Starlink Aviation
starlink.com
starlink.com
Also notable that SpaceX keeps finding these cool (revenue generating) use cases to further cheapen the cost of sending things up to space. Pretty much dogfooding their rockets via Starlink satellites.
Edited with correction that most inflight wifi is actually air to space now.
This has not been the case for several years. Most in flight Wifi is now being provided by Viasat which, as the name suggests, is air to space.
Even Gogo started rolling out satellite service in 2015.
Very few services are now air-to-ground.
Random pictures: https://i.stack.imgur.com/I7Yfd.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/DSC00...
Isn't such connection bulletproof for the trajectory of the plane, even if simply passively tracking?
(I worked on this technology)
It's basically LTE in the 2.4 GHz band, with a load of extra bits for beam forming, coping with speed and distance etc. Using the 2.4 GHz band allows them to build a network covering the US without spending billions on spectrum.
Yes, it's the same 2.4GHz ISM band that wifi uses, with the same power limits. And yes, it works well enough that you can do video calls hundreds of kilometres from the base station. That's how shit wifi is, and how well this stuff works.
Seems like you know a bit about this. Could you indulge my curiosity and elaborate why wifi is shit? I assume some combo of DSP bottleneck (i.e. want to keep hw cheap) and maintaining backwards compatibility with older standards?
Multiple Access - this is the general term for 'multiple devices on the same spectrum'. Cellular divides up the spectrum into frequency bands (Frequency division multiplexing) and time slots in those bands (time division multiplexing). The base station then assigns each device a slot in a band (or potentially several), it also provides the time reference for this scheduling. This makes efficient use of your available spectrum and nothing interferes with or talks over anything else.
Wifi gets none of this. There's no base station planning so two access points can interfere with each other. There's no FDMA (access point runs on one channel of one band), and no TDMA. There's no uplink channel and downlink channel separation. Instead it's "Carrier sense with collision detection". Basically "try not to transmit at the same time as someone else, and if you do come back and try again later". This results in nodes competing, talking over each other, interfering (see "hidden node problem") etc. and makes inefficient use of the spectrum. The problem gets worse as the traffic gets busier. Wifi 6 is bringing in some actual scheduling.
Modulation schemes (the fundamental way that you transmit bits on a radio) - cellular modulation schemes are now incredibly efficient and robust. They use a variety of techniques that allow scaling based on channel conditions so that you can get as close as possible to whatever Shannon currently says you're allows. A lot of wifi uses old-school spread spectrum, and newer standards use OFDM which is a bit better. Wifi 6 is finally moving to the Quadrature Amplitude Modulation stuff that LTE uses.
That's why I find the smartsky comparison so interesting - because it's a completely level playing field.
I.e. the master channel is used to serve wifi to the nearby devices, and to the next wifi routers in a chain, whereas the slave channel is used to get wifi from any upstream routers.
We wouldn't describe that approach as FDMA - more that it has a separate channel for backhaul.
Cellular standards cater for a very different use case and, as a result, as vastly more complex and robust. To manage a lot of moving users and to support mobility is hard, also taking into account that cellular has had to deal with quality of service from the beginning because even if data rate was low voice requires a constant throughput with constrained delays.
That's not really fair. Their solution requires knowing the exact location of the base station and the client at all times. It's significantly more complex and expensive than Wifi.
Also, you're not entirely correct about how the system works.
I've been looking into a way to get a wifi link between a couple locations maybe 500ft apart and wasn't sure if even that was possible.
I recently got to use it, and as expected latency is significantly better than on a pure GEO system.
The thing is that once Starlink has the service working, and they have, it does not require a lot of extra investment to support ships and aircrafts.
On the other hand, an air-to-ground system requires a full cellular network on the ground (at the very least with dedicated RF and antennas), although with fewer sites because cells can be massive, and that still only covers land.
Are you sure about that? I have a friend who worked in airspace comms his whole career (including at Gogo) and he described some of the challenges of the engineering problem (these systems have to be airgapped from the critical systems on the plane, the certification processes, the antennas have to be super highly directional to talk with satelites high overhead while both the plane and the satellite are moving at tremendous speed, etc). Maybe your "not a lot of extra investment" is relative, but it seems like there's still a bunch of work to make these things work on planes.
Developing new terminals is orders or magnitude cheaper than developing and deploying a cellular network.
EAN supposedly works with only 300 base stations – in terms of terrestrial networks, that‘s nothing.
Would be curious to see a citation. My understanding was that of the major providers of in-flight Internet, only Gogo was air-to-ground, and that pretty much everybody else (Thales, ViaSat, etc.) was either Ku- or Ka-band satellite, which has been winning out because it still works over water.
