StarLink Moving Forward

This would be cool for boats!!

https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/8/2...leRb6vQ56mS9u4XXYCy25JMgR6u_3yAKGA7APMnzRm-tA

Alaskan Sea-Duction said:

This would be cool for boats!!

https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/8/2...leRb6vQ56mS9u4XXYCy25JMgR6u_3yAKGA7APMnzRm-tA

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This could actually be a real game changer for those who are in remote areas such as Alaska and Canada.

Right now the only service option for us is KVH Mini Vsat service.
The new HTS system from KVH uses a spot beam plus traditional KU band coverage.

The challenge is that KVH is retiring service for legacy systems at the end of this year, meaning that we have to replace our hardware. Even though KVH is offering a discount on the new hardware, the $9500 upgrade cost is pretty costly.

I'd check out Steve Mitchell's review at

https://seabits.com/starlink-is-not-ready-for-your-boat-yet/

The Brockerts

Another launch tonight 9:58 pm. They certainly have been busy.

I have signed up for it both here in rural North Carolina (trees may be an issue here) and at our place on the rural Sonoma Coast in California, both horrifically underserved. They are saying they will be live in both spots sometime in the 6 -12 month time frame.

The Brockerts said:

I'd check out Steve Mitchell's review at

https://seabits.com/starlink-is-not-ready-for-your-boat-yet/

The Brockerts

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Thanks for posting my article

Starlink will definitely be a game changer when we get a mobile version. They filed for FCC approval of that earlier this week, but we're still a ways away before it will be available to the general public.

Even beta testers of the current setup have had less-than-perfect experiences, so there's a lot of tuning and improvement to come. The good news is that they can make updates, and have a very flexible platform that they can build on.

ksanders said:

The challenge is that KVH is retiring service for legacy systems at the end of this year, meaning that we have to replace our hardware. Even though KVH is offering a discount on the new hardware, the $9500 upgrade cost is pretty costly.

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I have a few customers in the same situation. Are you considering the upgrade, and if so, which unit are you thinking of moving to?

stevemitchell said:

I have a few customers in the same situation. Are you considering the upgrade, and if so, which unit are you thinking of moving to?

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Right now I have a V3 mini Vsat circa 2011

I'll be moving to the V3-HTS.

I'm not happy about buying new hardware at that price point but I don't really have a good alternative. No doubt the new system will work better and faster though.

In my current cruising grounds cellular is getting better but still does not serve much of the area.

The way my system is deployed is that we have two different cellular carriers with the satellite as a last resort.

Communications are not an option for us, We are a mom and pop business and while not all that "busy", our clients expect that we are generally reachable via email and or telephone.

High Wire said:

Another launch tonight 9:58 pm. They certainly have been busy.

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Yep. I think it is still "go".

If you are on the SE coast, you can see the re-entry burn a few minutes after launch. Barge is sorta due east of Charleston.

From our house on NC coast we look south and can see it clearly. At same time can see second stage overhead.

You Florida boys get a much better show!

Ski in NC said:

Yep. I think it is still "go".

If you are on the SE coast, you can see the re-entry burn a few minutes after launch. Barge is sorta due east of Charleston.

From our house on NC coast we look south and can see it clearly. At same time can see second stage overhead.

You Florida boys get a much better show!

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Postponed until Friday morning.

I would caution anyone on purchasing a long term contract .

There are currently at least 1/2 dozen sat launchers that each will be using about 1,000 - 1500 sats .

The price competition should be fierce when they all get operational.

Caviat Emptor.

I work remotely from my house. I plan on moving aboard full time if StarLink works out. I can work from anywhere. Fingers crossed.

Maybe new info?


https://youtu.be/_Q9fqCXrT3E

with all these satellites going into orbit, I wonder how we're going to get out for our trip to the moon and Mars without hitting a few.....

skyhawk said:

with all these satellites going into orbit, I wonder how we're going to get out for our trip to the moon and Mars without hitting a few.....

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Mount a few laser cannons, no worries...

