ViaSat Asks FCC To Halt SpaceX Starlink Launches Because It Can't Compete (teslarati.com) 184
Under the hollow pretense of concern for the environment, Starlink satellite internet competitor ViaSat has asked the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to force SpaceX to stop Starlink launches and threatened to take the matter to court if it doesn't get its way. Teslarati reports: A long-time satellite internet provider notorious for offering expensive, mediocre service with strict bandwidth restrictions, ViaSat has also been engaged in a years-long attempt to disrupt, slow down, and even kill SpaceX's Starlink constellation by any means necessary. That includes fabricating nonsensical protests, petitioning the FCC dozens of times, and -- most recently -- threatening to sue the agency and federal government as the company becomes increasingly desperate. The reason is simple: even compared to SpaceX's finicky, often-unreliable Starlink Beta service, ViaSat's satellite internet is almost insultingly bad. With a focus on serving the underserved and unserved, SpaceX's Starlink beta users -- many of which were already relying on ViaSat or HughesNet internet -- have overwhelmingly described the differences as night and day.
In simple terms, if given the option, it's extraordinarily unlikely that a single public ViaSat subscriber would choose the company's internet over SpaceX's Starlink. While Starlink currently requires subscribers to pay a substantial upfront cost -- ~$500 -- for the dish used to access the satellite network, ViaSat internet costs at least as much per month. Currently, new subscribers would pay a bare minimum of ~$113 per month for speeds up to 12 Mbps (akin to DSL) and an insultingly small 40GB data cap. For a 60GB cap and 25 Mbps, subscribers will pay more than $160 per month after a three-month promotion. With a fixed cost of $99 per month, truly unlimited data, and uncapped speeds that vary from 50 to 200+ Mbps, any ViaSat "silver" subscriber would receive far better service by switching to Starlink and save enough money to pay off the $500 dish in less than a year.
What ViaSat actually wants is for the FCC to catastrophically hamstring Starlink, thus saving the profit-focused company from having to actually work to compete with an internet service provider that is all but guaranteed to capture most of its subscribers on an even playing field. Incredibly, ViaSat actually removes its greenwashing mask in the very same FCC request [PDF], stating that it "will suffer competitive injury" if Starlink is allowed to "compete directly with Viasat in the market for satellite broadband services."
In simple terms, if given the option, it's extraordinarily unlikely that a single public ViaSat subscriber would choose the company's internet over SpaceX's Starlink. While Starlink currently requires subscribers to pay a substantial upfront cost -- ~$500 -- for the dish used to access the satellite network, ViaSat internet costs at least as much per month. Currently, new subscribers would pay a bare minimum of ~$113 per month for speeds up to 12 Mbps (akin to DSL) and an insultingly small 40GB data cap. For a 60GB cap and 25 Mbps, subscribers will pay more than $160 per month after a three-month promotion. With a fixed cost of $99 per month, truly unlimited data, and uncapped speeds that vary from 50 to 200+ Mbps, any ViaSat "silver" subscriber would receive far better service by switching to Starlink and save enough money to pay off the $500 dish in less than a year.
What ViaSat actually wants is for the FCC to catastrophically hamstring Starlink, thus saving the profit-focused company from having to actually work to compete with an internet service provider that is all but guaranteed to capture most of its subscribers on an even playing field. Incredibly, ViaSat actually removes its greenwashing mask in the very same FCC request [PDF], stating that it "will suffer competitive injury" if Starlink is allowed to "compete directly with Viasat in the market for satellite broadband services."
Competitive injury? (Score:3)
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Yes, there is.
It's entirely legal, too.
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No, Capitalism isn't about buying Senators.
That's more a feature of democracy....
Re:Competitive injury? (Score:5, Insightful)
By the way, capitalism is off the hook. The worst governments, as measured by the health and wealth of their citizens are among the least free nations. Again, when you see corruption is the primary purpose for government, unfree kleptocracies, which is all of 'em, become just another point on the sliding scale.
Now kneel before the powerful for permission to do anything. Mind their waggling fingers, which capitalism would just as soon not have to deal with.
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Very much depends how you define free. For example, Nordic countries have the best quality of life in the world, including health, and also have quite high taxes and heavy regulation.
The United States has a great deal of freedom, but very poor healthcare for many people. Wealth is the same, some have a lot, many have very little.
I think it's more complicated than some kind of freedom metric.
