Hacker News Reader

Comment by YATA0 | Hacker News Reader

> The fact that humanity got to a point where it made more "sense" to shoot dozens of rockets and deploy hundreds of satellites into space instead of running cables to cell towers to cover large areas is sad.

1. I think you are grossly underestimating just how many cables and cell towers would be needed to cover just rural North America alone (nevermind less developed places like Africa).

2. LEO satellite internet benefits more than just terrestrial clients. Ships and airplanes can now have more reliable communications.

>1. I think you are grossly underestimating just how many cables and cell towers would be needed to cover just rural North America alone (nevermind less developed places like Africa).

Not underestimating at all. Of course it will be a lot, but it has many advantages, and is by far more eco-friendly than shooting rockets into space.

>2. LEO satellite internet benefits more than just terrestrial clients. Ships and airplanes can now have more reliable communications.

There will always be a need for ship and airplane connectivity, but LEO being more reliable is still up for debate, and other forms of satcomms can be done with and order of magnitude less satellites.

> Not underestimating at all. Of course it will be a lot

Do you have any data to back this up? Starlink (and other possible future constellations) most effectively serve the low-density or unconnected areas of the world. North America alone has a land area on the order of 25 million square km, with significant topographical and geographical contraints.

I have several relatives who had what the government considered "high speed" internet available - one an old adsl 1.5Mbit connection, the other a drastically overprovisioned cell phone wireless that they were lucky if it provided 0.5Mbit real world connections. The providers offered no consolation, and there was zero prospect of them upgrading services. Both relatives are now happily using their starlink at ~200Mbit.

> other forms of satcomms can be done with and order of magnitude less satellites.

There is effectively a per-satellite maximum bandwidth, as well as distance-based power requirements. The same satellite in low earth orbit can provide much better internet than if it were in GEO. Non-LEO satellites will remain second-class internet (with lower speeds and higher latencies) because of fundamental physical limitations.

> is by far more eco-friendly than shooting rockets into space

Really? The energy usage is almost certainly much higher to do it terrestrially. If you're concerned about the CO2 generated by the launch burn you could easily offset that and more using carbon removal with the energy saved versus doing the same buildout terrestrially.

You're massively underestimating how many miles of cable would need to be run to cover the US with 4G. You're talking on the order of a million miles of cable. Not to mention building even more towers than the satellites they are launching. Raw materials alone are likely an order of magnitude more. Plus all the labor involved. Do you know how trenching works? There's no way that's more economical. Not a damn chance.

And yet countries like Vietnam have pulled exactly that off. If we have $1.7T for the f-35 fighter, we have the money to give everyone 100 Mb or better internet, it's just a matter of priority. I'm a satisfied Starlink customer but only because there are no other viable alternatives currently where I live.

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/07/07/watchdog-group-fi...

Since the comparison to Vietnam is triggering some people, let's add some hard numbers and really get the downvotes going.

Vietnam's GDP is $271B, The US is $21T or ~77x higher with ~3.4x as many people living in a space ~30x bigger than Vietnam. And yet we still cannot deliver cellphone reception and broadband on par with Vietnam. Wonder why? Also wonder why this is such a triggering statement to make but I guess some things will just remain a mystery. And won't you do your part to bring this post to -10? We can do this together.

Vietnam is smaller than California with a larger population. That cell towers can be made to work is not really in dispute, it's the cost (both initial and ongoing) for reaching the increasingly sparse population areas (like Wyoming and Montana) or geographically hard-to-cover areas (like the Rocky Mountains) that make satellites more economically viable.

Sure but between the current situation and the outskirts of Wyoming and Montana there's plenty of low-hanging fruit.

For example, my neighborhood is 1.5 mi away from gigabit internet. Good luck with that last mile and a half so Starlink it is.

The study I'm linking here says it would cost $80B to fix the current situation. That's chump change. I am so fed up with the tiny minded thinking that is trapping America in an endless loop of failure. But watch trillions materialize instantly if we have to go to war with someone again.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/striking-a-deal-to-streng...

I'm having trouble finding how much Starlink has currently cost to deploy, but per wikipedia in 2018 (yes, 4 years old):

> The cost of the decade-long project to design, build, and deploy the constellation was estimated by SpaceX in May 2018 to be at least US$10 billion. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink]

Which would be 1/8th the cost you describe (though probably more by now, I haven't found any figures yet). It also covers a larger geographic area (and therefore a larger number of people) in a shorter time than any cell tower + cable solution would, short of conscripting every possible technician in the US to accomplish the effort.

Starlink also gets to piggyback on other SpaceX launches so they aren't eating the entire launch cost themselves, it's subsidized (or can be) by their other customers. This is what I'm talking about when I say that presently it's more economically viable. It sucks about your situation (being so close to gigabit Internet without access), I've been there, too. Cable companies and ISPs in the US suck.

EDIT:

https://www.ft.com/content/4f992537-59f6-4d09-b977-c33945dba...

More recent, June 2021. Musk is expecting to spend $30 billion to cover 12 countries, and expects to have spent $10 billion before becoming cashflow positive with Starlink.

EDIT: Fixed link above, not sure why I ended up with a link to a subheading.

However, starlink isn't a product yet. It's hard to separate the hype from reality; so whether starlink turns out to be a practical alternative still needs practical demonstration. Or to put it another way - I'm sure you've heard of a few of the teething problems early adopters have, but it's not so clear whether those are merely small wrinkles, or just the tip of an iceberg of nasty practical problems that will render the network uneconomical.

