- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
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Of course it did, are there any programmes clean up space junk ?
Sat internet is so overhyped. As it’s limited by physics cell towers will always outperform them. Simple as that.
- cities - cables and 5g
- country side - 4g and cables in high concentration areas
- middle of nowhere or war zones - low orbit sats.
This is purely a security issue not a consumer one.
Infrastructure can be a real problem in some places.
I’m currently on a mountain and since they upgraded to a hybrid satellite/cable system the speeds have skyrocketed. Laying cable/towers is just not viable, especially with dense rock peaks blocking line of sight.
Also I have coworkers in Nigeria who lose internet multiple times a day (and often don’t have the bandwidth for a video call) but most of them have bitten the bullet and paid the high up-front cost to get starlink at home. And now can do HD video calls with zero interruption (unless they have power issues, but that’s a whole other thing).
So I think there’s a lot of use-cases for sattelite, especially for people who aren’t considered worth the investment in non-sattelite infrastructure.
It’s just unfortunate that yeah, space junk is going to one day (suddenly) be a massive problem.
Edit: ah I may have replied to the wrong comment
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
Exactly! Amazon can ship it to you for like 10 bucks. Problem solved!
cat 6 in every home lol. you have any idea about range of cat 6? I mean, any?
~50m for cat6, ~100 cat6a, enough to get you to a switching box where you connect to fiber.
Oh so now there’s also fiber is there?
Obviously there is fiber, copper is usually “last mile”. Its cheaper to have a long fiber and short copper. Copper more or less anyone can install, fiber is more specialized.
I’m not proposing to reinvent the wheel, just continue what has proven to work.
The Australian government is heavily criticised for half-assing fibre internet because they did copper to the house in most cases. We still, a decade later, have one of the worst internet in the western world.
I think satellites are likely much cheaper to deliver internet to a whole continent than trying to run bloody copper.
oh I didn’t know there’s a fiber box in 100m at any place in the country! tell that to my ISP who cant serve any internet through the landline telephone cable because it’s too far from distribution! oh and also to all the customers of microwave wireless networks.
and this doesn’t even need to be on the countryside! It’s a problem here even in villages that the ISP is not allowed to run any cables on the high voltage electric poles!
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.
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?
There are exceptions, but in most cases (in Europe) hardwire should work fine. The problem is that starlink is advertised for any use case.
Their are villages in rural England who don’t have fiber. It wouldn’t be cost-effective delay it for the six customers that require it.
Well, cable will not reach a warzone which is a rather pertinent use for a satellite communication system at present.
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
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…
Usually fiber is used between cities and in cities and copper is for the “last mile”. Usually there is a switching box for the street / building complex
One broken cable can result in a city/town without internet. Speaking from experience.
Also satellites have other uses like GPS
I doubt they use the same satellites for 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
I’m in Italy and outside cities, the Internet is still horrendous. And as I said, if you have a remote farm or garden, which are fairly common here, then you are on your own. Sim based internet is a thing, but there are monthly limits which are risky when you need surveillance and automation to be always live.
4G or 5G would still be a better cheaper alternative, I’m not sure what bandwidth a starlink / whatever other alternative but my guess is that is much lower then a classic cell tower.
Cell towers usually have multiple directional antennas, smaller coverage but much cheaper to maintain. Also can be fixed, can be upgraded to next generation. Satellites are pretty much one time use, can’t be upgraded, can’t be fixed, if something goes wrong the solution is to burn and send another one.
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.
I didn’t say that cat6 should be used everywhere, usually is just for “last mile delivery” get it from your home to a switching box that has fiber.
Bring back ethernet jacks on phones!
supporting this motion
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.
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 finally got brave enough to do it. Between August and January I had made over 800%.
Trump has ruined that for me. Oh well.
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.
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…
Your internet and mobile phone service kicks the UKs arse.
Oh no, oh dear everything no. Maybe in a few cities sure, but where I am I literally have no functioning internet anymore (they let the lines degrade below 1 Mbps) and have massive patches where cell phones don’t work at all (love when I hit a antelope and have to stand on the roof of my car to maybe get enough signal to call a tow).
Like no joke we have the worst and most expensive telecom in the developed (and a lot of the developing) world.
