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Communications The Internet

Washington Emergency Responders First To Use SpaceX's Starlink Internet In the Field: 'It's Amazing' (cnbc.com) 85

Posted by BeauHD from the space-internet dept.
The Starlink satellite internet network that SpaceX is developing has been used in the field by Washington state emergency responders in recent weeks, the first early application of the company's service to be disclosed. CNBC reports: Washington's state military, which includes its emergency response division, began employing Starlink user terminals in early August to bring internet service to areas devastated by wildfires. User terminals are the small devices on the ground that connect to the satellites. The emergency division has seven Starlink user terminals, which it is deploying with early success. "I have never set up any tactical satellite equipment that has been as quick to set up, and anywhere near as reliable" as Starlink, Richard Hall, the emergency telecommunications leader of the Washington State Military Department's IT division, told CNBC in an interview Monday.

Hall, whose division has used other satellite broadband services, said "there's really no comparison" between Starlink and traditional networks, where the satellites are farther away from the Earth in Geosynchronous or medium earth orbits. "Starlink easily doubles the bandwidth" in comparison, Hall said, noting that he's seen more than 150% decreases in latency. "I've seen lower than 30 millisecond latency consistently," he said. Hall said that, with other traditional services, it typically takes between 30 minutes to an hour to set up a satellite connection, "with a lot less speed and bandwidth and a lot higher latency in a much larger package."

By comparison, Hall emphasized that it took him between five and 10 minutes to set up and connect a Starlink terminal. And a single person can set up one of the devices: "It doesn't require a truck and a trailer and a whole lot of other additional equipment," Hall said. "I have spent the better part of four or five hours with some satellite equipment trying to get a good [connection]. So, to me, it's amazing," Hall added.
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Washington Emergency Responders First To Use SpaceX's Starlink Internet In the Field: 'It's Amazing' More

Washington Emergency Responders First To Use SpaceX's Starlink Internet In the Field: 'It's Amazing'

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  • Space-Jesus will save us all (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @05:13PM (#60555378)

    Amen.

    • Re:Space-Jesus will save us all (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @05:34PM (#60555422)

      But more seriously, they launch almost every week a rocket with 60 of them and then lands on the 'Of course I still love you'.
      If memory serves, there are around 800 of them up now and it already works pretty decently.
      With 12-15000 planned, the competition had better to hurry up.

      • Closer to every month. They have said every weak but they can't keep it up due to scrubs for various reasons like weather.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's going to get very crowded up there. The UK plans a constellation, China is talking about it, Russian wants one, there will doubtless be other commercial ventures.

        It will be interesting to see what places like China do to enforce their Great Firewall as well. Could try to ban receivers or they could try jamming.

        • The constellation probably doesn't broadcast over geographical areas where it doesn't have permission to do so. Starlink would need to obtain licenses to use RF spectrum in China. I'm sure China will oblige but insist that all packets traverse their firewall first.

    • Re:Space-Jesus will save us all (Score:5, Funny)

      by sysrammer ( 446839 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @11:02PM (#60556034) Homepage

      Our Function() which art in Memory, RNGesus be Thy Name.
      Thy Pixelations come, Thy RND(seed) be done,
      on the Client as it is on the Server;

      Let us bow our heads in payment...

      Ramen

  • I wonder if they'll have a hiking emergency unit (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @05:29PM (#60555408)

    The portable unit they were using sounds nice, but it seems like the units you used to connect from a home were larger (I seem to remember pizza box size)...

    I wonder if they'll have even more compact forms of StarLink connection, would be nice to have one of those emergency transponders you can get a message out to people from anywhere, using StarLink it might be more reliable...

    I have one for hiking in very remote places, that is around the size of a large phone charging battery. It can only send location and text messages and issue an emergency message that you are in trouble, even if that's all the StarLink model did if it were faster and more reliable it would be really useful.

    A Starlink model would also probably be less expensive as the one I had, I think was around $50/month to activate and make limited use of...

    • At the frequency's starliink is using your not going to make it through any foliage (10.7 ghz is the lowest). An EPIRB is 406 mhz to give it reasonable propagation, the 121.5 was better but the gear had false positive issues.