The idea is definitely very attractive, but it's not quite yet proven itself - and it's definitely unclear how realistic those cost guesstimates are.

What are you talking about it's definitely a product. I use it right now in my rural area (USPS doesn't even deliver here) and I'm getting 30ms latency with a 150/40 Mbps link. Rock solid for months straight even during snow storms.

And varelse, the one who I was responding to, is also using it right now. There are around 145k current users of the system. Which is certainly not enough to keep it afloat if it fails to grow in customer base, but it is a real thing being used by real people.

Yeah, that's what I meant - there's a beta out (i.e. a development tool), not a self-sustaining product. The scale is still too small; for this to be economically viable they need to show they can scale much larger and at competitive prices. I'm not saying that won't happen; but let's not go counting chickens before they hatch either.

that's not what it means to be a product. it's a beta service that's nowhere near capacity. it would be like saying a website that served a hundred people is clearly capable of providing the same service to a million.

> However, starlink isn't a product yet. It's hard to separate the hype from reality; so whether starlink turns out to be a practical alternative still needs practical demonstration

Yeah, it's a product. It's out of beta. I know people using it, I've video-chatted them for hours without a single hiccup. It's a real, practical alternative and it's here now.

> I'm sure you've heard of a few of the teething problems early adopters have, but it's not so clear whether those are merely small wrinkles, or just the tip of an iceberg of nasty practical problems that will render the network uneconomical.

I haven't, actually - the people I know using it have had it running for 5 months without any issues. The only issue I've seen online is someone's humourous photo where their cats sat on it because it's warm.

I stand corrected; I had entirely missed that!

I'd misremembered and thought that reviews such as https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/starlink were more recent; time flies ;-).

The caveat here concerning economic viability still stands, even if it's not looking bad. Without insider knowledge concerning costs it's hard to say how many customers starlink minimally needs to sustain itself, but I get the impression that that number is going to be at least in the millions. Still, that might be just one order of magnitude to go, if they're lucky.

Interesting - I'd be curious when that article was written - it states Sept 2, 2021 at the top, but towards the end of the article it mentions speeds improving to 200Mbps "as of April 12". Their experience sounds quite likely for those early days, but not at all what my relatives experienced (they got theirs in late August 2021). I think their dish placement is also poor - the app basically showed my relatives that the roof was the only place with good enough sight of the sky (they have similar amounts of trees to what's in videos on that article)

> The caveat here concerning economic viability still stands, even if it's not looking bad.

Yeah, for sure - however much you trust Elon's internal messaging, he suggested it is minimally viable as-is, needs starship to be a real moneymaker [1]

[1] https://spaceexplored.com/2021/11/29/spacex-raptor-crisis/

You say we can't wire up America, but what's your source? I'm not personally seeing a problem with a TVA-level engagement to bring high-speed Internet to as many people as possible. Starlink looks like it will be half the price, but Musk has gone on record saying this is for rural areas.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/musk-...

Further, I was getting 150 Mb a few months back, but now I'm down to 30 Mb. This isn't a polished product yet and it's in danger of losing federal funding.

https://broadbandbreakfast.com/2021/12/starlink-download-spe...

> You say we can't wire up America, but what's your source?

I did not say that, reread what I wrote and quote where you think I said that.

> I'm not personally seeing a problem with a TVA-level engagement to bring high-speed Internet to as many people as possible.

That's basically what I was getting at with this:

>> short of conscripting every possible technician in the US to accomplish the effort.

But, sadly, it is politically not viable in the US. If it were, I suspect we would have seen such an effort (though probably not telecom focused) post 2007/2008 financial crisis. Instead, a crap ton of money was dumped into the hands of contractors to spend on infrastructure that barely went anywhere. Just like a crap ton of money has been dumped into ISPs that still can't be bothered to cover the last 1.5 miles to your home.

What I did write:

>> [Starlink] also covers a larger geographic area (and therefore a larger number of people) in a shorter time than any cell tower + cable solution would

The first part is pretty obviously true, but the parenthetical does remain to be seen. It depends on how effective the fleet actually scales with connecting additional users, and they're only at ~145k right now.

I think Vietnam is significantly smaller than North America.

It's about 78% of the size of California. Per a quick search:

             | Area            | Population
  Vietnam    |   128,066 sq mi |  96.2 million
  California |   163,696 sq mi |  39.2 million
  USA        | 3,797,000 sq mi | 329.5 million

Ignoring quality of service, a satellite constellation is really very significantly less hardware for global coverage.

Somewhere elsewhere in the thread says the full constellation is expected to be 12,000 satellites. Yes, you have to replace them every ten years, and yes you need quite a few base stations, but by contrast, this random site[1] says there's over 100,000 cell towers in the United States. That number supports multiple networks, but only the US. Rocket launches are expensive, but so is building a lot of cell towers over the whole world.

Starlink could provide a reasonable backhaul technology for some terrestrial towers that are hard to service through wires or terrestrial radio. I'm hopeful that it will provide a service floor that inspires terrestrial networks to do better in areas where they have the capability but not the desire to invest in upgrades.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/521985/telecom-towers-in...

I think you've got it backwards. This is much more efficient than running cables everywhere and putting up giant towers all over the place in density needed to service everyone. That's why it's working in the first place. It's cheaper to do this than the alternative. (Too many Europeans assume rural places in America are similar to rural places in Europe. The layout is fundamentally different.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com