back to article SpaceX wants to slap Starlink internet terminals on planes, trucks, and boats – but Tesla owners need not apply

Elon Musk's satellite internet constellation biz, Starlink, wants to sell its end-user station devices and services for use in vehicles, judging by a filing with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The filing, submitted by SpaceX, began by noting the authorisation the company has received to launch over 4,400 non- …

  1. JetSetJim
    Paris Hilton

    > Sticking a terminal on top of one of Elon Musk's electric jalopies would probably spoil the sleek lines of the vehicle

    Why stick the terminal on top? Why not just the antenna with the "terminal" squirreled away in the boot, or built into some other cubby hole?

    1. BenM 29 Silver badge
      Coat

      >>Why not just the antenna with the "terminal" squirreled away in the boot, or built into some other cubby hole?

      the article says "...electrically identical to its previously authorized consumer user terminals..." which your proposed modification would not be.

      Not saying that they couldn't design a Starlink receiver for the Tesla, just that it isn't anywhere near as simple as just yanking the antenna off and separating it from the rest of it. IMHO, the number of users would probably be fairly small (I guess most Tesla drivers don't drive in the boondocks) making it hard to justify.

      1. tip pc Silver badge

        https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1369051431903268865

        Musk tweeted that he wasn't going to stick an antennae on tesla's, the tweet is in the article (May have been added after the above replies"

      2. jake Silver badge

        "(I guess most Tesla drivers don't drive in the boondocks)"

        I certainly wouldn't. I found one in a canyon out in the Mojave several months ago. It was not stuck (tires on top of the gravel). Probably out of power, no people around it, and a week or more's worth of dust on it. No cell service where it was. I hope they didn't try to walk out unprepared. I alerted the authorities, but have no idea what happened. Friends say they have also found all-electric vehicles in out of the way places, sometimes with a note saying they got lost and ran out of juice.

        At least with an ICE motor, a friendly passed-by can give you a splash of fuel ...

        1. Roland6 Silver badge

          >At least with an ICE motor, a friendly passed-by can give you a splash of fuel ...

          Or give you a tow...

    2. Boothy

      The current user 'terminal' (their name) is a phased array dish about 2 foot across.

      There's a few pics on arstechnica

      Granted they could probably shrink the size down somewhat, perhaps integrate the phased array into the roof panels, but that's going to take a bit of a redesign to the cars.

      1. HammerOn1024

        Probably Not

        "Granted they could probably shrink the size down somewhat..."

        Probably not. Phased array antennas are very size sensitive for a number of reasons like the minimum aperture necessary to reconstruct the waveform, emitter power levels, etc. As with any antenna there are trade offs; the primary advantage is that there is no mechanical system needed to steer the beam. The primary disadvantage is the amount of power needed to transmit is quite a bit higher since any given element is effectively an omni directional antenna; one only gains an advantage during constructive interference between the emitters.

        Also, sticking a 2 ft. antenna on the top of a car, hood or trunk lid would involve structural redesign of the vehicle as antenna and their associated radome make very poor load bearing devices.

        "Retrofits ain't easy."

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: Probably Not

          > sticking a 2 ft. antenna on the top of a .. trunk lid would involve structural redesign of the vehicle

          My neighbourhood 17 year olds with fake-WRX Subarus disagree with

          1. David 132 Silver badge
            Coat

            Re: Probably Not

            Hey, you need to preface such comments with a spoiler alert!

        2. sreynolds

          Re: Probably Not

          yeah you need to design the car around the radar, er antenna. like all AEGIS class ships look the same - floating antennas.

          1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

            Re: Probably Not

            Explains the cybertruck

    3. vtcodger Silver badge

      Why stick the terminal on top?

      Why stick the terminal on top? Why not just the antenna with the "terminal" squirreled away in the boot, or built into some other cubby hole?

      For one thing, unlike satellite radio -- Sirius XM for example --the internet requires a two way conversation. You need to use the antenna for transmitting as well as receiving. You can presumably get away with a suboptimal but asthetically pleasing, antenna configuration for reception as long as the signal/noise ratio is decent. When transmitting however, you probably need to properly aim your transmitted signal at the satellite.

      1. JetSetJim

        Re: Why stick the terminal on top?

        > When transmitting however, you probably need to properly aim your transmitted signal at the satellite.

