Starlink creates risk of internet investment doom cycle, says APNIC researcher Elon Musk's Starlink project has copped more criticism, this time from a researcher at APNIC, the Regional Internet Registry for the Asia-Pacific region. APNIC's George Michaelson says the project, already under fire for offering low capacity and high prices, risks being loved to death by the wrong sort of users, and may …
Because despite being promised to be showered with money from NextGen funds to "digitalize" the country, they have seen a big opportunity to have those 5G BTS built with taxpayers' money instead their own investments, and who cares if the needed frequencies are blocked by simple obstacles and can't go around them like fibre can, or a sector can't serve above a given number of users. And of course the ex Vodafone CEO is helping them greatly from inside the government, showing who are his real masters.
So if they can save even more money avoiding to deploy where even few 5G BTS can't work but for mobile comms because their range is limited - unless of course governments tell them they can't. Yet don't count on it, they are powerful lobbying entities.
The incumbent is already advertising 99% broadband coverage because it made an agreement with a satellite operator.
The real issue is that broadband companies have had years of government money to bring high speed internet to the poorer served people but never actually did it. they just kept the money for themselves.
Complaining about starlink is silly. Starlink has never said that they were there for large conurbations. just like you would not use existing satalite broadband in a city, so the same applies to starlink.
Headline grabbing cobblers.
My academic attention whore alarm is going off.
The same can be said for any broadband service, which is why they have lots of ways of dealing with it, most of which will be applicable to Starlink.
I would also note that the solution for Starlink is to throw more birds in the air and on a per user basis it’s probably cheaper than digging holes in the ground.
It is inevitable that as the number of users of a finite resource increases the performance degrades.
The obvious solution is to upgrade the resource - relatively easy to do with fibre, not so easy to do with terrestrial wireless, very difficult/costly to do with LEO satellites.
Cluttering up near Earth unregulated/unmanaged space with more and more satellites has many other serious (bad) consequences.
Making more money or doing something just because it is possible is not a good enough reason!
Those with slightly-worse options who sign for Starlink may therefore starve more deserving customers.
Exactly the same could be said with other internet connections. The phone networks solve it by selling you a connection with a data cap and the broadband companies solve it with a bandwidth limit. Starlink will probably stay with the bandwidth limit but could do data cap too. More customers brings more revenue which means more satellites slightly closer together and hence more bandwidth. The relatively few ground stations are the easy parts of the system to upgrade.
It could be said and it is true.
But if you have put in a fibre run that can take, say, 12 fibre pairs, each of which can easily do 10Gb or more (depending on length, use of WDM, etc) you have one hell of a greater bandwidth than a GHz or so of RF spectrum will allow.
Delivering not just kilowrists of speciality video, but hitting that mythical megawrist barrier.
Install the fiber, leave the starlink for failover, possibly along with cellular, and enforce provisioning limits so stations that are/can/should be connected via hard line have lower priority than mobile or remote locations where terrestrial links are not cost effective.
More capacity works up to a point, but demand will be able to outstrip capacity for ANYTHING operating in LEO, or worse, higher up.
it's capitalism, stupid. The people with money CAN afford sat dishes, among other things such as, I don't know, nicer housing, regular and fancy restaurant meals, faraway holidays, 'better' schooling and healthcare for their kids and themselves, lower crime rate, longer life expectancy and, finally, comfortable retirement in the peace and quiet of them luxury retirement homes (well, you can scrap the last bit, because covid just did the 'show your hand' trick, damn!)
And the rest of the humanity can FUCK OFF. What, did I mis-represent how this world operates?
So many vested interests lining up to discredit Star Link they are obviously scared of it.
The cost of Star link is far more than domestic broadband, even more than mobile/cell phone coverage. That differential in cost is the encouragement domestic BB providers have in providing proper services to the underserved.
how much is star link ~£90 per month plus £450 setup & dish fees = £1530 year 1 = £1080 ongoing? that's a lot of opportunity for fixed infrastructure investment.
> The cost of Star link
...is irrelevant. The point of the article is that Starlink (one word!) can and will be used as an excuse to not build any infrastructure where ever it might be a little less profitable to do so, thus enhancing the digital divide.
In short, broadband operators will tell everybody living in the sticks "sorry, not interested, try Starlink". Regardless if people can afford it or not.
> In short, broadband operators will tell everybody living in the sticks "sorry, not interested, try Starlink". Regardless if people can afford it or not.
So do you want to know what the alternative for people like me out in the "sticks" currently is?
I'm currently paying $99/month for 3Mb down, and 56Kb up async DSL for Centurylink - my county's only ISP provider. I will gladly pay the same price for up to 10-20 times the bandwidth down (according to some current users).