I should have considered the fact that I was always within an hour or so of Toronto.
The GTA is not really indicative of Canada at this point. It is the center of the universe after all…
No, appreciated. I had heard good things though.
Maybe from Telus/Rogers/Bell media. Its an issue really, the pro Canadian telecom propaganda is very much a thing here. I am told I have “great internet available” even where I am and then if I try to actually get it they ether say never mind or try and give me a cell modem. I am not alone on this ether, its a major issue.
To be fair two cans and a piece of string kicks the UKs arse when it comes to telecommunications.
Yup. Thanks Thatcher.
“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).
You’re correct but their LEO constellation is over 10x smaller than Starlink, so they’ve still got a lot of catching up to do.
They are doing much better than other fabled starlink competitors though, like amazon kuiper which is still not a real thing after all this time.
They have one strong competitive advantage that Starlink will never have; they are not American.
By definition, you cannot trust an American service. Even if the people who run a given service are not degenerates, there are enough degenerates in the US that they could elect a degenerate who will fuck you over.
They have very, very different business models. Constellation size is meaningless on its own, you have to account for the satellites capabilities, orbits, and the number and needs of your customers.
That’s true and I even thought about trying to investigate one of their satellites bandwidth capabilities versus one starlink satellite before I commented. But ultimately it doesn’t really matter because we’re talking about them being a rival to starlink so In the context of this conversation, they need to match their capacity and capabilities in all aspects to be a worthy rival.
Alphane_Moon just convinced me to take out a huge loan with my house as security, and invest in Eutelsat. I suggest everyone else does the same.
Now they have to offer a similar service. No pressure then 😊
They do offer a better service, albeit marginally - better download speeds, lower latency, slower upload speeds though. Problem is their antennas - they cost 8.000€ compared to 300€ the starlink ones…
Eutelsat are aimed at a different market: infrastructure. Their intended customers are larger and more demanding: research outposts, small villages, oil rigs, mobile phone towers, ships, and so on, as opposed to Starlink who focus on consumers directly, which is much more low-stakes. I’m genuinely curious if Eutelsat can move into Starlink’s territory.
They will surely do in the future. For example in Spain the government is subsidizing satellite internet through Hispasat for remote communities. I’m sure many other governments do the same in their backyard. If EU throws starlink contracts out the window and start subsidizing EU satellite related businesses and startups things will definitely improve for everybody and the more contracts they sign the lower the prices will go for their clients.
A man can dream
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.
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
<ButtonPressingMeme>
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.
On the contrary, I think it is something to avoid. Imagine letting a single person ground all space launches for 9 years. And all the pollution that adds to the atmosphere. All the junk landing on people’s farms or houses.
It doesn’t work that way. I dislike Elon as much as the next sane person but we don’t need to invent new reasons to dislike him on top of all of the bad reasons that exist.
What evidence do you have? I’m going of of what experts are saying on the fediverse:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacexs-starlink-could-cause-cascades-of-space-junk/
It does work this way, and Starlink is waging a PR campaign that it’s no big deal.
This is true at 500km altitude, but not so at higher LEO altitudes.
What will they launch on? Star Link is barely feasible because they can launch at cost on falcon 9.
Look up Ariane 6. It’s still more costly than the Falcon 9 but who in their right mind would trust the numbers Elon is sharing? Seems like they both cost around 100million $ per launch. Elon is claming 30million per launch and that he will make it cost 2 million…
Yeah I’m familiar with Ariane 6. It costs almost double what SpaceX changes external customers per launch, not even counting that their internal rate would be even lower. Plus you’d need more launches since the payload capacity is lower. You’d end up paying 3x or more the cost. At that point, why not just buy falcon 9 launches? Otherwise it seems like there’d be very little way to compete.
Good. Fuck Starlink.
A European Starlink rival’s shares skyrocketed 390% in a week — here’s why
OOOH!!! OOH!!! I KNOW THIS ONE!!! STARLINK GO BOOM! PEOPLE GO NOPE! TESLAS STOCK PRICE GO (bomb falling sound effects) KABOOM!!!