Re:Competitive injury? (Score:4)
Which freedoms does a person have in the US vs one from the Nordic countries? If we you by The Human Freedom Index Report then the US is behind the Nordics as well:
The Human Freedom Index Report gave more than 160 countries a rank in all three categories to determine which countries were the freest in the world. The country with the highest rank for the personal freedom index was the Netherlands, followed closely by Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Hong Kong had the highest economic freedom index, followed closely by Singapore. For overall human freedom, New Zealand came in first, closely followed by Switzerland and Hong Kong.
Re:Competitive injury? (Score:4, Insightful)
Lol, the purpose of government is corruption. Are you really that fucking dense?
I rather appreciate the fact that I have power and water to my house, that there's a well maintained road outside it for me to go places, and I like the fact that someone comes and picks up my garbage once a week. It's also great that the food I eat and the medicine I take is safe and effective and is resistant to tampering and contamination.
You might not understand what government does if you never leave your mom's basement. For those of us who actually interact with the world, we're pretty happy with there being some large-scale organization of life. It keeps us from being Somalia.
Viasat should get launching (Score:5, Informative)
Solution obvious. (Score:2)
Rule in Starlink's favor, and instead of damages and legal fees, Starlink gets ViaSat's satellites. Starlink gets to keep offering services, and ViaSat doesn't have to compete unfairly anymore.
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Why would Space-X want that? It's like gifting someone a trashcan full of toxic chemicals. SpaceX can do nothing with ViaSat's satellites other than provide an inferior service while at the same time being up for the costs of tracking and maintaining the satellites' orbits.
Re:Solution obvious. (Score:5, Funny)
Eh, good test dummies for when Starship Cargo is developed, to test its space junk retrieval capacity.
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Viasat has only six satellites - always been a niche player.
Hell of a 'niche' right there. No wonder they're winning.
(ViaSat Customer Vision) "Hello? Hi. Do you happen to offer internet in a fly-by package? Yes, I'm fine with trying to catch bandwidth like a fart in high wind..."
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They're geostationary satellites. They don't "fly by". The niche is the limited service area.
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Geostationary? Nice light lag there. Even if they had no hardware latency, 230ms is the minimum.
Re:Viasat should get launching (Score:5, Informative)
I was on HughesNet (same basic setup), and man was the latency awful...AWFUL I say. If you are streaming, it wasn't too bad, but if you were attempting to actually do work like RDP over a VPN and attempt to interact....WOW. I actually had to write a $300USD check to buy my way out once I actually found a local provider that could provide service to me.
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You have to consider the round-trip latency, which must travel to the satellite four times (twice to send the packet, twice to get the response). That's ~477 ms. Plus your normal routing latency.
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Sure, latency isn't super critical for all use cases, but there are still many (video/voice chat, gaming, remote desktop or UI streaming of any kind) that are quite common these days. And no matter how much they try to hide it, web browsing isn't going to feel great with that kind of latency either, even if modern browsers batch requests.
Re:Viasat should get launching (Score:5, Informative)
Viasat has only six satellites - always been a niche player.
Six satellites was a major player in this market until Starlink.
With that said, viasat always provided shit service at a massive cost and they can go fuck themselves. There's no public benefit in slowing down Starlink so they can be more competitive with their shit service and abject complacence.
If there's an ISP that deserves to die, it's ATT. But if there's a second one, it's Viasat.
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Quantity has a quality all it's own.
Re:Viasat should get launching (Score:5, Interesting)
you can't compare a 6,400 kg satellite with a 260 kg one.
Sure you can, just like you can compare a mainframe to a PC.
We're seeing a handful of big, heavy duty machines with immense power but little ability to adapt to changing needs being supplanted by collections of individually inferior devices that are together significantly more powerful and more capable of adapting to changing needs. Going big was definitely what made sense at the time that these geostationary satellites were launched, but there's really no doubt that the StarLink approach is far superior, in the same way that a PC on everyone's desk led to industry-changing productivity gains over what was possible with mainframes.
P.S. If technology advances enough (e.g. a massive quantum entanglement breakthrough renders communication satellites obsolete?), we may see a later reversal of the current trend, just as we're seeing a move from PC to cloud computing these days, but that's not where we are today. That sort of thing is still science fiction.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Customers aren't property. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Our broken business model is going to put us out of business, you must protect us from our shortsightedness and terrible product!"
yeah, how about NO.
