Starlink Unveils Airplane Service (arstechnica.com) 79
SpaceX has introduced Starlink Aviation, promising 350Mbps broadband with unlimited data for each airplane it's installed in. From a report: "Starlink can deliver up to 350Mbps to each plane, enabling all passengers to access streaming-capable Internet at the same time," the company said. "With latency as low as 20 ms, passengers can engage in activities previously not functional in flight, including video calls, online gaming, virtual private networks and other high data rate activities." Starlink said the airplane service will use a "low-profile Aero Terminal" with "an electronically steered phased array antenna, which enables new levels of reliability, redundancy and performance."
It has a "simplified design" that "enables installations during minimal downtime and combines well with other routine maintenance checks," Starlink says. The service hardware also includes two wireless access points. There's a one-time hardware cost of $150,000, not including installation. "The installation can be performed by your current maintenance organization or Starlink can recommend experienced and qualified installers," Starlink says.
It has a "simplified design" that "enables installations during minimal downtime and combines well with other routine maintenance checks," Starlink says. The service hardware also includes two wireless access points. There's a one-time hardware cost of $150,000, not including installation. "The installation can be performed by your current maintenance organization or Starlink can recommend experienced and qualified installers," Starlink says.
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Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't worry, airlines are going to make it expensive enough that no more than 70 people are going to use it at the same time.
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It is $150k for the hardware? Why?? How does it differ from a residential unit?
Because it comes with aircraft rated mounting screws.
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Perhaps you should have read till the end of the summary?
There's a one-time hardware cost of $150,000, not including installation. "The installation can be performed by your current maintenance organization or Starlink can recommend experienced and qualified installers," Starlink says.
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It needs to survive a lot more vibration ( takeoff, landing, turbulence etc), a lot more rapid temperature changes ( 0 to 10k feet in less than 15 minutes) allso breakdown in a service that airlines re sell to their passengers probably includes some kind if sla that makes service autage due to hw failure quite expensive for StarLink ( esp since sceduling service on an aircraft is rather expensive)
Possibly that could be the case for the service level agreement, but that's probably part of a maintenance contract that costs additional money rather than being part of the initial $150K price tag. As for vibration and temperature changes, it's just not that hard to ruggedize solid state electronics against that sort of thing. We could also add slightly higher radiation levels to that, but still not that hard.
I would say that they charge this much for it for the simple reason that they can. They're really
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> It is $150k for the hardware? Why?? How does it differ from a residential unit?
This guy literally asked "How is a stationary house different than an airplane in flight". And people are taking it seriously.
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Don't worry, airlines are going to make it expensive enough that no more than 70 people are going to use it at the same time.
That's still 1/3 to 1/2 of a B737/A320 family airliner.
Typical seating on an A35J is 369 pax and even a superjumbo tends to top out at 550 odd (IIRC the exit limit of an A380 is 800, but no-ones even tried to fly one as an all economy configuration).
Besides, you'd be surprised what some people will pay in order not to be alone with their own vapid thoughts. People already pay stupid money for inflight internet so they can twat "I'm on a plane". What makes you think this would change?
Re: Huh? (Score:1)
Now go google "Tragedy of the commons."
14 people streaming 4k video will max out a 350 Mbs connection.
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Re: Huh? (Score:1)
Video calls (Score:3, Interesting)
Do we really want to encourage video calling on airplanes? I guess on private jets would be one thing, but on commercial flights seems tacky.
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As long as they're wearing VR googles and earphones who cares?
Re:Video calls (Score:4, Insightful)
You can still hear their (loud) side of the conversation where they are yelling because they're wearing headphones.
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Maybe airlines will force you to wear one of these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Or they could just not participate in a fucking FaceTime call for a few hours while in the air.
We can't even get people to wear face coverings to prevent the spread of deadly disease. There's literally no possible way they could compel people to wear a high-tech ball gag without "mah riiiights!" and belligerent behavior towards flight crew.