        And this can be achieved without mechanical steering, within limits, using beam steering antennas (which look to be part of the actual Starlink dish anyway, which probably supplement the motor-driven steering bit, too - perhaps until there is sufficient numbers of satellites above)

      2. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: Why stick the terminal on top?

        For one thing, unlike satellite radio -- Sirius XM for example --the internet requires a two way conversation. You need to use the antenna for transmitting as well as receiving.

        WTF

        If you look at the arstechnica pictures you will see the dish is supplied with a long interface cable to the 'router'/terminal ...

        In another arstechnica article the teardown reveals all the antenna intelligence is on a circuit board embedded in the dish assembly.

    4. jmch Silver badge

      The main use case is replacement of other satellite services, hence the main use being planes and boats. Land vehicles in most places have mobile internet available, which for the vast majority of trips will be in their own country with no extra roaming charges, and so covers most use cases.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        I see you are unfamiliar with the rural USA

        1. AdamT

          Wait, what? I remember watching that documentary "The X-Files" years ago and they could get mobile reception literally where ever they were. Middle of a remote forest, large desert, etc. it didn't matter they could whip out the old flip-phone and make a call.

          You're not suggesting that I was misled are you?!

          1. JetSetJim

            They were using alien technology, not regular mobile phones

        2. Cuddles

          Or significant portions of the UK for that matter.

    5. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

      a picture of one of these "terminals" might have helped

      what size we talking car radio or arcade machine?

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      > Why stick the terminal on top?

      Because this early prototype didn't work so well.

  2. Sparkus

    Intelsat

    needs to get their antiquated act together......

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Intelsat

      Why? if they are "electrically identical to its previously authorized consumer user terminals" as stated in the article then it doesn't bode well for the quality of their products. You can't just put a consumer grade gizmo in a new box, strap it to a plane and expect it to survive the first take-off. Or a truck for that matter, the operating environment is way too strenuous.

      Although this sort of thing would go a long way to explain Tesla's terrible reliabilty stats.

      1. John Robson Silver badge

        Re: Intelsat

        Rather depends on what they are actually going to be transferring - a printed array of micro antennae are hardly massively vibration sensitive - anything with soldered joints or actively moving parts yes... but the solder elements can be uprated without changing the electrical characteristics...

      2. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: Intelsat

        >You can't just put a consumer grade gizmo in a new box, strap it to a plane and expect it to survive the first take-off.

        Depends on who SpaceX regards as their typical 'consumer'...

        For some products "consumer grade" means individually boxed for retail...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Intelsat

      If Intelsat is related to Inmarsat (MARitime), then they're sorted: Inmarsat Government (IG) is a (possibly only) contract provider vetted by CECOM for the US Navy plus US Army Watercraft Systems, with "terminal" equipment made by Intellian.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Intelsat

        Iridium's largest customer is the US military. I can see them signing up for starlink in a heartbeat

  3. Pen-y-gors

    1 million users?

    So Starlink, 4000 satellites messing up the sky, can only provide connectivity to 1 million users?

    I was expecting hundreds of millions

    1. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: 1 million users?

      Only licensed for.

      At the moment.

      It's still a trial.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: 1 million users?

        Probably a limit on the number of digits in the field on the license form

    2. Steve Todd

      Re: 1 million users?

      Currently licensed in the USA. They have applied to increase that number to 5 million, then there’s the rest of the world to think about...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 1 million users?

        Although I'd be scared to see what the bandwidth would look like with that many after users...

    3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: 1 million users?

      "So Starlink, 4000 satellites messing up the sky, can only provide connectivity to 1 million users?"

      Apart from other have said, it's also worth noting that the base stations are not necessarily intended for a single users. Put one in a small village in the middle of nowhere and all the villagers can connect to it over WiFi or a mesh or something.

      1. JetSetJim

        Re: 1 million users?

        Equally, I've heard that not all of the satellites are for ground to space connectivity, some are for sat2sat in a higher orbit to attempt to reduce latency (reducing number of hops, or something).

        It would be interesting to know the user and throughput capacity of each satellite

    4. rg287

      Re: 1 million users?

      1. That's what their initial US license is for, which is more than enough to cover their beta phase.

      2. Most of those satellites aren't over the US at any given moment. However, they don't have the spectrum licensing for Rest-of-World yet, so any given sat is basically doing nothing for 80% of the time. Their licensing is for 1million US users, necessarily restricted to using a small subset of the 1100 sats currently in orbit because of orbital mechanics.