You should have invested all that money you were bleeding your customers for into more satellites and better infrastructure, rather than stock dividends and legal actions. Now you can go die, and make room for a much more competitive service.
Inovate or die (Score:3)
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While Viasat is clearly just trying everything it can to survive being out-innovated, it does have a point. The summary isn't accurate, it isn't saying that the issue is it can't complete, it's saying that if Starlink puts up 12,000+ satellites the risk of collision increases greatly. So far in human history only 9000 have been put up, and 2500 of those were Starlink.
The environmental concerns are not entirely bogus either. The claim that the satellites will just "burn up on re-entry" is a bit dubious. They
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Oh depends what you count as "satellite". Project West Ford put 480mln of objects in orbit.
Re: Inovate or die (Score:2)
Look at the launch pace x is is launching at to achieve their large size. Now look at every other company planning to launch large constellations and look at their launch plans.
No one I mean no one is even. Decade close of being able to launch like starlink. Oneweb does 36 satellites to ecery ten launches(600) of starlink.
Saying I wanna build my own mega constellation is one thing. Finding a launch provider this decade other than space x to do so is another
Re:Inovate or die (Score:5, Interesting)
Risk of collision? The geostationary satellites that viacom uses are 36,000 km above earth's surface. Starlink satellites are 300 to 500 km above the surface. So they are like 35,000 km away from each other. I don't think there is much risk of collision.
My understanding is that starlink satellites actually were designed so that they would burn up safely during re-entry. I don't think they ignored the issue. But I could be wrong.
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As I said, the issue is what "burn up" really means. It doesn't mean they vanish into nothing, it means they go from being a bit solid satellite to something else.
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They should have an answer for this already.
It's not likely there are plans for thousands of little cannonballs ready to smash into cities with a scorched outside.
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Well the exact composition of the satellites is a trade secret, but we do have a decent idea of the materials in them and how they react to heating. So the FCC should be able to tell us what will happen when they burn up, what gasses will be released into the atmosphere etc.
It appears they have not doing that study. Previously satellites were uncommon enough that it wasn't an issue, but Starlink is proposing to put up tens of thousands and replace them all every 6 years, so we could be looking at around 7-8
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The mass of deorbiting Starlink satellites is going to be less than the 5,200 metric tons of micrometeorites that burn up in the atmosphere each year. If we assume 20% of Starlink's full 42,000 satellite constellation is replaced annually, Starlink will represent 2,184 metric tons. In practice it will probably be a bit less than this, as the lifespan is expected to be five to seven years, rather than just five.
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Could be, I had just googled it and pulled the number from https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
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Re:Inovate or die (Score:5, Funny)
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viacom
But I could be wrong.
That says it all about this comment. Viacom?
Competition is illegal? When did that happen? (Score:3)
Actually, they are specifically arguing that they can't compete.
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The but you quoted is not saying what you think it's saying.
It's say that IF their claims about Starlink's behaviour being irresponsible are true, THEN it would be unfair competition because ViaSat is playing by the rules and behaving responsibly.
The rest is standard lawyer stuff, must act now to prevent irreparable harm, don't let them build up a customer base and use that as an excuse etc.
Again, not saying VaiSat is right, only that they are not specifically arguing that it is unfair simply because Starli
Re:Inovate or die (Score:5, Informative)
First, Viasat's satellites are in geosync orbit, so there is no danger from low orbit satellites. They simply don't have standing to make that complaint.
>their component parts become gasses or break down into finer particles.
Back-of-napkin is easy. There's a wide range of estimates for the amount of stuff which falls to earth naturally, but the low end [universetoday.com] is 5 metric tons (5000 kg), daily. Starlink satellites weigh ~260 kg, and have an orbital life expectancy of ~6 years. 12,000 satellites / 6 years = ~0.55 / day, or 142 kg / day, about a 3% increase over what naturally occurs. If one take the high end estimates for cosmic dust (300000 kg / day), then it's a 0.05% increase. To look at it another way, the average US family produces ~5.6 kg of trash/day, so Starlink will be dumping what amounts to the trash from about 25 families.
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And, best part, in the filing ViaSat says that they do intend to start putting satellites in LEO. They are in the process of getting clearance to do what they claim is environmentally dangerous for Starlink to do. That's how you know their claims are bogus. They don't believe them, they just don't want to compet
Did they not have time? (Score:3)
Starlink is not a new idea and Musk has made a lot of noise about it for almost as long as SpaceX. There have been his many Muskian ideas about blimps and other solutions to this problem, but whatever the case, it was long in coming. Every one of the other satellite service providers have known for at least 10 years that there would be a competitor coming.
