the market rate. A price floor of zero can't be above market rate, pretty much by definition.
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I know right...
And really 100 percent isn't really absolutely required. I just want everyone to get the most good they can out of the available spectrum. If 80 or 90 percent get used and no one wants to use what is left including some random person that just wants to do whatever personal thing on it... then fine. But really opening it up like this is going to cause it to get nearly 100 percent exploited practically everywhere. And that's to the common good.
Here someone might say "but what if we need space f
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Not if you're hoping to make a profit.
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Rubbish.
Seriously, the value of trash is below zero because not only will nobody take it for free, you have to pay someone to take it away.
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Ideally, you use congnitive radio [wikipedia.org] and never grant exclusive use, only priority. If the priority user fails to show for X amount of time, another user can request the allocation as priority user. Cognitive radio implies a fair bit of spectral flexibility so they should be able to adapt to whatever is available fairly close to deployment time.
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Assuming that becomes standard kit, I'd agree. However for the foreseeable future that flexibility isn't likely.
Still, I like the idea.
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I agree that it should only be rented. I referred to it as leasing.
I also described in some posts a process by which earning the lease required actually using the bandwidth and that if it were not used for a specific period of time then the lease would automatically expire whether or not the company had kept current on payments.
I prefer very much a "use it or lose it" system.
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SpaceX is launching 6x ORBCOMM-2 LEO satellites with a Falcon 9. The ORBCOMM-2 LEO sats are like 3x as large as their first gen sats. So yeah it depends on how big the satellites are and how many they can launch at once.
Re:4000 satellites? Quit now. (Score:5, Insightful)
and the only reason why he's irked is that 'competition' means he'll have to justify his numbers better.
I don't see that at all.
Re:4000 satellites? Quit now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the Iridium constellation was built using a manufacturing technique that dropped the cost per satellite down to $5 million apiece. With 20 years of advancement in automation and technology, it should be possible to build a comparable satellite for much less, especially if you amortize the development costs over more units. And it probably really helps to have your own launch company that will become more competitive on a per launch basis with more guaranteed launches on its schedule.
There's a certain kind of entrepreneur who sees possibility as a matter of willpower -- people who think they can will any desired reality into being with enough money and shouting. I don't think Musk is one of those. I think he's one of those that turns his ideas into a big model and figures out when he can do them. Yeah, I know, Hyperloop, but so far he's just throwing billionaire pocket change at that.
FCC (Score:1)
Cart before horse. (Score:5, Insightful)
Space debris
The Joint Space Operations Center, part of United States Strategic Command (formerly the United States Space Command), currently tracks more than 8,500 objects larger than 10 cm in LEO. However, a limited Arecibo Observatory study suggested there could be approximately one million objects larger than 2 millimeters, which are too small to be visible from Earth-based observatories.
Low Earth orbit [wikipedia.org]
Musk believes he can launch and maintain a constellation of 4,000 satellites in low earth orbit and still make a profit while others are pursuing simpler and cheaper broadband solutions, which can be deployed more rapidly and with less environmental impact and no one sees a problem in this?
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Low Earth orbit [wikipedia.org] Musk believes he can launch and maintain a constellation of 4,000 satellites in low earth orbit and still make a profit while others are pursuing simpler and cheaper broadband solutions, which can be deployed more rapidly and with less environmental impact and no one sees a problem in this?
It wouldn't be the first time that the US government recruited an eccentric billionaire as a figure head and funded his private enterprise [telegraph.co.uk] through back channels to maintain the illusion of corporate independence.
Take a look at Iridium or GlobalStar, the only two Low Earth Orbit satellite phone companies I know of. How come do they keep on finding new investors when they have such a poor track record at making money?
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are you saying there's some kind of conspiracy with those satellites? No, it's much more simple than that. The original plan for them ended being made obsolete by vast improvements in cell phone tower technology. The company was sold for a bargain basement price and then did start to make money by focusing on niche customers
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Because their biggest customer is governments. GlobalStar and Iridium are heavily used by the military (all countries) in order for communications support at practically anywhere in the world. Then there are plenty of countries where they have huge swaths of barren land but you still need to have people
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So, who is paying for this?