Starlink needs approx 15000 sats to have full coverage. Each launch drops 60 into orbit. So it will be quite some time before they are a full go. Probably be mid decade

Amazon wants to launch 12000 for their service and OneWeb 3000. They will likely be towards the end of the decade.

Keep in mind:

Due to the low orbit these satellites are visible in the night sky. So while we will have great internet our view of the nighttime sky will be interrupted. The astronomy sector is actively concerned about this.
Also these satellites are not in fixed orbit which means the potential (while slight) for a collision is greatly increased with the more satellites that are up there. This would create a potential chain event where more sats are damaged by debris.
Plus is concern about how these low earth birds will impact the signal from fixed (Directv) or medium (GPS) which are in higher orbit.
There are a number of petitions at the FCC that are ongoing. While I think they will all be addressed there are downsides to this technology that are being considered despite its potential benefit.

It will be interesting watching this technology evolve.

Lollygag1 said:

Starlink needs approx 15000 sats to have full coverage. Each launch drops 60 into orbit. So it will be quite some time before they are a full go. Probably be mid decade

Amazon wants to launch 12000 for their service and OneWeb 3000. They will likely be towards the end of the decade.

Keep in mind:

Due to the low orbit these satellites are visible in the night sky. So while we will have great internet our view of the nighttime sky will be interrupted. The astronomy sector is actively concerned about this.
Also these satellites are not in fixed orbit which means the potential (while slight) for a collision is greatly increased with the more satellites that are up there. This would create a potential chain event where more sats are damaged by debris.
Plus is concern about how these low earth birds will impact the signal from fixed (Directv) or medium (GPS) which are in higher orbit.
There are a number of petitions at the FCC that are ongoing. While I think they will all be addressed there are downsides to this technology that are being considered despite its potential benefit.

It will be interesting watching this technology evolve.

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At their altitude, any satellites won't stay there long without power to the Ion drive. Unline higher orbit satellites, they are still within the pull of gravity and will quickly fall from orbit in the event of a problem. They won't be space junk for long. they are designed to burn up most of their components in re-entry, so you won't need your skylab protection hard hat for them.

In fact, spacex has already de-orbited over 60 of the first satellites and replaced them with newer satellites. Even the satellites that went up night before last don't have the final design which allows them to communicate with each other which is the real game changer. Once you have sat to sat hops, you don't need all the ground stations they're installing all over.

I have a theory that he who gets there first will dominate the market, and probably, Spacex will lease bandwith to other carriers, rather than face the problem of having competitive spacecraft in the same orbital planes. So, I think Spacex will use their low cost launch vehicles to fill up the network with satellites and then FCC will tell Spacex to work out an agreement with the other would-be competitors. Just a theory...

https://satellitemap.space/#

Use this website to see where the Starlink satellites are right now...

If you see a bunch of satellites in a chain, those are newly launched satellites that have not moved to their orbits yet and are slowly spacing out to move to their assigned orbit window. The ion drive on each satellite is very weak, but if it is powered, it will slowly accelerate or deccelerate the satellite to the assigned orbit window.

I believe Amazon and One Web already have approval to deploy. SpaceX will get there first but the others may not be direct competition rather focus on niche applications.

Lollygag touched on the big outstanding unknown with Starlink, One Web, Kuiper (Amazon), and Telesat. That unknown is how they share spectrum (radio frequencies) with each other as as other users of that spectrum. Being there first doesn’t mean much other than market share. In the US my understanding all four are equal. In that respect Starlink and One Web use the Ku band to communicate with customers and Ka band to communicate with gateways. Telesat and Kuiper use Ka band for both. They have to deconflict with each other and not adversely impact other users in Ku band like DISH and DirecTV and Ka band like some 5G cellular operations and existing services like Hughes and Viasat. They may not be able to use all the spectrum they think they have or may not be able to use it the way they would like. In the end they will lose capacity or in laymen’s terms, the case of beer they bought might be short a few cans.

Tom

Well I can tel you that 2021 with what is currently on the market I'm going to buy the upgraded KVH gear.

Why??? Simply because it works. It is not maybe someday, it is an available service today and that service lets me un-tether from the cellular network and have a happy cruising season.