You know what my "broadband" operator that received hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government over the last 28 years in order to "serve the underserved" users tells me now when I complain about their offering?
"Sorry, not interested in offering you a better service. Are you saying you actually get 3Mb down where you live? That's very surprising, as you're so far away from our POP, we can't actually even guarantee that you get a signal out there. You're SO LUCKY!!!"
I know this guy up in alaska who's in the same boat, but only with an even worse connection. He knows there's fiber near his place, he watched them put it in, but the telco says it's not an option for him. Radio links won't work as there are several large trees in the line of sight. traditional satellite service (aka HugesNet) won't work and is too expensive.
> "Sorry, not interested in offering you a better service."
That's precisely the problem! But Starlink isn't the solution, given many people out there can't afford to pay those prices. Now you might say they couldn't afford your current DSL either and you'd be right, but the point is precisely that the best solution for everyone would be cheaper, good terrestrial broadband.
That those "broadband operators" you talk about (or the ones replacing them) are forced to compete, instead of just milking their outdated infrastructure while enjoying handouts from their puppets in the government.
Other countries all around the world prove it is commercially possible to have solid broadband, including in the boonies, at quite affordable prices. I've seen it myself in several European countries, where fiber to the premises is around $30-40/month, and even way out in the fields you can get a usable DSL connection (don't know the exact bandwidth, but it was enough for two people to do videoconferencing simultaneously without any problem).
I'm not arguing whether it's *possible* to have high quality ISP service to the boonies. I know it's possible, as I have a good friend running Fiber right now in Indiana without any issues at one of the last co-op ISPs in the state.
>....but the point is precisely that the best solution for everyone would be cheaper, good terrestrial broadband.
My point is, that's great that it's the *best* solution for everyone, however, it has been 30 years, they've gotten 250+ million bucks, and this "best solution" has not materialized anywhere that I know of. Starlink, as with Musk's other businesses, may just light the fire under their assholes to start running fiber out here. Currently, one of my friends a few miles away is switching from his provider - HughesNet - to Starlink, and is seeing impressive performance and lower latency. It is *literally* the current solution to his and likely my problem.
So do you want to know what the alternative for people like me out in the "sticks" currently is?
I'm in "the sticks" (at the Mountain Fastness). We don't get mail delivery or trash collection at the house. We're on well water and have a septic system. But we have fiber right to the home, because the electric co-operative ran it alongside the power lines on their poles.
It can be done. Just apply some regulation and shift the broadband subsidies to the power companies who actually roll it out. They already have most of the physical infrastructure in place, and they have to maintain their existing lines anyway. Defund the telcos who aren't running fiber to their rural customers – they've been feeding from this trough long enough.
Actually, in this case, what's needed is LESS regulation. Why? Because in a lot of locations throughout the country, the big ISP's and telco providers have lobbied and gotten laws on the books to PREVENT utility companies from doing just this so the telco's don't actually have to compete.
For this to happen, these laws will have to be removed.
Those with slightly-worse options who sign for Starlink may therefore starve more deserving customers
So if I can see a house that can get faster internet, but not get it myself, I'm 'less deserving'? Seems odd phrasing.
Michaelson says this problem extends beyond slow internet into infrastructure investment decisions, as governments reason that Starlink's presence means they do not need to build broadband infrastructure in some locations.
Do governments build infrastructure like this? Surely they could legislate that providers have to, which could include starlink?
If starlink proves a market exists, then the companies will come. If the market isn't profitable then legislation is required to mandate it so everyone gets access to the utility that the internet is increasingly becoming.
But Starlink has also shown it doesn't much care about issues like its impact on astronomers, who have complained its myriad satellites make stargazing harder.
I thought they'd expended quite considerable effort to darken their satellites? (Possibly with limited success)
Or by 'not careing' do you mean 'not doing'?
As Space becomes more and more accessable then conflicts of interest are inevitable.
> I thought they'd expended quite considerable effort to darken their satellites? (Possibly with limited success)
At least they expended considerable effort saying so. But they can't make them black, because of thermal issues (the sun is quite fierce up there), so it's just a band-aid, not a real, working solution.
Besides, even if they made them blacker than black, they would still hinder long exposure observation by randomly zipping through the picture. Not for long, but I guess definitely enough to randomly mess up luminosity measurements and stuff like that.
.
> As Space becomes more and more accessable then conflicts of interest are inevitable.
That's true, but humanity is supposed to have evolved beyond the "Me see, me kill!" level. We're supposed to be able to assess our long term interests (yes, I know), and not sell our house just because we thought we could make a quick buck. Unfortunately this is not true, and I'm expecting more cries of "He's the Alpha-male, the Boss, it's his god-given right to live a better life at my expense", glorified animals that we are...
