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Communications The Internet

SpaceX Plans Starlink Broadband For Trucks, Ships, and Planes (arstechnica.com) 106

Posted by BeauHD from the moving-vehicles dept.
On Friday, SpaceX asked the FCC for permission to deploy Starlink satellite broadband to aircraft, ships, large trucks & RVs. Ars Technica reports: SpaceX said it is "seek[ing] authority to deploy and operate these earth stations... throughout the United States and its territories... in the territorial waters of the United States and throughout international waters worldwide, and... on US-registered aircraft operating worldwide and non-US-registered aircraft operating in US airspace." "Granting this application would serve the public interest by authorizing a new class of ground-based components for SpaceX's satellite system that will expand the range of broadband capabilities available to moving vehicles throughout the United States and to moving vessels and aircraft worldwide," SpaceX told the FCC. Internet users are no longer "willing to forego connectivity while on the move, whether driving a truck across the country, moving a freighter from Europe to a US port, or while on a domestic or international flight," SpaceX said.

The application said that vehicle-mounted terminals will be similar to the Starlink satellite dishes designed for home-Internet service, with some key differences: "SpaceX Service's ESIMs are electrically identical to its previously authorized consumer user terminals but have mountings that allow them to be installed on vehicles, vessels, and aircraft, which are suitable for those environments. SpaceX Service's ESIMs will communicate only with those SpaceX satellites that are visible on the horizon above a minimum elevation angle of 25 degrees. The proposed phased array user terminal will track SpaceX's NGSO [non-geostationary orbit] satellites passing within its field of view. As the terminal steers the transmitting beam, it automatically changes the power to maintain a constant level at the receiving antenna of its target satellite, compensating for variations in antenna gain and path loss associated with the steering angle." While the article speculated that that Starlink terminals could fit Tesla cars and other passenger vehicles, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk clarified on Twitter today that passenger cars are not in the plan because the terminal is "much too big."
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SpaceX Plans Starlink Broadband For Trucks, Ships, and Planes More

SpaceX Plans Starlink Broadband For Trucks, Ships, and Planes

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  • ... deploy Starlink satellite broadband ...

    This will hopefully do fun things to the network of fiefdoms that is US regional broadband monopolies ... all kinds of 'unfair' stuff such as 'competition'.

  • RV/Van perfect use case (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @03:50AM (#61139632)

    An RV or a van is a great use case for these, having the room to put the terminal somewhere and most people probably being OK with setting out the dish once settled in somewhere...

    Beyond the physical aspects though, what a fantastic market to corner because people that have the funds to spend significant time in an RV or camper van are usually pretty well off so you can easily charge a nice premium for the mobile aspect of the service.

    I wonder how much just the availability of pretty good internet might actually make camper van use more appealing and actually boost that market in a virtuous feedback loop.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Mike Frett ( 2811077 )

      You can get "pretty good internet" a lot cheaper than Starlinks $500 price tag.

      • Not while at sea

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Depends on you use level. If you want to pay one of the mobile operators about $100 a month (maybe a less if its part of a bundle but than we can debate what you are really paying) the same starlink, and without having to buy the expensive station equipment; yes you can crappy capped LTE.

        While that LTE is fast enough to stream etc, download, video conference etc its really only enough to support one or two users at a time. You also have to choose between an "unlimited plan" that once you hit 20 gigs or so s

      • I thought it was 99$ monthly

      • Mobile? No you cannot. You can only get shitty internet, and now Starlink. There are really no other options under $500 setup and $100/mo. In fact, most of the halfway decent cellular hotspots cost around $500 anyway, and then you wind up with shitty cellular with shitty caps.

      • You can get "pretty good internet" a lot cheaper than Starlinks $500 price tag.

        You're going to have to lay out what you mean by that exactly, because if you mean mobile cell hotspots they often will have little to no signal anywhere an RV/van would really want to travel. Starlink would reliably be an order of magnitude faster than any option I could think of.

      • How can you get "pretty good internet" for $500 and $99 per month that follows you around from place to place as you travel? The internet at most RV Parks and truck stops are terrible, and LTE Phone internet is spotty when you are out in the middle of places you'd RV, e.g. National Parks.