Easy there, Powder… Although you are absolutely right
That’s Lemmy for you…
I’m stuck with star link as of present. I would defiantly like for a competent and competent competitor in the market. Competition is the core of capitalism and the driving force behind development.
But also, we cannot have so many god-damn satellites polluting the night sky. Starlink should never have been allowed to get up there as a private actor in the first place.
It’s a tricky situation, as international cooperation would be extremely difficult to maintain, especially during situations like the Ukraine war. But having private companies compete to fill the orbit with space waste as soon as possible is hardly a good solution either.
The states has been moving towards authoritarian corporate control for a long time though. The freedom cities controlled by big tech, setup in whatever country they want, operating outside ‘local’ regulations, with services via satellite and protection via US military, very much fits with what Starlink has done. Techs push for ‘rare earth’ (uranium) is likely about powering these sorts of cities, without needing to rely on a ‘countries’ power grid – to make them autonomous and impervious to local issues.
A few big military powers to allow for the “constant enemy” setup similar to 1984, with a corporate backend to prop up oligarchs that can act based on the whims of the oligarch without fear of repudiation.
Authoritarianism is on a big upswing lately, and egalitarian ideals are busy eating themselves alive – mired in demographic politics. And the conspiracy gremlin in me says it’s been intentional on the part of the democrats/progressive sorts, as they’re just as beholden to ‘rich’ authoritarian leaning tech people as the right wing/republican sorts.
There’s so much more room out there than there is here on this finite planet.
There are a number of concerns, from hindering science by blocking pictures taken by Hubble to flat out malfunctioning and crashing into the ISS. For every new satellite the risk increases. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/satellites-spacex-problem-space-pollution
So? The ISS is due to be decommissioned soon and the HST has been failing from orbit for a while now.
Telescopes on the far side of the moon would see far far more than any telescope in earth orbit and especially any on the ground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Crater_Radio_Telescope
Things in space don’t veer wildly out of control when they fail. They stay pretty much in their existing orbit.
It’s not like these satellites have big thrusters or engines just propelling them constantly around the planet. They’re in a state of free fall. They’re just also moving sideways fast enough that the earth also falls away from them at around the same speed that they are falling towards it.
Lower orbits have far more atmospheric drag, and any debris in those orbits will simply slow down enough to stop missing the planet.
So we will have a bunch of trash circulating the earth, left there by opporunistic billionaires. No thank you. What they have done to the night sky alone is a crime against all of us as far as I’m concerned.
And to think that lower orbit is not interesting any more now that NASA wants to build a telescope on the moon is beyond me.
Guess it’s ok when governments leave debris by shooting at satellites, but not when businesses do?
Weird.
As the headlins in the article I linked earlier kindly informs us, half of all active satellites are now from SpaceX. And it’s increasing fast. If other companies enter the scene and start competing, the earth will be orbited by a shitload of useful satelites launched into space by billionaires with a penis complex.
Governments are supposed to provide services for their population. Some of these needs might justify launching satellites. It is not unproblematic, and I would rather see it being governed by an international organization, but at least it’s being done on behalf of people.
Companies launch them to make a profit for the fat wallets of their stakeholders and CEOs.
They are not the same. Pretending they are is, as you so nicely put it, weird.
Competition is the core of capitalism
Lemmy tells me that exploitation is the core of capitalism. Not so?
Lemmy seem to misunderstand that exploitation is a byproduct of human nature and change the system isn’t going to help that (see: USSR). The purpose of government is supposed to be to keep the capitalist system in check in regards to preventing such exploitation. The average Lemmy tankie seems to want to monopolise exploitation to the government itself and remove your freedom to leave to a less exploitative arrangement.
Competition is the core of capitalism and the driving force behind >development.
But when, tho?
here’s why
What could it be?
I didn’t read the article but I’d bet the “why” is because it’s been on the news and people think it’s an easy way to make a quick buck. However, these people are amateurs - when it’s in the news you’re already too late.
Not if you bought in at 100% or 200% or 300% when it was also in the news. You will still have made tons and tons of money.
The real positive for the company and maybe the world is if they issue some new stock now and get a nice war chest of cash so they can expand their network rapidly. That will hurt the investors above, but hopefully they take gains now when it’s fruitful or in the farther future when the company dramatically increases its market share.