Traditional satellite is pretty simple tech. You aim a signal at a dish in the sky and it will reflect it.
For LEO satellite, the problem is coverage, since it's so damn close to earth, the range of a LEO satellite is very small. This would require a lot of base stations to, again reflect the signal, or it would require a LEO mesh network. This is a problem since analog signal repeaters (basically amplifiers) also amplify noise and degrade the SnR. To overcome this issue requires higher powers or lower wavelengths and while corporate satellite operation can function pretty well with a lot of signals using the same frequencies as their satellites are generally on gimbles and properly aimed/focused, terrestrial satellites installed by consumers or maybe "Bob the installation guy" lack the precision and therefore reusing low frequencies will be a bandwidth issue and a licensing issue.
For geo-transit/geo-sync
The point I'm making is that a LEO mesh network may have required either higher performance digital repeaters, as software defined radio wasn't really a thing back then, this would likely require new satellites (we don't send hardware upgrades to existing ones). And in reality, the expected lifespan of a satellite is not particularly long, we of course can build 50-100 years devices, but it would end up costing a $1 billion per satellite. Instead, a LEO mesh network is expected to regularly launch a new satellite or two and decommission aging ones.
So for 10 years, these companies have known that they should be sticking new satellites with better capabilities (and backwards compatibility of course) onto every launch they could. A LEO satellite for Internet can of course be quite small, and as SpaceLink has demonstrated, they typically are.
So the next issue that comes up is upgrading modems for customers to make use of the better platform. To do this, they should have, a long time ago been in an upgrade cycle. The existing physical dishes themselves should be good enough and there's even a chance the antenna is good enough as they are operating at large enough wavelengths that the coils will still respond well enough at the given frequency ranges. This leaves the settop boxes/modems. These devices used to be built like battle tanks meant to last 20+ years, but in modern times, they are the same cheap shit electronics we expect from everything else. A 5-10 year life span is reasonable. Not only that, but by upgrading the settop boxes, the providers are able to spam the customers with more stuff they don't need or want at premium prices and can be quite profitable. People all over the world are generally more than happy to pay their satellite provider a small premium over other providers to receive a film subbed and/or dubbed into their native lan
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Even if they didn't have 10 years, isn't this the exact definition of "free market" that is repeatedly touted as being the cornerstone of American business ideals?
Keep up, compete, or go out of business.
Re:Did they not have time? (Score:4, Insightful)
I personally find Tesla vehicles oversized, unruly
Isn't that just because they're tailored for the American tastes, supersizing everything?
So that being said... they've have 10 years to a) Improve the performance of their LEO network via logical evolution/progression b) Increase the bandwidth available to their ground stations c) Progressively upgrade their customer's equipment d) Decrease their overall costs through the use of smaller/lighter LEO satellites, better modulations (QAM256+/OFDM), etc...
I haven't checked, but it also sounds like they haven't even tried to partner up with SpaceX, even just trying to get launch costs down so that they could upgrade the satellites more cheaply.
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ViaSat has booked a Falcon Heavy to launch ViaSat-3 in early 2022. SpaceX has also launched or booked two satellites for EchoStar (owner of Hughes Network Systems), a ViaSat competitor. SpaceX has launched a bunch of other geostationary communication satellites, but I'm not sure how many of them are for broadband.
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Your analogy is a little off - yes, you have to constantly tinker on the Alfa, but at least it looks good while you're doing it on the side of the road since it decided to have a break.
Linux usually doesn't have that.
(posted from an Ubunutu install)
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I'm not a particular Musk fan-boy and I personally find Tesla vehicles oversized, unruly and see them as "helping the environment today to leave landfills of non-reusable materials for future generations once the cars are no longer road-worthy".
Mind elaborating a bit on this logic? EVs are going to likely last at least twice as long as every gas-powered alternative that is currently filling landfills. Between that and the (no) emissions benefit that starts on day one of ownership, it certainly seems like EVs are providing a considerable benefit over the current alternative. One could argue toxicity and long-term impact, but it's likely negligible between ICE and EV waste.