      3. Starlink is never going to serve hundreds of millions of Americans because the majority of Americans live in major metro areas and have acceptable(ish) internet access. If 1% of New Yorkers tried to jump on StarLink, the radio congestion on satellites with LoS to NYC would be... ugly. Albeit there's obviously scope for multi-tenant buildings to share a single antennae depending on how they structure their sales and if they provide MSP/ISP support rather strictly selling direct-to-consumer on a one-dish-one-customer basis.

      4. Spectrum licenses are pending in many countries, including the UK/OfCom, at which point they can increase utilisation of their network. But having spectrum is only one step - you then need ground stations configured at IXPs, bit barns, with transit providers, etc to actually hand user data off to. This is a lot like building out Tesla's SuperCharger network. They need to bootstrap the infrastructure before the product becomes useful. Additionally, the generation of satellites launched so far don't have the inter-sat links (aside from some on the very latest launch), which means terminals in the ocean or rural Africa could connect to StarLink but there would be nowhere for the satellites to send the data - no ground station, and no ability to relay to a sats which can see a ground link.

      1. Roger Garner

        Re: 1 million users?

        Starlink is already here in the UK, license granted back in November by Ofcom. Test users started receiving their kit back in January. Pretty much anyone in the south of England/Wales can sign up now I believe.

        1. gryphon

          Re: 1 million users?

          Funnily enough I got an e-mail from them this morning.

          'Starlink is now available in parts of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Northern England'

          'During beta, users can expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system. There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all.'

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is for aircraft, ships, large trucks & RVs

    MEGA-sims ahoy ;)

    1. WolfFan Silver badge

      Re: This is for aircraft, ships, large trucks & RVs

      Making Elon Great Again?

  5. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

    Hopefully

    openretch are quaking as when unserved areas get starlink internets there wont be any need for the government to splurge billions on openretch to coinnect up unserved areas as openretches business plan seems to be take the billions and occasionally connect up a village 2km from the nearest exchange only after the local MP has raised the matter in parliment 14 times

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hopefully

      If they are following developments in the US, you can expect them to start spreading disinformation about how starlink can't possibly meet their service objectives and shouldn't be allowed to receive rural service subsidies. That's the playbook US cable and (geosynchronous) satellite operators have started using.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Hopefully

        It's an interesting argument. But does Starlink or similar even require rural subsidies? They can supply internet just as easily to a city centre as the middle of nowhere.

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: Hopefully

          >They can supply internet just as easily to a city centre as the middle of nowhere.

          But not as cheaply as competitors running fibre from an exchange on the corner.

          They are also limited in bandwidth / area. A lot of users seeing the same group of satellites lowers the bandwidth, although a city center would also have nearby uplink so there is less satellite-satellite relay

          1. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: Hopefully

            "But not as cheaply as competitors running fibre from an exchange on the corner."

            I was quoted $5k for fibre. I have VDSL already and I'm on the edge of London in a residential area. The VDSL is suffering constant microdropouts (PPP level) and dsl dropouts in bad weather

            BT's current published plans show no intention to sort the issues until 2026 or later

            Starlink have already won this game for a lot of people

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hopefully

      Much though I hate to praise Openreach I live in a very rural location and am 5 miles from the nearest small exchange. All the villages nearby now have access to fibre to the cabinet. Its still not great but 30 MBPS is still better than a speed which varied between 8MB on a good day and 0.5 MB on a bad day. I once started downloading a film on Friday and it was not ready to begin viewing until the following evening. That 5 mile connection was an aluminium link which went very close to the local duck pond, if the pond flooded then we lost broadband.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Hopefully

        "30 MBPS is still better than a speed which varied between 8MB on a good day and 0.5 MB on a bad day. "

        150MB/s is better still and it doesn't dropout when the ground gets wet. 300MB/s announced for the end of 2021 and that's just using 12/14GHz - the terminals are equipped to use at least 20 different channels between 12-60GHz so there's a lot of scope for expansion

    3. Andre Carneiro

      Re: Hopefully

      Quite the contrary.

      If someone else can provide good quality internet to hard-to-reach locations then that immediately takes Openreach off the political hook to get it done.

      They won’t miss a few thousand premisses that would cost millions to connect with a decent service and never see an RoI (even with subsidies)

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Hopefully

        They may well have to pay back any subsidies already allocated and not used yet.