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Or require all two-way video calls to be made from the last several rows of the plane, similar to what they did with smokers back in the 1970s. People that can't wait to chat while in flight would select those seats and all other passengers would avoid those seats as they already do.
If someone realizes last minute they need to participate in a video meeting they can offer to swap seats with some poor passenger that got stuck in the back few rows. I know I would jump at the chance to move forward 20 rows i
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Or require all two-way video calls to be made from the last several rows of the plane, similar to what they did with smokers back in the 1970s. People that can't wait to chat while in flight would select those seats and all other passengers would avoid those seats as they already do.
If someone realizes last minute they need to participate in a video meeting they can offer to swap seats with some poor passenger that got stuck in the back few rows. I know I would jump at the chance to move forward 20 rows if I were offered.
Can they restrict it to the front couple of rows. I sit at the back of planes because cabins tend to fill up front to back (a better chance of getting an empty seat next to you). Also I don't mind sitting patiently for a line to start moving.
Plus the suckers who pay more for nothing pay to sit at the front of the plane.
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You can still hear their (loud) side of the conversation where they are yelling because they're wearing headphones.
There's three reasons I'm not worried about this.
1. Latency is a bitch.
2. Airlines already block video and VOIP calls (for more than just bandwidth availability).
3. Bandwidth limits will be so low that it'll cut them off in short order.
The problem we have are people "live flogging" their lives by recording it. Those twats are already a problem.
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The whole thing SpaceX is advertising here is that latency is lower and bandwidth is higher, so #1 and #3 are already gone (in theory). Which means it's at the airline's discretion whether #2 is still a thing. I could easily see some airlines allowing it, while others would preserve cabin peace and quiet.
Re: Video calls (Score:4, Insightful)
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The only people who could afford the calls considered themselves far more important than anyone else.
The only people who could afford the calls the free market considered their work and time far more valuable than anyone else. - FTFY
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Maybe only people who were raised with manners could afford those calls?
No, more likely people who were raised with manners realise that the world will not end the few hours they are in flight and it'll be waiting for them when they land. I suspect these phones were mostly used by stupid people who wanted more credit card debt. Swipe swipe.
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I keep seeing this brought up in discussions on in-flight WiFi. The thing is, seatback phones used to be fairly common, back in a time when phone calls were a much more common way to communicate. As far as I can recall, people making long, loud phone calls on planes was fairly rare. Now that so much of our communication has moved to text-based formats, it's hard to imagine people would actually make that many calls on planes.
I remember them. The cost was astronomical per minute. I was on a flight where the CEO of Creative Labs was seated next to me and he spent most of a 3 hour flight on an Airphone.
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The price of those seatback phones was a strong deterrent to me even though usually the company would have been paying for it. I think I only used one once and that was when I was sent off on an unexpected business trip with just enough time to catch the plane and I needed to reschedule a first date planned for that night.
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Those phones used to cost somewhere around $2-$5 per minute to use. Unless you had a shit-ton of money, you weren't going to use one of those to yack with your bestie for the entire flight. You only used one if it was absolutely essential.
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Do we really want to encourage video calling on airplanes? I guess on private jets would be one thing, but on commercial flights seems tacky.
Oh god no. That's all you need is hearing half the conversation of the idiot next to you and his or her partner. Information on a publicly traded company's financial performance, OTOH....
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Have you heard it for the last 20 years? Planes, except for domestic / short haul flights, have had phones in them for you to use for decades now.
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Have you heard it for the last 20 years? Planes, except for domestic / short haul flights, have had phones in them for you to use for decades now.
I've been on a lot of flights short and long haul and haven't een the in-seat phones in a long while; nor anyone using any sort of non-cell phone. Airfone is long dead, given the lack of use and cost to airlines to carry the weight.
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And being crammed in like a sardine isn't tacky? As for the noise, you won't be able to hear much over the engines. So I wouldn't worry.