And with new car prices pushing to insane levels, our landfills probably w
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I'm also unsure as to what is considered "non-reusable materials" stacking up in the landfill. The battery packs are highly recyclable. The electric motors are highly recyclable. The Model 3 / Y car structure itself is made of iron and steel - both are highly recyclable. Model S / X use aluminum, which is very recyclable. The wiring is copper - also sought after for recycling. So that basically leaves the plastic bits, which are equal or less than you would find on a liquid fuel vehicle.
There is more than one way.. (Score:3)
They could just as well explorer other options, e.g., launch more satellites.
There is a company that launches rockets with reasonable pricing these days.
Another option is to lease a part of other currently existing networks, and resell that.
It seems kind of limiting to throttle innovation this way just because you had a bad service.
What have they done to improve their situation? Wait for the right moment to complain?
It's not that they didn't see this coming, or you'd have to fire the whole management immediately.
They chose the weakest option, imho.
Re:There is more than one way.. (Score:5, Insightful)
They chose the weakest option, imho.
It's probably their only option. They discovered a small market where they can offer a minimal and crappy service at a hugely inflated price to customers who basically have no choice. SpaceX targets a much larger market and operates at a completely different scale. To compete with that, ViaSat would have to make a massive investment, sell their services at a far lower price... and still be competing with StarLink. Easier to just kill the competition in that case.
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I doubt ViaSat could invest their way out of this because Starlink is really there to help SpaceX drive down the cost of launches by providing regular work. Starlink is basically creating a market for regular launches of large numbers of satellites, that didn't exist before. Previously nobody was launching thousands of them, with a commitment to do so indefinitely to maintain the constellation.
ViaSat could ask SpaceX to do the same for them, but getting investors to throw money at it will be difficult consi
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Given that their complaint is that launching many satellites without considering the implications is a bad idea, I can't see how launching more of their own would actually help.
I'm sure they won't be the last company to find their business model destroyed by new satellite internet providers. Satellite TV is probably next as better streaming services become available to people in more remote areas.
Re: There is more than one way.. (Score:2)
Satellite TV is already dying. AT&T destroyed all the customer goodwill for DirectTV, and it will eventually merge with Dish. Subscriber numbers have been plummeting for years. Soon they wonâ(TM)t be able to afford maintaining the current constellations or launch replacements with any profit. Almost everyone who can get terrestrial internet now gets their TV from the same terrestrial ISP or theyâ(TM)ve become cord cutters and moved to streaming services over their terrestrial internet. The fin
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Re:There is more than one way.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does ViaSat only now address their issue through legal means? They could just as well explorer other options, e.g., launch more satellites.
Because buying regulators is WAY cheaper than buying satellite launches.
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funny... (Score:2)
I can't imagine any judge granting them their whish of blocking SpaceX. It's their problem they can't compete, not SpaceX. Having profited from years of no competition they never really invested in bettering their service, and now they see a competitor rising up with much better service for a much lower cost, yeah, that will hurt them.. As I said, I can't believe if they would sue they would win, certainly not on the premise of 'we cannot compete'.
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Which is hilarious since all of ViaSat's complaints apply to them as well, and they want to put satellites into LEO, which they say is really bad for Starlink to be doing. You could boil their entire filing down to, "Orbiting satellites
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It's more to do with polluting LEO and what happens to the satellites when they de-orbit.
Prior to Starlink there had been a total of about 7000 satellites launched in human history. Now Starlink are proposing to launch that many a year, and de-orbit that many a year. It's a big change in the amount of stuff being de-orbited and when things burn up on re-entry they don't vanish, they turn into gasses and small chunks. Previously the numbers were too small to pay much attention to, but with 7-8k/year de-orbit
God that article reeks of fanboyism (Score:2, Informative)
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Real issues with astronomy and space debris (Score:2)
Old and Slow tech? Pivot to IoT! (Score:3)
ViaSat should immediately try and get a team working on a smaller and cheaper modem that can provide just better than dial up speeds. Many simple telemetry systems use things like Iridium SBD as a backup communications. If it wasn't super expensive (say $20 a month) for some slow (say 1Mbps down / 1Mbps up) speeds and the data cap was good (1GB for example) I could do a LOT with that. I pay Iridium $20 for 10KB - yes KILObytes - of SBD data that is SLOW slotted messages. If ViaSat offered continuous connections and reasonable prices I could pit them against my Cell offerings and would boot Iridium as my backup connection.