      If you want reasonable distress beacons, positions, and txt/email messaging study up and get a ham license (~15 bucks for 10 years). A lot of hiking areas have very good terrestrial APRS coverage and there is reasonable sat coverage. If your realy going off the beaten path a HF rig i

      • At the frequency's starliink is using your not going to make it through any foliage

        Great point, had not thought about the specific frequency they were using.

        If your realy going off the beaten path a HF rig is not much bigger and can reach the other side of the planet.

        An interesting alternative idea, probably a bit more effort than I want to go through for that purpose. Seems like it could be really nice though.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The only problem with HAM licences is that the registration data is public. I know a few people who would like to get one but don't want their information in a public database for safety reasons.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Looking at the photo in TFA it seems that the claim the receiver would be pizza box size was BS. Maybe this isn't the final unit but it's got the footprint of a very large pizza box and then a pole going up and an equally large dish on top.

  • "150% decreases in latency" (Score:3)

    by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @05:37PM (#60555440)
    Cool, so with previous satellite links, he had 100ms latency, and now the packets arrive 50ms before they have been sent! I knew that everything Elon touches does no longer have to obey pesky limits like the speed of light!

    • Cool, so with previous satellite links, he had 100ms latency, and now the packets arrive 50ms before they have been sent! I knew that everything Elon touches does no longer have to obey pesky limits like the speed of light!

      Can't speak to the exact maths, but, as noted in TFS, the traditional satellites are in much higher orbits than the Starlink units, some in geosync (22,236 miles above the equator), so round-trip communication *should* be faster w/Starlink.

      ... Starlink and traditional networks, where the satellites are farther away from the Earth in Geosynchronous or medium earth orbits ...

      • Sure, it should work faster. But it shouldn't cause us to question the relationship between cause and effect.

    • Listen youngster... some of us walked up hill both ways between home and school in our younger years :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Yes, noticed that as well. I suspect a measurement error or fraud (or plain old stupidity).

    • Its inpossible to have a decreas of 100% let allone 150%. So he probilly ment to say the older equiment needs 50% more.

  • ... all we had to pay for it was a bunch more space junk in orbit to dodge that also fucks up astronomy.

    • Either the laws of physics are fundamentally wrong, or Slashdot 'Editors' are incompetent.

      Hmm.

    • Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Brannon ( 221550 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @05:54PM (#60555488)
      Elon Musk could cure cancer and some whiney fuck on /. would complain that they didn't like the color of the pill.

      • You do realize that they need marketing research first, right? It's just common sense. You need focus groups to see what is likely to go down well.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by nasor ( 690345 )
      Dude. Did you read the summary? The latency is so low that packets arrive before they're even sent! Seriously, what's it going to take to impress you if violating causality isn't enough???

  • In other news, Washington has a military (Score:4, Funny)

    by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @05:50PM (#60555470)

    In other news, Washington State has its own military units. Who knew?

    • Re:In other news, Washington has a military (Score:4, Informative)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @06:07PM (#60555518)

      Who knew?

      Guess most people don't, but many states have a state guard or state defense forces (in addition to things like the national guard). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • I live in Washington state, and that was quite surprising to me. But in any case now I'm really disappointed we don't have our own Space Force.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          If Seattle would finally elect 'Good Space Guy' we might (he's been running with that name since the turn of the century), although he's a Libertardian so all the benefits would go to the top 0.01% anyway.

      • Who knew? What other US States have their own military, they also should not need Federal Military or National Guard.
        If Washington State has their own military, then there should be no need for the Federal Government to use the Federal Military inside Washington State. Where were they in Seattle riots?

        Why is there so much duplication of effort and responsibility?

        Wow, even California has a military. Why are disasters/emergency the domain of a State Military? Wouldn't it be better, safer, cheaper, more po

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BranMan ( 29917 )

      Lots of people actually. Vermont has mountain troops (makes sense). Massachusetts has an artillery brigade. Texas even has their own armor division!

  • You can't have a latency decrease of more than 100% (at which point latency would be zero).

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @06:00PM (#60555500)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Agreed. It's 2020, and very little good is coming out of it, but, yay! to the little (billion $) successes.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Almost none. There are already algorithms to remove meteors, space junk, functioning satellites, and asteroids from the captured images automatically. The initial complaints were about the occasional bright flash (similar to but less intense than the 'Iridium flash') which would overwhelm the filters, but that was dealt with by making them almost non-reflective. Even then it would have only happened very close to the terminator, where the satellite was still illuminated by the sun, a region which for var

  • Buried cable — fiber or even copper — should still be faster and (much) cheaper. But is not. Because government [wired.com] — even the mighty Google all but gave up [mercurynews.com].

