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Comment by gpm | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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