These guys are just butt hurt their primary market got wrecked and havent looked for a way to recycle their offerings to a different market. Complete lack of trying to come up with a new plan. They should sue to force Starlink to only offer fast plans and keep the slow M2M for themselves.
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ViaSat should immediately try and get a team working on a smaller and cheaper modem that can provide just better than dial up speeds.
ViaSat already provides much better than dialup speeds. But Starlink provides in turn much better than ViaSat speeds. And there's no fixing this without more birds because they already have capacity issues.
Neutral tone (Score:5, Insightful)
I really enjoy the neutral tone of the summary (and the linked article).
While I agree that ViaSat is complaining to hamper the competition from SpaceX, you can find a more objective description here [spacenews.com], for example.
Re:Neutral tone (Score:5, Insightful)
It's interesting how this works on an international level. Starlink asked the FCC for permission to put up 32,000 satellites, and the FCC in turn went to the ITC with the request.
Until Starlink got started there had only been around 7000 satellites launched ever. Now we are entering an age where massive constellations will exist, and many of them will want to be in low orbits to get low latency and short lifespans.
It's pretty much first-come-first-serve at the moment but I can't see that being sustainable, especially when the precedent has already been set for requesting big allocations up-front.
Re:Neutral tone (Score:4, Insightful)
It's pretty much first-come-first-serve at the moment but I can't see that being sustainable, especially when the precedent has already been set for requesting big allocations up-front.
Well currently only SpaceX has the capability to roll out and sustain this size constellation. That's the heart of the matter for their competitors. SpaceX:
1. were able to test for free giving themselves ride shares
2. are giving themselves launches at cost on the already cheapest kg-to-orbit launcher (it was the cheapest before they started reusing them)
3. can use Starlink to push their operational efficiency. They no longer static fire before Starlink launches like they do for their external customers and they are using and reusing their oldest boosters for Starlink
Maybe Rocket Lab or a private Chinese launch service will be able to match this kind of cadence and efficiency, but it's going to be a few years. Like all things SpaceX, by the time the competition starts feeling the squeeze, they're hopelessly behind.
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Spacenews only has quotes from ViaSat and none from Starlink - it's not more objective just biased the other way ,,, ..still comes across as "we can't compete - so stop Starlink" ...
StarLink is better for one important reason (Score:2)
The only reason StarLink has a major advantage over all other providers is that SpaceX is able to launch their own satellites for cheap. Much cheaper than any other traditional launcher. This allows them to launch many more satellites which is what you need for a high speed Internet satellite service. If I was ViaSat, I'd be looking to exit the market because they simply lack the technology to beat StarLink. As a consumer, we want cheaper / better services not slower and more expensive.
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..or Pay the cheapest launch system to launch more satellites - SpaceX ...
Re:StarLink is better for one important reason (Score:4, Informative)
They have. ViaSat-3 is scheduled to launch on a Falcon Heavy in 2022.
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..or Pay the cheapest launch system to launch more satellites - SpaceX ...
Chevy could also start putting Ford engines in their cars.
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What have they done lately? (Score:2)
Capitalism (Score:2)
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Not only are they trying to have government step in and prevent competition (which they call "wrongful", don't explain how), they're being inc
Blue Origin Playbook (Score:2)
First step, lose in the market. Second step, complain to regulators that it's not fair that you lost in the market. Just like Blue Origin.
Schadenfreude... (Score:5, Interesting)
And so (Score:2)
"Because it can't compete"
This makes it an opinion piece, not a news article.
Cnn, fwiw, obfuscates these kinds of things by labelling them "Analysis", then shoving it in at the top of the page as if a headline news story. They are not alone in this.
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I don't think "because they can't compete" is a huge jump to make.
ViaSat's stated reason is there needs to be an environmental impact assessment done, despite satellites being exempt from that.
So, forced to pick between
a) ViaSat is asking the FCC to halt Starlink because they really care about the environment.
-or-
b) ViaSat is asking the FCC to halt Starlink because it's going to kill their business.
I'm going with B.
I wonder if there is something more. (Score:2)
As much as I would like to get on the bandwagon of Stop being a sore loser, because someone out innovated you (which still may be the case). I am wondering if SpaceX was able to get some additional unfair advantages, such as having a lot of red tape cut for SpaceX where Viasat had to follow a much stricter set of rules.