If the answer is "Elon Musk", why should anyone care how he spends his money?
If the answer is the US Government, then we might care enough to vet the idea before investing.
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I don't think so (Score:1)
Despite what some might think, Spacex's satellite internet will be more expensive DSL, cable, or LTE in cities or suburbs. Spacex will get the people out in the boonies, or the 3rd world countries, which can't afford to build any infrastructure. They will have to use text only email and text messages, but text can go a long way in some places. As for the people in the boonies, big telecom doesn't want to serve them, and will probably be happy that someone else will take care of them.
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Despite what some might think, Spacex's satellite internet will be more expensive DSL, cable, or LTE in cities or suburbs.
Unless it happens not to be. But I get that internet in the boonies and third world is a market.
As for the people in the boonies, big telecom doesn't want to serve them, and will probably be happy that someone else will take care of them.
Depends how long term they're thinking. SpaceX could turn that into competition for their core markets. A little obstruction now could pay dividends later. Aerospace is particularly notorious for playing this sort of game.
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Tip of the hat for the History of the World reference, my good, anonymous sir.
Double Head-Fake (Score:5, Interesting)
SpaceX is using fake fake competitors to disrupt opposition to its Space Internet Plan. Musk must be a big Animal House fan.
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Not so much, I would say that he is a student of history
Look back a decade to the telecom meltdown
One company started building out a large and improved global fibre network
Once that company got positive attention, a slew of competitors started a cavalcade of press releases
Some companies cobbled together networks from bankrupt telcos and entered the market as a lowest cost provider, despite the fact that they aggressively hot potato routed packets to the innovative company's network, effectively getting them
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So, if I was running SpaceX, I would be very interested in what happened to Level(3) and I would make strong moves to prevent the same jolly bullshit that nearly drug Level(3) under
I'd be more concerned about the jolly bullshit that dragged Qwest under.
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Qwest was a CLEC with management that acted like Enron
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Qwest was a CLEC with management that acted like Enron
Qwest was a long-haul provider that publicly refused to install a tap into the network for the purposes of spying on The People.
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So there is an upside to insider trading and making false claims, or was their multibillion dollar debt and poor revenue stream (not to mention poor customer service) all a plot by the nsa
Unfortunately that is a business plan (Score:2)
1 buy up potentially valuable property
2 don't use it to prevent others from entering the market
3 Profit from the lack of competion
Possible scenarios (Score:1)
1. Use the I am actually doing it to gain FCC priority.
2. Buy up more bandwidth than Spacex needs.
3. Keep others out of industry
4. Profit
or.
Realize that so many satellites are not profitable and blame lack of spectrum as the cause.
Idle speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, SpaceX, you know I love you but you're trying to cook the rules to get yourself a sweetheart deal. There's a big difference between speculating on radio spectrum and speculating on, say, silver: if you buy some silver and don't use it, a few years later you've still got some silver. If you buy spectrum and don't use it, a few years later the FCC takes it back and you've got nothing. Spectrum is a perishable resource, so nobody's going to bid on spectrum unless they really are going to make a communications network, or they plan to "flip" it and resell it to a viable user like SpaceX.
And short-term speculative bidding is *good* for the American public. Remember, this radio spectrum is our public property, and it's worth serious money. If SpaceX convinces the FCC not to allow "paper satellites", and demonstrates that it's the only bidder that's for real, then it can bid $0.01, win the auction, deploy its constellation, and keep all the profit. Allowing speculative competitive bids forces SpaceX to raise its bid, meaning the FCC, and thus the American public, gets to take a share of SpaceX's profits.
Analogy: Suppose your town decides to auction off some public park land to local developers. The biggest developer says, "only developers that can actually build a condo at least 20 stories tall should be allowed to bid." They are the only such developer, they bid $0.01, build a gigantic condo, make a fortune, and you and your town is left with no cash and no park.
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Derailing my own post to throw in a quote by a guy who really understood what intangible public assets are worth: "I’ve got this thing and it’s f***ing golden, and ... I’m just not giving it up for f***in' nothing. I’m not gonna do it. And I can always use it."
Of course, Rod Blagojevich wasn't selling radio spectrum, he was selling a US Senate seat, and he went to prison for it. But still.