That’s not been true for over 5 years, getting closer to a decade. I’d be happy to show wifi speed/GPS location pairs for United Airlines flights over the past decade, including many trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic flights.
There are two major problems here:
1. when you reach a major transit hub, such as NY airspace the bandwidth is very limited due to the sheer amount of traffic
2. Inmarsats network structure was(is?) like a honeycomb. So the further away you are from the center of each section the worse the transmission characteristics are.
One problem that is rarely looked at is atmospheric interference between satellite and base station.
Anyway, at least problem number two may be addressed by Starlinks vast array of satellites.
It's been a while since I looked at these things though.
Lots of HF-DataLink still out there. Funny seeing the pings from on-lease Russian aircraft that Russian airlines seized.
Like sending Ukraine "free" base stations and charging them $4,500 a month for service.
The $60 tier is not available on the 20,000 donated terminals - 85% of the retail price of which ($1,500 and a $2,500 model) was paid for by governments.
But that $4,500 a month is insanely cheap and an absolutely incredible value for Ukraine.
The media loves to whip up a frenzy over Musk, but Ukrainian commanders on the front have said Starlink is the single biggest advantage they have, their efficacy would drop by more than half without it, and even, they’d rather have more Starlink than more guns.
Simply put no one has done more for Ukraine than Elon / SpaceX.
"I have bought over 50 StarLinks, with official prices right from the website in EU countries - Poland, CZ, Germany - like 400-500 bucks each, then enable portability for extra IIRC 50$, then payed monthly fee of 60$ (was 120$ before). It’s the same for everyone else in EU" Dimko Zhluktenko, the head of Dzuga’s Paw charity fund, tweeted in his response to the development.
So regular joe donates them for $500 with monthly fee of $60 but $4,500 a month is insanely cheap?
I have a $10,000 toilet seat to sell you.
Starlink - Latency 20-40 ms Download - 50-200 mbps Upload - 10-20 mbps
Starlink Business - Latency 20-40 ms Download - 100-350 mbps Upload - 10-40 mbps
No, Musk does that himself by saying and doing a lot of very stupid things and also lying a lot.
Are there any alternatives? Nope. Also, let's not talk about how SpaceX "should" sponge up the costs, because you would not ask Lockheed Martin or Raytheon Technologies to do that. Compared to regular prices of military hardware, Starlink costs nothing.
It's interesting that they are rolling in the warranty cost with the monthly subscription. First time I've seen that.
It will be great for aircraft owners looking to have a full featured internet experience in flight.
Though the downside is that it will likely have priority when roaming into any cell, thus degrading service for ordinary ground based customers in busy areas.
Highest demand for normal starlink is in cities.
Not gonna be flying over NYC w this.
Kind of a good fit I would think in terms of utilization.
?? cities have fiber, who wants starlink in a city?
If the building signs up with the ISP, any customer from that building can sign up directly at ISP, and they can setup the connection within the same day.
Price wise, they are on par with other ISPs, but the Sri Lankan government heavily regulates the prices.
Only 1 in 3000 people need to desire starlink for cities to have more demand.
Strange situations happen. Not having good service in your neighborhood, hating the one provider available, wanting a backup, liking the idea of internet from space, lower latency over seas and thousands of other reasons I'm not crazy enough to think of.
To do that you probably need to get the whole building (or the building manager) to go along with this.
So if you have 1/3000 of people wanting this in the city, those same people also need to be in a matching situation to have the possibility to use Starlink, which can significantly reduce the ratio.
It's still possible, but the initiative will need to come from Starlink, possibly involving plans for complete buildings.
edit: I was of course thinking city centers, but in the nearby regions the demand might be significantly higher, access to roof is easy, population density is OK, and fiber internet still not well available.
I think there are misunderstandings in the concept of a "city", that what kind of density it refers to, and how much space - on top of area - is allocated for a resident in such a city. To me, a city is straight up Bladerunner, luxury apartments having such privileges as shared library rooms or balcony railings with sightlines workable for some GEO satellite dishes. To GP a city might be towards houses with single-car garages. That kind of definition mismatch happens both ways, by the way, in forms of city dwellers mistakenly offending other city as rural areas and complicating discussions.
If people want it, at least some of them will find a way with their landlord, if they don‘t already own the entire building (especially in the US, single-family homes are not at all uncommon close to the center of major cities).
Interesting. In which country do you live in? Because in France, I'd say that 90% of the people owning a TV sat dish are immigrants looking for the channels of their country of origin (the type of things you usually don't get with cable network), and the other 10% are people in very remote areas.
There's much fiber there, but also many streets where no fiber is available. AFAICT that kind of spottiness is the most common case and few cities have uniformly good coverage. I do hope 3Mbps is rare though.
