This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Sat internet is so overhyped. As it's limited by physics cell towers will always outperform them. Simple as that.
This is purely a security issue not a consumer one.
So much space junk….
Unpopular opinion: we don't need freaking internet from satellites, just get cat6 in every home and everyone is happy. I'm sure the cost would be lower then having to launch 999999.91 satellites to have similar speeds
cat 6 in every home lol. you have any idea about range of cat 6? I mean, any?
You do if you're fighting a war against Putin and the ketamine troll is threatening to turn off your internet.
Now get rid of the home and the cable, how do you cover 99.9% of the earth? Nomads need satellite, and so do rural homes too far from an isp fiber/copper endpoint But yes, if starlink has it done, why double the satellites to do it again with a different name? Because it's easier to launch 1000 more satellites than dismantle the system that enables such feats.
There are remote areas where cable won’t reach. For example, I need surveillance on a remote farm and I would love to get internet there.
Cable will reach anywhere. There is not such a place that cable "will not reach". Is there a profit incentive to serve you as a customer in a capitalist system? Maybe not. But cable will reach.
I know plent of places in my European country where cable does reach, but was made for landline phones and cannot carry any data for internet because its so far from the nearest distribution center. even wireless like microwave can't sustain more than a quality camera feed
Not sure if you are in Europe, but in the US there are places where you could walk the width of Germany and see 100 houses. It does not serve to be technically correct here. Also, how would that work with boats / other vehicles and places without infrastructures?
Well, cable will not reach a warzone which is a rather pertinent use for a satellite communication system at present.
You'd need signal boosters at regular intervals, which need power... so now you're running multiple cables.
But you can't run them too close together as the power will induce noise in the data cable.
And after a long distance even the power needs boosting.
And to protect the cables, you'd need to bury them or put them on poles. Separately.
At a certain point, cable becomes the expensive option...
One broken cable can result in a city/town without internet. Speaking from experience.
Also satellites have other uses like GPS
I understand, but that is the exception. Even in your case probably getting 4G / 5G to that area would be cheaper / easier long term. Also Europe has a relatively high density compared with other continents
Cat 6A caps out at like 330 ft. Also thats a ton of copper.
Fiber optic nonprofit utilities makes more sense in cities and in rural areas we should just subsidize cell phone data plans.
Bring back ethernet jacks on phones!
Not unpopular but I think they are just trying to grab some of SpaceX market share in this space (no pun intended). I agree cable is better but these folks are trying to make money.
supporting this motion
If only I wasn't too chicken shit to start investing... I was looking at Eutelsats stocks earlier in the week. But it'd be my first steps on the market so decided against it.
I'm not even sure how, it seems like its kind of wealth gated because you have to be able to make enough from your investments to cover brokerage fees. I'm not aware of any non US retail investment platform that doesn't have a regular fee to pay.
Trading212.
I finally got brave enough to do it. Between August and January I had made over 800%.
Trump has ruined that for me. Oh well.
It'll be interesting to see what the Canadian telesat LEO system will be capable of. They're supposed to be launching satellites next year and are using a higher orbit so will need much fewer satellites than starlink.
But sadly increased latency. Also don't hold your breath on Canada telecom anything, we have a history of being the worst at it.
I don't mind a bit more latency (should still be nicely below 100ms) but my use case is more related to mid-Atlantic mobile connectivity than remote region broadband.
Their planned implementation just seems much better than others with beam shaping, linked satellites and less than 200 satellites to maintain and replace.
Although you're not wrong about our telecom track record...
Is starlink business model like uber/airbnb? Killing the market with low prices by circumventing regulations to establish their monopoly?
No, it just vertical integration. You need to send up rockets to make money, so you make sure they never have an empty slot on them by filling it yourself. You get enough satellites up, then you have a revenue generating payload you can send up steady from then on.
Then it is a monopoly building if you take the limited slots before others companies 😁
I was wondering because starlink's terminals are around $500 while eutelsat's are 10k. It seems it can be only possible if you accept massive losses on first years, with help of to investors to keep the company running, to take down competitors. Like uber and many others did, which had years of losses before having income.
SpaceX isn't an Uber model, its a goverment leech model. It's had heavily, heavily goverment subsidies to the tune of 18 billion dollars over its 10yr lifetime.
Terminal prices are likely just an economy of scale issue. Much cheaper per unit to make 100,000 than 1,000. Im sure as eutelsat grows the prices will come down.
If Eutelsat and the EU rocket program get 18 billion in goverment investment like SpaceX, im betting they can also accelerate all of the above.
SpaceX doesnt have a moat, it just has the lead. Rocket labs in new Zealand is already hot on their tails. No reason the EU cant join or surpass them.
“European Starlink rival” is a bit far fetched when there’s merely rumours that they might be able to offer a similar service. But that’s the stock market for you.
They have both GEO and LEO satellites. Not on the scale of Starlink (for LEO), but they do have a network.
I am not commenting on the nature of the stock market or anything like that. Just pointing out that they do have a working network, it's not 100% speculation (like you see with crypto schemes).
Bye bye future space launches once we have full or partial Kessler syndrome.
Bye bye earth based astronomy.
But dang this tech is so much better than Hughesnet
Kessler syndrome doesn’t really apply for purely LEO satellites. They all burn up in a single digit amount of years.
It’s not something to worry about yet.