Everything's fine until the 15th person (Score:4, Funny)
decides they too want to stream 4k content.
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Just set routers to limit individual band when connection is saturated.
Or install more Starlinks antennas.
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I'd have thought that RF congestion would be a bigger issue. Last time I flew there were dozens of Bluetooth devices visible to my phone, and my own wireless headphones had connection issues. A few random personal wi-fi hotspots too.
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It is an issue. I doubt the airlines will really care.
UP TO. (Score:2)
I really wish the editor would learn to parse english. UP TO 350 mbps.
God freaking knows they aren't going to get that if they hook up to any of the existing satellites. I get 10 on average, 50 on a good day.
But I'm sure they'll just give the airlines priority and screw over the users who have been watching their bandwidth slowly diminish.
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Yes, the service works best when users are less densely populated (not all on the same sat). It doesn't work well for urban environments and this is a known and communicated factor. Starlink is a last mile and mobile technology. Urban users already have a plethora of high speed low latency options.
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Since the hardware is lots more advanced ($150k per unit says a lot) they are probably capable of much higher actual speeds...
With the StarLink I helped set up for my mom, it's around 20 on average.
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I think you might be being a bit overly pedantic (which is something I will admit I usually am myself). The important capitalization difference in computer jargon is Mbps vs MBps for Megabits per second versus Megabytes per second. While it is convention to us a capital M for mega and a small m for milli, making it properly Mbps or MBps vs mbps or mBps, context does matter a bit. In this case the context is the basically unheard of unit of millibits per second. Who exactly measures things in millibits per s
Voice Calls? (Score:2)
Sure, you can use Facetime or WhatsApp but that's a tiny percentage.
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I would think WiFi calling would work perfectly well for phone calls.
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Ofcthey can, you just to have to adopt rytines ftom simplex radio ( ie se over when you have finished speaking to avoid confusion caused by the sat delay)
Delay over Starlink is no worse than it is over terrestrial voice chat apps. Admittedly delay in those apps is bad enough that we should be adopting simplex radio habits for them too...
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I can't say he's wrong, but...
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Have you considered starting every conversation with him with "five by five"?
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I know. It's normally considered inappropriate for a phone conversation, just like saying "over" at the end of what you're saying. That's why I said to say it. It's meant as a sort of wry, ironic commentary of their habit of saying "over". They're supposed to think "why are they saying that to me?" or even ask directly and the answer is supposed to shed light on the fact that saying "over" at the end of your part in a phone conversation is a bit unusual.
I get that they're just trying, in their own way, to b
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Voice calls? This is for teams/zoom meetings and for most users they'll be muted a good portion of the time. The majority of airline traffic is for work.
"...and the people who do chat by voice make "phone calls" - Something you wouldn't be able to do on Starlink anyway."
Wifi calling has been a standard feature on cell phones for quite some time now. But yes, that will probably mostly happen in messaging instead.
For consumers I imagine the big advantages will be video streaming and gaming/vr or video streami
Good luck. (Score:4, Funny)
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Seriously? (Score:4, Informative)
You idiots are complaining 350 Mbps is not enough to support an airplane? How much do you get now? Last I checked, three weeks ago, WiFi on planes suck. There is no streaming possible, at any but rate. Even VPN is fucked. With 350 Mbps, around 200 people would be able to stream Netflix at 1 Mbps .. which is OK quality, get on their home/office VPN and do work etc. Furthermore, if too many people stream, and they will not, btw .. but I digress, they can automatically implement some sort of bandwidth restriction cap.
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I wonder... if there ended up being that much demand from Netflix users, would they think about putting an edge cache in each plane...
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That's how IFE already works.
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The airline could work with Netflix to install a local cache on the aircraft for popular shows. They already have something like that for the in flight entertainment.
Aerodynamics? (Score:2)
Man, that thing looks only a bit more aerodynamic than the AC on RV roof. Surely they could've done better with that housing.
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