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And short-term speculative bidding is *good* for the American public. Remember, this radio spectrum is our public property, and it's worth serious money. If SpaceX convinces the FCC not to allow "paper satellites", and demonstrates that it's the only bidder that's for real, then it can bid $0.01, win the auction, deploy its constellation, and keep all the profit. Allowing speculative competitive bids forces SpaceX to raise its bid, meaning the FCC, and thus the American public, gets to take a share of SpaceX's profits.
If a company has to pay $2 billion for a slice of spectrum, they have to pass that cost on to their customers. The government gets $2 billion from the company and immediately spends it on something foolish. Everyone who uses that spectrum has to pay the tax since the company who bought the spectrum has to make back the $2 billion somehow. Plus interest. Plus a profit.
High-dollar spectrum sales are almost the same thing as the government taking out a loan. Quick cash for the government but the citize
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Exactly: the people who use the resource have to pay everyone else for it. What's the problem?
I suppose there's a problem if you believe that money paid to the government goes into a black hole, but I don't. Government spending isn't a perfectly fair way to distribute profits to the people, but neither is "give it all to Elon Musk".
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This may have more to do with the recent spectrum sale shenanigans. Small companies get a significant discount on the auction, so big companies make deals with small companies to buy the spectrum and split the savings difference.
If you disallow people that have zero intent to use the spectrum (like the small company that didn't exist a year ago and only owns stuff on paper), then you force the big company to compete directly.
This helps SpaceX because they can get the small company discount and not have to c
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The problem is that a business's profits aren't in proportion to the amount of public property (in this case radio spectrum) they use, so a tax on profits isn't an effective way to allocate that property.
Also, your "set barrier to entry, allow monopoly, tax on profits" model is really easy to abuse. Just look at cable/phone utilities as an example.
Easy way to reduce squatting (Score:1)
is to tax it. That makes it a money drain if you just sit on it.
The new lower orbit junkyard death belt (Score:1)
How can this work? Even with 4000 satellites? (Score:3)
The area of the earth is 4,000^2xpi square miles, so even with 4,000 satellites there is one for every 12,000 square miles. OK, perhaps the very high latitudes don't need to be covered, and you can get that down to 10,000 square miles. For the United States, the average population density means that on average, you'd have 500,000 people covered by one satellite. Europe, Japan, China, Indonesia, and many other countries or regions have significantly higher population density. For cities, this is just a non-starter.
Now, Musk is not a stupid guy, but I just can't see how this works.
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AO-73 is about 700 miles up, (roughly what Mr. Musk is proposing) and it has a ground foot print that as I write this appears to cover most of Oceania. Your 12,000 square miles would be a ground foot print with a radius of roughly 62 miles given that AO-73 currently covers all of Australia, and then some It seems like any given area will be covered by multiple satellites at any given time.
Most large cities are surrounded by large rural areas, or large bodies of water (or both) so there will be multiple sat
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I think leaving out the polar regions would account for more than 1/6th of the surface area if using equatorial orbit.
Of course, they may be using polar orbits and choose to leave out orbits over the ocean or land that doesn't have much population.
Or, they could use Tundra orbits and just drop the satellites on top of the areas they wish to provide coverage to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
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Some geosats provide Internet service to tens of millions of square miles per individual satellite, and you can't see how these satellites would do the same for a few thousand square miles? I don't get your objections.
Musk isn't planning to compete with wireline broadband providers in big cities, he's planning to go after the market of rural areas (all over the world) where population densities are too low to make wireline broadband make sense, or even in suburban areas where the density isn't high enough f
Easy solution... (Score:2)
Gotta to Love SpaceX (Score:2)
Space launch in the developed world, had pretty much stalled with similar prices.
SpaceX had to fight Boeing, L-Mart, OSC, ULA, and Blue Origin who all tried to block SpaceX at every turn.
Now, SpaceX is not just forcing launch prices down, but will shortly create a new massive market for sats since theirs will be so cheap to purchase.
And here, they are fighting against the games that the big telcos will play.
No other person is shaking up the world markets th
Re: (Score:2)
Errm, only a limited number of satellites would be in view at a time, with a pretty narrow FoV, they don't need all that many frequencies...