However I expect is is because Musk's companies are just a big fan of Vertical integration, so where Viasat needed to go threw NASA or Some other countries space program to get their product
the invisible hand of the free market? (Score:2)
no one ever asks what the other hand is up to. could be the left hand of friends in government shielding your business from the free market.
Who knows what starlink will be like... (Score:2)
Re:In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
> Under the hollow pretense of concern for the environment... ... an army of Anonymous Cowards have flooded all posts about cryptocurrency with concern over their carbon footprint.
There's nothing hollow about the pretense of burning an entire nations worth of electricity just so a bunch of finance morons can masturbate over their speculative investment.
And don't be stupid trying to claim this is "Anonymous Cowards". There are plenty of us registered users who happily put our account names to the scientifically backed opinion that Bitcoin is possibly the world's biggest environmental tragedy when it comes to carbon footprint per benefit to society.
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But private vehicle ownership enables people to live in places where real estate is slightly more affordable and/or where you don't have to literally live on top of someone else. This also takes us back around to the actual topic - getting high speed internet access to folks who choose to live out in BFE. Not everyone wants to live in an overpriced, overcrowded, urban environment.
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When I try to post without logging in I can't. I can "post anonymously" after logging in.
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deranged psychopathic Slashdot nerds.
This sounds about as threatening, as a gang of pizza-loving turtles who dress up and play ninja with a rat.
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I hate the mobile site and just "request desktop site" on my phone.
Works great.
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I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
Today there is a slight nudge towards EVs. Tomrrow, society will upgrade that sentiment. You will eventually be berated and abused for not conforming to modern standards, driving around in your "baby killer" gas guzzler.
Crypto today is the gas guzzler. But when crypto tries to conform and migrate to only using renewable energy sources, that's still not good enough for you. They're still "stealing" power from others.
And that kind of mentality, will rise up through government, until it is deemed that "was
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And that kind of mentality, will rise up through government, until it is deemed that "wasteful" consumption of any form of electricity, will be penalized. We get to that point, and you're not merely controlling cryptocoin. You're controlling damn near everything about someone's life.
In areas with a dwindling water supply, we already have your "scenario" in the case of water restrictions. When you affect someone else's life with your wastefulness, you damn well expect others to stop you from wasting a limited resource.
Re:In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you should probably damn well expect every third world country on the planet to expect every first world country to meet them in the middle. Let's see how second world for all works out.
You don't like it, so you want to pretend the problem doesn't exist.
And in my scenario of self-sufficiency.
Your dreamt up scenario of people complaining about what people do with something that's 100% theirs? If they can power 100% of their crypto with their own solar panels, no one is going to care.
You're literally just making up problems to be scared about.
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There is a maximum percentage of wind that can go on the grid and keep it stable Once this is reached the Wind generation has to be curtailed. Some could go to battery storage and be used to support the grid frequency but even then there are limits to how much that can be stored. Such a site could be a good location for cryptocurrency mining.
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Or, you know, something actually useful, like synthetic fuel production.
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Well then that idiocy must be fought tooth and nail. Industry, in a free society, will rise to the occasion of cheaper and cheaper (read: more plentiful) power.
Rather than make them feel guilty, an ancient technique of religion and food, open up more and more demand for non-polluting renewables.
Who wouldn't want 19.21 jiggawatts just for their personal home use?
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Today there is a slight nudge towards EVs. Tomrrow, society will upgrade that sentiment. You will eventually be berated and abused for not conforming to modern standards, driving around in your "baby killer" gas guzzler.
I doubt it.
Nobody is berating and abusing people driving classic cars without catalytic converters and modern safety devices. We just recognize that rich dumbasses are going to be rich dumbasses.
The same will happen with the current ICE cars - they're going to be classic collector pieces really soon, and not really something that the average person has the time or money to own and maintain. As the gas stations dry up, as the chains go out of business, it's going to be more and more expensive and less and le
Re: Why all the SpaceX advertising ? (Score:2)
They want slashdotters to choose SpaceX for all their launch needs. I too am planning to use SpaceX the next time I launch a satellite.
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I'm ready to buy a subscription, up to 15 cubesats per month, and choice of 47 popular orbits, including such classics as Polar, Tundra, Molinya, GTO (upgrade to GEO paid individually), Retrograde, Sun-synchronous, and one no other launch service offers - launches directly into the Graveyard Orbit.
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The judge can dismiss the case and when ViaSat refiles, label them a vexatious litigant.