Is this where the weird dichotomy between the US being on the one side very liberal for businesses yet on the other very restrictive? (the restrictive being protectionist practices from the established companies in this case)
* there isn’t any sort of provider like Openreach where all the ISPs share some portion of the network (in Openreach’s case, the last-mile network) so every ISP has to build every last inch to the home themselves
* generally speaking, ISPs have to get permits from localities, which are often cash-strapped and thus looking to scrape as much money as they can from an unsympathetic sector
Yeah, erm, mate ... don't get me started on Openscreech.
TL;DR: They are not the panacea, ESPECIALLY when it comes to fibre. Openreach might sound good on paper, but boy does it really not work out well in practice.
There could be though if US regulators wanted too.
In my country (New Zealand) for example the government did a deal during the switch from copper to fiber that regulated the network owners. A network owner would get exclusive rights to install their cables in a particular city and in return they would be prohibited from retail sales and would have to provide wholesale access to their network to ISPs at regulated prices.
Now something like 90% of the country has access to at least gigabit fiber (up to 8 gigabit available in some areas) and a choice of a dozen or so ISPs.
There are other 2 or 3 year newer apartment buildings 10 meters away in 3 directions which have fiber to the premises rather then awkwardly run lengths of the cheapest aluminium cable that they could find.
I was considering using starlink but found prepaid MVNO 5G cheaper (though it is unreliable)
Maybe 1960s/1970s era GPON does that
Yup.
Sounds like you've stumbled across one of OpenWretch's many failings.
Sounds like your building is one of the many unfortunate older buildings throughout the country that is connected via EO lines. EO = "Exchange Only", i.e. copper goes direct back to the exchange, not via a street cab.
Buildings served via EO lines are very much "back of the back of the back of the queue" at OR when it comes to FTTP upgrade.
OR seemingly deem it "too difficult" to pull fibre back down the same EO ducts to the exchange. Others might say "can't be arsed" or "easier to sweat the copper assets" or "waiting for another government handout" .... I couldn't possibly say.
The expected additional sales, because some/many of the customers will buy a 16/1Mbps DSL connection if the provider doesn't offer them 500/500 fiber, and the price won't be that much lower.
For normal consumer pricing laying down new lines will likely never turn a profit in the U.S. in any established neighbourhood, especially in municipalities that like to extract every dollar out of unsympathetic companies as another comment mentioned.
I‘ve seen stable latencies under 20ms on some networks, but also absurd spikes of multiple seconds on others. (The same goes for cable/DOCSIS, by the way…)
So at home I'm on 50 Mbps VDSL. My company's office has fiber but it has a Starlink for fallback.
How is Starlink in terms of latency?
But on one provider, with congestion, that would go up to 15 seconds (yes, 15.000 ms) basically every evening during the pandemic…
It all depends on how well a network is managed. This is true for ever access technology; fiber just has a lot more headroom to mask bad network management, congestion etc.
If Starling does indeed provide even a lower bandwidth connection at just 20ms, that is a nett win. Cool!
I don't know if a fiber to home would achieve lower latencies than 20 ms.... Someone mentioned DOCSIS - don't know much about it. Is that not needed for a fiber connection?
Who in their right mind would pay for Starlink over fiber? The same cost, but a lot better connection lol.
Because even if there's very few people who don't have good service (for example some kind of technical issue where fiber can't be routed to a specific building) you quickly reach the capacity for the service. Plus the odd person who wants it for a backup.
Also, I routinely get 100+ Mbps on Starlink, which is better than a lot of connections available across the country.
you also have the effect of cities sometimes being tied to a single sub-par ISP… many are willing to pay for any alternative
This is literally the opposite of true.
But both of you combined make a good point: this is the best way to fully utilize bandwidth of the sats, which are not going to be serving terrestrial customers when flying over the oceans, which is a significant portion of the time.
Between boats, planes, and rural terrestrial customers the usage of any individual Starlink sat can be efficiently spread out.
I hate that internet is becoming more common on flights. One of my favorite things about flying is that it's a good chunk of time where you disconnect and don't worry about emails or messages.
Just sit back and watch a movie or listen to music. Or catch up on sleep.
This article from 2017 confirms that it was 15 Mbps at one time: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-travel-briefcase-airl...
It looks like they have since reduced the free tier to less than 1 Mbps and added a paid option that allows you to stream video.
On the return flight it just didn't even work. Fortunately, I'd had newpipe download some content before we left.
Reasons not to use in-flight wifi:
* It might be broken, but the credit card processing for some reason works fine.
* If you are on a short haul flight, it's going to be disconnected for takeoff/landing so you will get a solid 30m
* If you are on an international flight, it often stops work once you are over the ocean.