        If Starlink does what it says on the tin then it would be a massive improvement over the current next-best option, a MiFi or Phone hotspot. It's the missing link that has kept many remote workers from pulling up stakes an

      • You can get "pretty good internet" a lot cheaper than Starlinks $500 price tag.

        No, you can't. Not if you need it to work when you're out of range of cellular service. Your only option then is one of the existing satellite services which provide less bandwidth, much higher latency, and restrictive data caps. Starlink is going to be huge for RVers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by yabos ( 719499 )
      It sounds like a good use case, but I wonder what % of people park their RV in the forest. Certainly you see a lot of them at camp sites. The starlink receiver will most likely not work in this setting. It seems to want a 100% unobstructed view of the sky.

      • I wonder what % of people park their RV in the forest

        Anywhere there's room for an RV, especially more than one RV, there should be a clear enough patch of sky for Starlink to work OK. Especially if the dish is on the roof.

        Would be really interesting to see someone test that though, see how many trees surrounding starts to impact it.

  • Rural Broadband? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @04:19AM (#61139648)
    For years now, major telcos - around the world, not just the US - have been very resistant to provide services to rural communities on the grounds that the return-on-investment (ROI) isn't there. In an effort to offer the same digital services to rural citizens, governments have poured billions of dollars in to the pockets of those same telcos, who have prompted fudged numbers and use creative accounting to pocket the profits while not pushing out rural broadband.

    If SpaceX believe that they have enough capacity to support mobile platforms such as trucks, ships and planes, then it would seem reasonable to think that they may have the ability to start offering something to farms and rural communities, maybe even off-grid homes with nothing more than solar for power. This would be nice for a bunch of reasons, not least of which would be that the federal government could stop pouring money in to the major telcos for "rural broadband" that never seems to happen.

    But it could do more. What if there was sufficient capacity in the network to start supporting use in more rural areas where there was a single broadband provider? Suddenly these oligopolies that have gotten fat and lazy from having entire towns, cities and counties worth of "captured" customers would have some real competition on their hands for a change. That might shake things up a bit.

    I'm still a bit nervous about the risks of LEO collisions - but if both can be managed safely then this might be a useful way of bringing a few of these fat cat telcos down a peg or two. Bring it on.
    • I find the monthly pricing of $100/mo high for a single household, but for ships and planes that have a lot of people, the cost per user could be very low. I wonder if neighboring houses would be allowed to share a single starlink plan. Or could a whole town use a single dish? Why not, it would be a waste of resources to have a separate dish for each house. But then there would probably be usage limits or usage-based pricing.
      • Would you share your internet? Neither would I. Do you want to be put into the position of defending yourself when your "neighbor" downloads child pornography? Didn't think so.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ytene ( 4376651 )
          You raise a really interesting point.

          But let me run a hypothetical past you... Say you're a student, living in a shared house with 4 others and you have a single internet provider that delivers your connectivity. Now suppose that one day the MPAA or RIAA pitch up with a court summons and your community of neighbours find yourselves charged with illegally downloading movie content or music or some such.

          If the plaintiffs can show that the perpetrator had to be a resident of the property - i.e. because y

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jabuzz ( 182671 )

            I think the courts have pretty much grasped the IP address does not equal a person now.
            Besides which it is trivial even in IPv4 land to take several external IP addresses and use them to NAT different local networks so your hypothetical child porn watching neighbours would be on a different IP address anyway. With IPv6 it is easier still.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            The MAFIAA mostly doesn't bother with individuals these days, they only go after ISPs and websites.

            It's the smaller outfits that are targeting individuals, but so far they have not been doing very well in court. The usual issue is that an IP address does not identify and individual, and isn't enough justification for the discovery they need to figure out who actually uploaded the movie.

        • Good point, but it doesn't have to be anonymous sharing. Would the passengers on a starlink-equipped ship "share their internet"? Sharing an expensive starlink antenna does not have to imply sharing the same ip address. The antenna can probably have much higher capacity than a single household needs. Even if SpaceX forces each end user to pay a separate monthly fee, why not share an antenna for a town and then fan out cheaper modems at each house, each with its own ip address?