        This does raise the question of how the subsidies are paid out though. Is like when you get building work done and the builder wants cash up front to buy the materials? Are BT "sitting on" ££billions using it on the money markets to make profits while not actually spending it?

        1. Roland6 Silver badge

          Re: Hopefully

          >They may well have to pay back any subsidies already allocated and not used yet.

          Under the BDUK programme, BT received a subsidy to install FTTC in areas BT had previously identified as being "uneconomic". If the takeup was over a threshold (ie. the service paid for itself and thus was economic), BT had to repay some of the subsidy.

          1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

            Re: Hopefully

            So BT get money in advance if you promise to install FTTC but lose money if they actually serve any customers? It all makes sense now.

      2. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Hopefully

        "If someone else can provide good quality internet to hard-to-reach locations then that immediately takes Openreach off the political hook to get it done."

        On the contrary.... Let me provide the example of Cranleigh in Surrey.

        no broadband coverage, no BT plans to ever provide it - until a WISP got funding to provide it

        2 weeks before the WISP go-live date, BT announced broadband plans for the village and launched a legal challenge which blocked the release of funding for the WISP (money only available because BT weren't interested). As soon as the WISP went bankrupt they dropped the urgency of the plans and finally put broadband in place 6 years later.

        10 years later. there is STILL rotten coverage in the village, in areas the WISP would have covered , but BT have fullfilled their obligation of providing _A_ VDSL cabinet, which prevents anyone else getting broadband funding (locals have been ingenious in making their own micro WISPs to provide linking to people in dead spots)

        Starlink is competition that BT can't put out of business and a lot of people are angry enough at their anticompetitive behaviour that they'll take any non-BT alternative simply to avoid being held over a barrel

    4. JimboSmith Silver badge

      Re: Hopefully

      My folks village was fibred up by a non Openreach company with subsidies I believe. They do FTTP as opposed to the FTTC offered by those using Openreach. When a neighbour asked about max speed from their existing supplier they were told it was something under 30mbs. As this neighbour needed faster than that they signed up to the new service on their top speed package which was 900MB I think. My folks don't need anything like that and when the sales woman cold called at the door she got a shock.

      The sales lady was laying it on thick with the benefits of the fastest package. My mum asked about the cost of the top package given a very expensive quote for (almost) gigabit fibre broadband. Apparently they had a nonstandard installation and a long distance from the road. This required specialist equipment and the quote for the first year including installation was £1k+. Mum asked if having fibre would make her emails go any faster or shopping on Amazon faster? Lady said possibly but then mentioned streaming things like Netflix and mum said "Nope don't do any of that". Sales lady mentions gaming and mum confesses she does do that. Saleswoman becomes more animated until mum says she's unsure how her games of Bridge will be improved by lightning fast internet speeds. Needless to say there was a no sale from my parents. I was there and watched the whole conversation with a barely hidden smile.

      1. thondwe

        Re: Hopefully

        It's all pretty random - our village {nearby city would call it rural - but Londoners would call in (not currently) commuter land} - got FTTC years back via a Welsh Gov scheme, and now has FTTP delivered by OpenReach. There are places in the bigger cities who still struggle due to distances from Exchange, random distribution of Virgin Cable)...

    5. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Hopefully

      The response from openwound seems to be a big yawn so far and they're stiocking to their guns about "no problems" in the face of lots of reports of issues

      Which is to be expected until C-level staff have to start explaining themselves to shareholders

      You'll knw they're worried when you start seeing FUD tactics being spread

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Moveable giant dish on top of car not good idea? wow whudathunkit.

    In other news, Starlink is looking at using it for GPS.

    Much like OneWeb and the alleged wrong satellites.

    Hint, the "wrong satellite" jibe was from one academic, who doesn't work in the space field, who never heard of chip scale atomic clocks.

  7. PhilipN Silver badge

    Underserved locations?

    Where? I'm booking my ticket.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Free realtime tracking with every dish ?

    So am I right in thinking, for efficient power usage, that the satellites need to track all the antennas inside their footprint just like the antennas need to know the real time location of the satellites passing within their sky view.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Free realtime tracking with every dish ?

      Nope, but the data isn't exactly high bandwidth and can be delivered by satellite on a low power carrier (GPS empheresis data is delievered by GPS....)

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like