The $9500 cost is expensive, and the $0.50 per megabyte is painful as well.

but... if I do not buy the upgrade I'm stuck at the dock, and if I do buy the upgrade it will more than pay for itself in revenue to my company.

So... I write the check and go about my happy life.

ksanders said:

Well I can tel you that 2021 with what is currently on the market I'm going to buy the upgraded KVH gear.

Why??? Simply because it works. It is not maybe someday, it is an available service today and that service lets me un-tether from the cellular network and have a happy cruising season.

The $9500 cost is expensive, and the $0.50 per megabyte is painful as well.

but... if I do not buy the upgrade I'm stuck at the dock, and if I do buy the upgrade it will more than pay for itself in revenue to my company.

So... I write the check and go about my happy life.

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With Starlink not being ready for primetime on a boat yet, and you being in areas where big cellular antennas aren't enough, I don't think you've got much choice. Outside of cellular range, cheap options for getting data just don't really exist.

Lollygag1 said:

I believe Amazon and One Web already have approval to deploy. SpaceX will get there first but the others may not be direct competition rather focus on niche applications.

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Amazon has a chance - with deep pockets...
One Web has already died on the table once and required a cash infusion. Investment will soon get tired of funding a losing proposition....

With SpaceX getting their production line to create over 120 satellites a month, and the costs going down in the process, he is so far in front of the competition who is still working on rocket motor issues. They expect to have the cost per satellite down to about $30,000, out the door.

One Web is working on keeping their satellite costs to under 5 million.
One Web also has to ride someone else's rocket into space.

Google has already given up on their Loon project, but Google ends any project that looks like it is a long ROI project. With Starlink, you don't need loon.

Once starlink gets inter-satellite communications, it will work better and faster, and their operating costs will go down... I don't think the 1200 currently orbiting satellites carry the sat to sat comms hardware yet, so they will need to be deorbited and replaced. They may be relegated to lower bandwidth needs orbits and let newer satellites take their place.

I don't see a problem with bandwidth, since they operate with beam forming antennas, rather than a broadcast footprint. Why light up ground that has no subscribers.

It will be an interesting race, for sure!

rslifkin said:

With Starlink not being ready for primetime on a boat yet, and you being in areas where big cellular antennas aren't enough, I don't think you've got much choice. Outside of cellular range, cheap options for getting data just don't really exist.

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Agreed. There are a lot of great ideas that will at some point change the game for remote data access.

The challenge is that today the only real choice when out of cellular range is geostationary satellite service.

The good thing is that while I am not so happy with the need to upgrade, I recognize that all hardware ages out, and I have enjoyed high speed data and good quality voice service throughout my cruising area.

The new system will only be an improvement on that.

Kevin

I don’t want to discourage you from upgrading your KVH system, but you might talk with Intellian. They are building the user terminals for One Web and will probably build a marine terminal. One Web will be serving Alaska 7x24 by September. The user terminals consist of two .75m parabolic antennas under radomes as I understand it. I don’t know the approach to marine terminals but you may want to ask.

Tom

There was a concern about Starlink being “geofenced”.

I actually bought it a few months ago (599 for subscription and set up gear) and they will let me know when its available.

But I am going to cancel since its geofenced.

The geofencing issue will eventually be resolved once there is sufficient coverage.

I think geofencing is more for bandwidth allocation. Starlink seems to divide up its capacity into hexagons about 12 miles wide and 15 miles tall. (The hexagons are formed by multiple circular small beams that overlap with the hexagon defined as the area served uniquely by a single circular beam. Unless you geofence the terminals then Starlink network managers would have a difficult time maintaining good quality of service within a hexagon with a fixed amount of bandwidth as they couldn’t control the number of terminals inside the hexagon. When they offer mobility services such as for RVs, boats, and airplanes, they will probably do it in separate bandwidth specifically for mobility services, and probably charge more for it. While you could use the existing antenna for RVs, but not for boats. That will be a special antenna $$.

Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense.

It was a nice thought, lol

tpbrady said:

While you could use the existing antenna for RVs, but not for boats. That will be a special antenna $$.

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Why do you say this. I'm using Starlink on my boat and it is working well.