      • Re:Rural Broadband? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @06:49AM (#61139798)
        The cost of internet for any marine vessel out of range of say 4G wireless from a shore station might surprise you.

        There are channels on YouTube that have covered this (for example, check out eSysman [youtube.com], for example with this specific video covering internet costs in 2020 [youtube.com].

        There is a comment beneath the video linked above, from a user called André Rüegg, who wrote 8 months ago that his family's sailing yacht pays USD $150 per month for 2kbps. (He doesn't say, but I'm guessing that would be via Iridium). The point being that a "decent" connection speed (say in to the Mbps range) could run you tens of thousands of dollars per month.

        Starlink may well represent the first major competition to a lot of these well-entrenched oligopolies. It will be very interesting to see where this goes.
      • I suppose it's the same as wired internet currently - you and your neighbor could split the bill, sharing is hardly a difficulty with Wifi or at worst, running a Cat5. Yet how many people do this? I would imagine it does happen in apartment complexes at least.

    • Re:Rural Broadband? (Score:5, Informative)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @08:11AM (#61139942) Homepage Journal

      > they may have the ability to start offering something to farms and rural communities, maybe even off-grid homes with nothing more than solar for power

      This is literally their mission statement and 90% of current customers. I'm leading a community project to get the rest of our residents online (~60 households) and every install I do of Starlink has people delighted. Some had only 9600baud dial-up due to government monopoly grants (we could not get pole access for fiber).

      A guy I know in the nearby city is selling his house and moving here because he wants to live rural but didn't want to give up 'broadband'.

      Everything is about to change.

    • If SpaceX believe that they have enough capacity to support mobile platforms such as trucks, ships and planes, then it would seem reasonable to think that they may have the ability to start offering something to farms and rural communities, maybe even off-grid homes with nothing more than solar for power.

      To add to what others have already said, not only is this their primary stated goal (although in beta, they aren't shy about servicing city addresses anyway), but an off-grid home with nothing but solar power is a prominent subscriber of Starlink today. The guy posted a bunch of pictures to Reddit. He lives in the back of beyond in snow-covered mountains so inaccessible in the winter that he uses a snowmobile to get around. He published a photo of his Starlink terminal strapped to the back of his snowmob

  • Why would a truck driver pay for broadband internet in the truck? Maybe so that he could drive the truck remotely from his home? Or drive two trucks simultaneously?
  • How many Starlink satellites are needed for the Kessler syndrome to become a reality?

    • Re:Here is a question... (Score:4, Informative)

      by dotancohen ( 1015143 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @05:43AM (#61139718) Homepage

      Starlink satellites are in a very low orbit that naturally decays in less than a decade. You would need about six orders of magnitude more satellites to make collisions 1:1000 years likely assuming all satellites loose navigational ability at once.

      Space is big. Really, really big. You might think that it's a long way down to the chemist's, but that is just peanuts compared to space.

      • Space is big, but the volume in which the satelites orbit is a rather finite shell; furthermore they move at high speed - the picture of having them spaced out over space is misleading..they buzz around at 7km/s and trace out a volume of number of satelites*velocity*effective area*timespan, when 1/volume is of order the number density, you expect a collision in that timespan .. if you work out the numbers then you would have multiple collisions per year if they would move in random orbits for a 10000 sateli

        • The volume of these satellites is on the order of a cubic meter, actually less. These are not traditional comms sats, they go up sixty at a time in a single launch.

          They do have a single large solar cell that takes up about 3/4 the area swept by its trajectory through space, so that is the part most likely to collide. If the whole sat deorbits naturally in about a decade, solar panel debris will deorbit in a year. It is far, far unlikely that this would lead to a secondary collision, even ignoring the fact t

          • the volume of the satelites is not important, its the projected area (in that sense its bad they are flattened and have large solar arrays)..but yea, Kessler is not a certainty, but it depend on details like how many fragments and how fast they decay and how good you can maneuver around it (note that it will not be possible to completely evade the debris field as it will be decaying)..in any case (since collision rate goes with density**2) you certainly cannot fill space around earth with 6 orders of magnit

        • Space is big, but the volume in which the satelites orbit is a rather finite shell;

          Now now, don’t go contradicting his Douglas Adams quote with facts. On Slashdot that’s a losing proposition.