That helps, but it isn't sufficient to make the astronomers concede that it's fine now. Everyone has a different opinion as to how they value each group who wants to do something. You could easily argue that you don't care about the astronomers' complaints. Arguing that the astronomers have dropped their complaints, however, is not going to work.
We shouldn't have to. Put together a proposal to repurpose all of the old KH-11's to point them up instead of down. Then astronomers can complain that they no longer get paid vacations to the top of the Andes or the top of Maui (which is a very, very nice place by the way).
> Put together a proposal to repurpose all of the old KH-11's to point them up instead of down.
You don't don't know what astronomy is all about, do you. Hint, it's not about watching the skies and make cool colorful pictures to show around...
Even Hubble (which at least is a real scientific telescope), is too limited, it can't do an awful lot of things many terrestrial telescopes can (or at least do better). Ever pondered why tool boxes don't usually contain just a hammer?
The only advantage terrestrial telescopes have is size. That's literally it. In every other aspect, something located outside of the atmosphere is going to work better due to not having to deal with that pesky atmosphere distorting everything, or the planet spinning and the thing you want to look at dropping below the horizon. Or not even being visible from the hemisphere the telescope is located in in the first place.
> The only advantage terrestrial telescopes have is size
Nope. The biggest advantage all terrestrial telescopes have over Hubble is that you can easily, quickly and cheaply change instruments. Hubble comes with 4 (active) instruments from 2009 (ACS, COS, STIS, WFC3) and there is absolutely no way you can replace them, upgrade them or even repair them anymore.
On a terrestrial telescope changing/upgrading instrument is a trivial operation. If something breaks, it's easy to repair. If something new crops up, it's easy to implement, it doesn't require a $millions operation.
> Was just stating facts.
Slightly irrelevant facts though, because whatever the exact reason might be, the fact remains that there is no real solution to the problem that Starlink pollutes visually the night skies. That was my initial point: That many satellites make astronomy extremely difficult and (thus) expensive.
(Cue the cries of "what has astronomy ever done for me" I guess... *sigh*)
But if a penny of broadband subsidies go to that ISP you can see but can't have, they should be extending their reach to people like you. Starlink will work well in areas where people live on 80 acre or larger farms, so density is low.
The high price is a good thing in that regard, so it won't substitute for wired broadband where people have a choice.
Dead on. (Americanese for absolutely accurate article). I was one of the first to use sat internet with Direct PC back in Cretaceous times. Worked great for a year until it was oversold and got actually (literally) slower than my 26k dialup. Moved to a terrestrial connection - not super fast but reliable. Then tried Hugesnet and got the same results over a year. Fast at first then gradually slowed down. Back to land line net. Finally, Excede (first Wildblue) which had the same half life as the others. Gave it up for Cell Tower internet which so far (fingers crossed) is fast and reliable.
What didn't help is that the average programmer (say in Silicon Valley or some other fibered hotspot) is sitting at the latest 50 core machine and with a gigabit fiber connection even to the office coffeepot. They never think of the rest of the world, with the best some users have available is a router hooked up to the far end of a barbed wire link or worse. So we get upgrades that are 5gb or bigger. Or worse, they just release the entire patched app in its entirety. (Anybody try to update GTA? The next Centennial might arrive before the end of the code.)
So, yes. I think that Starlink will gradually slide down the same slope eventually. Don't see how it could happen otherwise unless the constellation density actually blocks out the sun.
He's comparing nothing at all, he's just saying that all satellite services he's tried eventually slowed down due to the increasing number of people using them. Right now Starlink has just a handful of satellites, but also just a handful of subscribers. The question is what will happen when they have all their planned satellites and millions of subscribers.
I don't remember seeing all of these ground stations the last time that I looked at the map -
https://satellitemap.space/
Prudhoe Bay, Alaska? St. Johns, Newfoundland & Labrador? Two stations in France? Four in Australia? It looks like they're building out the ground infrastructure as well as the satellites. If the inter-satellite links ever get going then this will really stick it to the current bunch of
Sorry - can't complete that last sentence as I descend into incoherent rage every time that I try to describe Comcast/Frontier/ATT/Verizon etc.
The market will find it's level. As the throughput drops off the heavy users will move on. The article argues that providers will use Starlink as an excuse to not build out infrastructure that they are already not building out. And the argument being used against Starlink could also be used against 5g wireless building into rural areas. Small wireless providers that currently support rural areas are going to get hurt regardless, if they can't keep up with technology. From the customer's perspective it all improves, or they stay with their current options.
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