Reply to post: Re: Now I'm confused...

Please, tell us more about how just 60 hydrogen-powered 5G drones could make 400,000 UK base stations redundant

Frederic Bloggs

Re: Now I'm confused...

Clearly, you are a new reader or didn't follow the link. Bill Ray is ex-vulture and has quite a bit of hands on experience of connecting remote places to t'internet. As well as being a thoroughly decent chap. But anyone with some actual experience of radio will be asking pointed questions. Such as:

a) There are 10 (or 12) million people inside the M25 ring. What aggregated bandwidth does said population currently use (and do they consider it to be "adequate" anyway)?

b) How many flying thingies would it take to service just London's population. Now add every other conurbation in the UK before hand waving a lot about the "rural" internet? You may find this article on Erlangs useful to answer this question.

c) How much spectrum would it take to up and downlink it all?

d) Indeed would there be any spectrum left for anybody else?

Even dear old Elon has figured out that he's going to need to fill the sky with 60,000 bits of junk satellites just to service some of the internet not->slow spots in the US, never mind the rest of the world. I know he thinks that's enough for "the world", but nobody else does.

After all Elon isn't the first person to try this, Iridium started all this off in the 1990s and have gone bankrupt IIRC twice since. Iridium gives you a whole 25 kilo "baud" (probably bits), at least whilst a satellite is in view. BTW, Iridium had problems with their satellites being "too bright" as well.

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