  • Internet on the open waters is excruciatingly expensive - hundreds a month for a limited service through a satellite service - which is why most boats don't have internet at all, or they have some barely dial up speed service to be used in the most sparing circumstances. As dumb as it sounds ships have even run aground [abc.net.au] because the crew are trying to get some bars on their phone.

    So another, hopefully cheaper option would be very popular on boats. But knowing SpaceX they'll see a captive audience and price

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      And long-distance trains and buses.
      By listing only "trucks, ships and planes", I think it just shows Elon has been in the US too long.

      • If you're on a long distance bus you can't afford the internet upgrade

        Trains might make sense though, in this country it costs more to take a train than to take a bus, per mile, even though trains are more efficient.

        • Wrong, two different bus lines run the same route. Say as in my case Toronto to Miami. One is just a bus. The other charges $5 more but offer WiFi service the entire day of the drive. Guess which one i am going to take, hint: Not the cheaper one.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by quenda ( 644621 )

            Say as in my case Toronto to Miami.

            I hope you are just trolling the Americans, and there is a Miami in Canada :-)

            The other charges $5 more but offer WiFi service the entire day of the drive.

            Heck, even if there is only one bus, people will happily pay a few bucks for wifi where there is no cellular coverage.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      Except it likely does cost SpaceX more to cover open water. They still have to put more birds in the air on flight paths that are over all that open water to provide coverage. These satellites only cover, relatively speaking, small cells compared with stationary orbit the previous generations of comm sats have used.

      So just like the terrestrials guys don't go putting up cell towers in the middle of nowhere SpaceX has an incentive to put birds on flight paths that pass over where more people are at; in terms

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Zarquon ( 1778 )

        Not really true... the satellites are on low orbits that precess across the surface of the earth. The same satellites that serve land serve the sea. The extra satellites are for higher latitudes... 55 degree inclination vs polar orbits.

        What really enables the open water service are intersatellite links and to a lesser degree extra ground stations.

  • Can't wait to have a motorised antenna doing rapid 360 movements as it tries to maintain signal lock while I'm whizzing around.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by robbak ( 775424 )
      They are phased array antennas. They only adjust once, to point them at the best angle for the satellite orbits.

      These terminals will be fixed to the surface of the truck or ship and won't move. The phased array antenna will steer the beam to point at the satellite, counteracting your movements.
      • THat doesnt make sense, any vehicle by definition is going to constantly change direction. Why would anyone want a fixed antenna, which is wrong the moment you drive down the road or turn ?

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by quenda ( 644621 )

          THat doesnt make sense,

          What part of "phased array antennas" don't you understand, moron? This is news for NERDS.

          • phased array antennas" are directional, to make. them effective you would need mechanics to constantly correct their angle and direction.

        • Starlink dishes have motors that automatically turn to find the signal. As your vehicle moves, the dish will automatically rotate to maintain (or reacquire) a signal lock. If you're doing donuts in a field, your connection will be unreliable, but will be re-established when you're done.

          The "fixed" portion of the fixed antenna refers to how the dish will be mounted, not to where the dish will be pointing.

          • Nope. The motors are to find the optimal position to see the most satellites. But as Starlink add more satellites to it's system a fixed antenna pointing straight up but using a phased-array to do the steering will work fine no matter where your vehicle points.
          • > Starlink dishes have motors that automatically turn to find the signal. As your vehicle moves, the dish will automatically rotate to maintain (or reacquire) a signal lock. If you're doing donuts in a field, your connection will be unreliable, but will be re-established when you're done.

            And as soon as they break due to bumps in the road, or excessive constant repositioning im sure musk wont replace them for free.
  • while you're driving is worth ruining ground based astronomy as everybody in the mother jumps on the constellation bandwagon.

  • "driving a truck" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NotEmmanuelGoldstein ( 6423622 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @06:31AM (#61139776)

    ... whether driving a truck ...