    Can't wait for the same benevolent and omniscient folks to run our healthcare...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by slazzy ( 864185 )
      Yeah I'd really like to see more high-speed fibre in new housing and apartment developments throughout the world. Something like a neighbourhood meet-me-room where many different internet providers can compete for services rather than the current duopoly (cable/telephone) providers that have been so terrible.

      • Re:Buried cable should be faster and cheaper (Score:5, Interesting)

        by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @07:07PM (#60555670)

        The city I live in is adopting the Ammon, Idaho model: the local utility is running fiber throughout the city, thereby owning and servicing the infrastructure. Then ISP's sign up to provide service, all running over the same infrastructure and competing on quality of service. That eliminates the local duopoly, but also sidesteps the whole objection of private companies having to compete with the Government.

        Once it's done rolling out in a couple years, it will be a thing of beauty.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by mi ( 197448 )

          Ammon, Idaho model: the local utility is running fiber throughout the city, thereby owning and servicing the infrastructure

          20 years ago, DSL was done this way some times — Verizon was responsible for copper, ISPs (like SpeakEasy) providing service.

          It was not pleasant... Point is, actually laying down — and owning — the cable is not as big a deal as the adherents of the "natural monopoly" theory [mises.org] like to pretend... If it weren't for the bureaucrats, seeking rent that's quite literally exorbi

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by pelpet ( 981194 )

      Musk's boring company could have a niche here - drill underground for optical fibres (and all other type of installations). Digging a huge trench with an excavator is inefficent, intrusive and expensive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      So you don't know anything about laying outdoor cable, I take it. Burying conduit is expensive, slow, and requires extensive survey work to ensure you don't hit other utilities, and isn't even viable in many areas. It took them almost two years to do it just in my suburban Seattle neighborhood built in the early '60s, anywhere older or with sidewalks would be far worse. In rural areas a full team in soft dry dirt with no buried obstacles is doing really well to run half a kilometer per day.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by mi ( 197448 )

        So you don't know anything about laying outdoor cable, I take it.

        I don't, but people at Google Fiber do — which is why the set out to do it in the first place. And they did know — the theory.

        The other article I linked to explains in detail, how local governments slow that process in practice.

        Burying conduit is expensive, slow, and requires extensive survey work

        Found the "natural monopoly" adherent :)

    • Buried cable â" fiber or even copper â" should still be faster

      Depends what you mean by "faster".

      Later versions of Starlink will use sat to sat laser to route traffic over long distances.
      The speed of light in a vacuum is faster than the speed of light through fiber, and a cable on the ground doesn't go in a very straight line.

      Over a long distance, it is expected that Starlink will have lower latency than fiber.

      That said, if you're moving data, nothing beats a Antonov An-225 filled with 18TB hard drives.
      That's around 5.2 Exabytes per shipment.

  • What is this, "science for morons"? Decrease latency by more than 100% and you have your message arrive before it was sent. Does nobody understand the basics anymore?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Fat landwhales expecting 24/7 rescue service from their desert hike in gobi., ready to sue any S&R who doesn't deliver.

  • With all that JUNK floating around the globe, I bet to "aliens" it looks like the Earth has a "space shield" around it, to prevent an invasion LOL.

  • Military and first responder use, eh? What if Russia or some other state (mainly Russia) decides to target and disable these satellites? What recourse is there, given that they are commercial property?

    I'm just wondering about possible worst-case scenarios.

    • Military and first responder use, eh? What if Russia or some other state (mainly Russia) decides to target and disable these satellites? What recourse is there, given that they are commercial property?

      There will be upwards of 15,000 satellites. Russia or any other probable aggressor state (and Russia and China are the only two on the planet with the demonstrated physical capability) would bankrupt themselves before they could shoot them all down. This will be the most robust satellite communications system ever built by humans, simply because of its massively distributed nature. Traditional satellite data systems have consisted of one geosynchronous satellite for the entire hemisphere, or in the case

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