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Comment by capableweb | Hacker News Reader

According to their coverage map (https://www.starlink.com/map) there is no coverage in Africa nor Asia, unless I'm missing something obvious. Or if there are new continents I'm not aware of.

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The SpaceX tweet says "Starlink is now on all seven continents", not "Starlink is commercially available for general use on all seven continents".

Non-commercial users such as the US military are using it on bases, ships, and aircraft worldwide. Antarctica is notably a continent without US military bases, so the "on all seven continents" claim was not complete until these scientists got a hold of a dish.

Yeah, I get that it could mean a lot of things. I guess it smells kind of funny as they imply that you can use it in seven continents, while maybe it's just their coverage is available in seven continents, but you can't actually contract it.

Would be a bit like saying McDonalds is on all seven continents since mcdonalds.com is reachable on all seven continents, but then you cannot actually order McDonalds at Antarctica so it smells a bit like misleading marketing.

That map doesn’t distinguish between waiting for enough satellites to be in the sky overhead and waiting for permission from the local government. For better or worse, each country’s government has to approve the use of any particular frequency, as well as things like transmission power.

That makes perfect sense. If the service is not available, it's not available. The reason why doesn't make a difference "how available" it is. Either it is, or it isn't.

Seems a bit like false marketing to say "Starlink is now on all seven continents" when it's more like "Starlink has satellites over seven continents but you can only actually use it on five of them"

Eh, it depends on who "you" are. I'm pretty sure the USAF can use them on all seven continents. Meanwhile I, not having a contract, can't use them on any continent.

Do you mean to say that the USAF can use devices that cause arbitrary interference on frequency bands that the country they're operating in hasn't reserved for such uses, and said countries tolerate that?

Those countries' poor radio engineers...

Uh, yes. The USAF uses electronic warfare systems that don't just accidentally cause such interference, but do so intentionally. Much like every other major military.

Which isn't to say that they would operate those systems (or starlink) in peacetime without the approval of the host country, just that they can use those systems at any time... While I don't know for a fact that SpaceX has left the decision on where to use starlink up to them, I'm pretty sure that would be the case.

I was referring more to countries that host US military bases / allow USAF flyover in peacetime, and which aren't currently considered Starlink-enabled. The Philippines, for example.

> Which isn't to say that they would operate those systems (or starlink) in peacetime without the approval of the host country

To the original point, Starlink wouldn't be claiming that "Starlink is now on all seven continents" unless somebody (e.g. the USAF) was at least conducting connectivity tests in these countries, if not putting Starlink into active use — which would, again, be much to the chagrin of local RF engineers, who had.

>>Starlink wouldn't be claiming that "Starlink is now on all seven continents" unless somebody (e.g. the USAF) was at least conducting connectivity tests in these countries, if not putting Starlink into active use

Elon's history of marketing says otherwise.

I think the radio engineers suffer at the hands of poorly-shielded switch-mode power supplies and inadvertent spark-gap transmitters caused by aging powerline infrastructure more than anything else.

The satellites are already there, like gps satellites are already there. I'm assuming they're transmitting whether or not people on the ground have connection or whether or not the government "approves" it.

MIMO antennas aren't transmitting in your direction unless you get their attention by transmitting in theirs. Also, they might be transmitting by default with barely-enough power, in a narrow band, in frequencies everyone generally agrees to not use for anything important; but once you establish a circuit with them, they could start transmitting in your particular direction with more power, in wider bandwidth, or in more-likely-to-be-reserved frequencies.

Well, if you hover over various countries where it’s not yet available, it will tell you when they estimate that it will be available. Nigeria says “Q4 2022”, which is not very far away. In order to be sure of having service available in a month or two, they have surely already built a ground station or two, printed some instruction booklets in Nigerian, hired some Nigerian sales reps, etc.

FYI English is the official language of Nigeria, and the one most people who can afford satellite internet speak day-to-day. No need to translate!

Maybe that's why they're getting it months before anyone else :)

There are something like 10-15 countries in Africa where English is the official language, and there is almost as many English speakers in Africa as in the US in total :)

It's much more likely to do with licensing radio bandwidth.

Yeah, I saw that when you hover, it shows you an estimate of when it'll be available. But saying that it's available in X weeks/months/years in Africa directly conflicts with the tweet saying "Starlink is now on all seven continents" when it's not available in Africa or Asia right now.

I think you're being a little obtuse here. The point of the tweet seems to be that the laser links are up enabling a true global network without the need for nearby ground stations.

They have coverage over all seven continents because of that and I have very little doubt that it's been tested in those continents as well. "Availability" here seems to be a proxy for "is technically solved" vs. "is commercially available".

If you're asking "what's the difference?" Think about the war in Ukraine. Starlink wasn't (and isn't?) commercially available there but was able to be deployed in an emergency.

Ahh yes, the language called Nigerian…

If you mouseover the countries you can see that some of them are "Pending regulatory approval".

> waiting for enough satellites to be in the sky overhead

Seriously, wtf? Look at some orbits. Satellites do not sit stationary over one location, except the ones called "geosynchronous satellites".

https://satellitemap.space/#

Edit: if Starlink is not available in a country it is for one of three reasons:-

- the country is not at the top of Starlink's priority list for connection (commercial reasons)

- the country wants nothing to do with anything based in the USA (politics)

- the country has an obstructive bureaucracy (corruption, stupidity).

> For better or worse, each country’s government has to approve the use of any particular frequency, as well as things like transmission power.

I think it’s for the worse if governments disapprove the use of Starlink. Starlink should at least be allowed to send out an SOS message. It could save a life out on the frontier.

This is availability for purchase map, not coverage.

What is the difference? If I pick an address in Africa, it tells me "Service date is unknown at this time", does that mean they have coverage there but I cannot purchase it if I live there?

So I could, if I live in Africa, buy it and send it to an address in Europe, go pick it up and then use it from my home in Africa?

The Starlink dishes have GPS data reported so if you aren't authorized in an area it will be disabled. That said, this coverage map looks like it's for commercial sale, Africa is big complicated continent, if you look at Nigeria for instance, it says availability starting in Q4 2022, which means they likely already have some ground stations installed. If the ground stations are installed and the spectrum is allowed then a local government/school could probably purchase a Starlink dish legally and have it work right now.

All they need is one dish installed on every continent for the 'all seven continents supported' to TECHNICALLY be correct, obviously this tweet is just marketing. It's still pretty cool to see that many incredibly under-served communities in South America/Africa/Asia will be able to be served considering running physical infrastructure is very expensive.

Hover more thoroughly. Different countries and regions have different tooltips.

But no, you would not be able to ship the user terminal to Africa and use it. You can’t even move it more than a few dozen miles from the address they have on file and keep using it, unless you have the more expensive license for mobile users (think RVs and boats and such). Even then it stops working if you enter an area where service is unavailable.

So realistically then, " This is availability for purchase map, not coverage. " makes no sense, because it is for a fact not available in Africa.

The difference is pretty big!

Without coverage, no one can use Starlink.

If there is coverage, state governments can allow Starlink usage.

To expand, they get their internet from ground stations. If they had just one or two ground stations, like in CA and TX, then everyone would be depending on the laser network and the entire operation would be slow. So they can't sell to a lot of people that would just be getting laser coverage.

I wonder what's up with that dark spot in Western Australia.

Probably to remove interference with https://www.atnf.csiro.au/projects/askap/index.html

> Or if there are new continents I'm not aware of.

Antarctica. Thank you for this.

Maritime coverage shows African and Asian coasts in the Mediterranean

Perhaps it's available in all seven continents the way Tesla cars have full self driving.

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