    I want truck-drivers to be watching the road not the latest Netflix show: If he's on his 3-day down-time, he'll either park somewhere with good wi-fi, or have a flash-drive of movies on-hand: Space-wasting satellite-dish, not required.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I can't see it being of much use for trucks because cellular will be cheaper for stuff like tracking and telemetry.

      Maybe specialist trucks like mobile labs.

    • If he's on his 3-day down-time...

      I believe that would be 34 hours.

    • ... a bigger dick ? ... *all* the moneys ?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Most long-haul trucks on the road these days have a sleeper cab. That's the big box behind the part the driver actually sits in. It's basically a camper, and they spend a lot of time NOT driving and being in the back of it. When you have a team of drivers, one is sitting around or sleeping while the other is driving. Anyway the point is that truck drivers can definitely make use of just as much bandwidth as anyone else, as they don't (and aren't allow to) spend every waking moment driving while out on a

    • If autonomous driving becomes a reality, and it seems near certain this will happen fairly soon, then truckers will no longer be driving long distance routes. They probably will be driving short haul routes though (I'm not sure why I think this, but somehow it seems likely to me).

      Long distance trucking is tedious, and is one of those jobs humans are not well suited to. I'm surprised we don't already have autonomy between major truck stops, with drivers taking over from there. It would be a revolution. I ima

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Syberz ( 1170343 )
      Here in Germany, most truckers aren't allowed on the roads after 6pm on Saturday, until like 5am on Monday. Rest areas on the Autobahn are filled with trucks and these are simple park-like stopping points with restrooms and nothing else, no wifi, no services. So for those truckers to get high speed wifi via Starlink would be a boon and definitely not a waste of space.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GlennC ( 96879 )

      The main reason for connectivity is for the Electronic Logging Device that is required by Federal regulation.

      https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/hours-service/elds/electronic-logging-devices [dot.gov]

    • The internet works for sound, too.

      If I were sirius XM I'd be worried.

      • SiriumXM has an web access or apps for any Internet enabled device you could name. More channels and some video.

    • you can use it for monitoring the vehicle in places with poor mobile coverage, but I think the likely future use is on autonomous trucks, where getting good coverage with a high speed connection may be a requirement.

  • Still more US Navy ships run into each other because the radar specialists are watching Netflix.

  • Why would a truck need that much internet ?

  • Big Data are no longer willing to forego surveillance when subjects are out of range of normal telemetry means.

  • One day this Starlink dish will be small enough to just carry around with you. For people that have cottages, RVs or second homes this will be great. Or even just piling in the car for the family vacation.

    The current version looks quite heavy and bulky but I'm sure that future versions will be smaller and lighter. I signed up for StarLink last week. Can't wait for it to arrive :-)

    • Starlink would have to change its policies for that to work, or else you’ll have to pay for this upcoming mobile service. They currently say, once provisioned, your antenna will not get internet service if you subsequently move it out of your local cell.

      See “Can I travel with Starlink, or move it to a different address?” at https://www.starlink.com/faq [starlink.com]

      • Yes that's right - the current way of doing it is that the satellite is pegged to your geo location. So if you move it a significant distance the connection will no longer work. I suspect they will offer this "roaming" type of connection as an add on service for those who want it. No way of really knowing this of course, just speculating.

        The roaming dish itself would have to change such that it can locate satellites as the dish itself is moving. Much trickier than having the dish in a fixed location.

  • The rollout of Starlink will surely be slowed down by the regulators of all those national governments on Earth. But if I buy boat-Starlink and dock in Somalia or whatever, will it keep working? What if I bring it on land, or maybe even many miles inland? Is this mobile Starlink thing not basically and end-round of all federal regulation on internet service - basically a go-anywhere internet box? If the same regulation that applies to satellite phones would apply to this, then it's actually pretty revolutio

  • If I owned a trucking company, every truck would be equipped with Starlink and Truck Health Management. Similar to Boeing's system:

    "Boeing Airplane Health Management (AHM) provides significant overall fuel and emission performance measures for individual airplanes, enabling operators to improve overall average fleet performance. AHM is an information tool designed by Boeing and airline users that collects in-flight airplane information and relays it in real time to the ground. The Performance Monitoring m

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