I worked on inflight wifi for Qantas, where they share the highest trafficked route in the world - the 60 minute light between Sydney and Melbourne. It was a huge win for the project when we got clearance to enable wifi on the ground for takeoff.
I understand if your job expects you to be online when possible but if you have difficulty disconnecting without an external pressure to be online you could consider talking to a therapist to help you manage your reliance, especially if it's bothering you significantly.
[0] https://www.ustravel.org/press/study-record-768-million-us-v...
I'd say that's a conservative estimate! Most people go for dental work etc., why ignore the mind in your health support regime?
Another dimension here is that it's a refuge from "the always on" society; if you were to step back and look at your life from a distance almost everyone would say "I need to disconnect more", but you often don't realize how dependent you are on that dopamine hit the connected internet provides until you're forced to disconnect. Then you see the peace and realize, "oh, I'm OK when I'm not attached to my phone".
But there are fewer and fewer opportunities to have that kind of realization these days.
I'm sure you know that you always have the option to just not use the in-flight wifi. Is it that the availability of the wifi will tempt you to use it, therefore removing the feeling of disconnect?
I had once planned to sleep on a 10h flight. It did not go to plan.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/gogo-2ku-inflight-wi...
Modern planes like the 787 are made to a big degree from composites and the antenna can be installed inside the fuselage - leading to 0% increase in air resistance.
The fuel concern is a significant one, as well as performance. Enough fuel or performance impacts and you can restrict the airports flown with these antennas. It's not as big a problem on widebodies, but it's the reason you haven't seen WiFi on small regional or the smallest narrow bodies until recently.
One interesting example is that for the initial IFE systems that were deployed, the heat generated by the displays was significant enough that the largest cost to the installation was the required upgrade to the cabin air conditioning systems.
in addition to antenna systems for iridium and inmarsat L/S-band stuff.
there is a lower limit to the size of aircraft that can accommodate something like this, of course.
for instance: https://runwaygirlnetwork.com/2021/09/panasonic-next-gen-ku-...
- Richard Branson
Not sure what are SpaceX financials but Musk seems ok.
If someone could solve that for me affordably, I can handle the sitting on an airplane in economy class for 15 hours bit.
Although yes: having high speed, low latency internet for those 15 hours would make it much more pleasant.
I don't think "security" is going to be lessened in our lifetime, if anything it can only get worse. Disrupting the space would take an insane amount of money you don't have. People who have money, can fly private.
Planes need to have exits on the rear, middle, and front of the plane to make deplaning a lot easier and quicker.
If this issue is ever solved it will be a miracle.
If the former, I couldn’t imagine anything more deathly boring than this, working insanely hard to run a commodity service that’s fundamentally identical to all of your competitors other than on the margins. It would be like wondering how different the car hire industry would be if Musk had launched a hire company at the same time as Tesla.
If you are willing to do the necessary investment, I think there is huge potential to build an airplane that goes significantly further then planes like the Aviation Alice or what Heart Aerospace ES-30 is doing.
Many industry experts believe we're going to see an electrification but in tiers. Pure electric in the regional space, with more regional options than now on smaller planes, followed by hydrogen or alternative fuels powering the mid-range. Long range may go to hydrogen or alternatives, but the density is still such that jet fuel will rein on the longest flights for the next 10-15 years minimum.
The ES-30 flying from Zürich can get you to important cities in France, Germany, Italy and Austria. With they hybrid mode almost to Paris.
In Europe you have great trains but in the US this could be a game changer in all the big metro areas, North East, Florida, Texas Triangle, Southern California, Mid West/Canada.
Pushing on that whole stack you can get out more then the ES-30. There is potential for things like flying higher, using PRANTL Wing, Flying wing structure, batteries as part of the structure and so on.
A startup wouldn't risk doing any of these, but a company like SpaceX/Tesla could easily invest the capital to do this.
Hate to break it to you but displacing three tonnes of metal and batteries to move your 80kg ass to Walmart isn't environmentally friendly in any way
Producing one tonne of lithium requires digging out 500 tonnes of earth. We don't mine lithium with solar panels and horses, it's an extremely energy intensive and polluting industry, and that's only a tiny part of the equation, building the car already is already extremely polluting
Is it better than straight up burning dino juice ? Sure, is it sustainable and eco friendly as it is presented today ? not at all
And that's not even talking about the fact that a big part of car pollution is due to tires, heavier/faster accelerating cars = eat through tires more quickly than lighter/slower vehicles
There is no shame in buying a tesla but don't feel like you're saving/helping the planet, this is environmentally friendly the same way having 1 terminal cancer is healthier than having 2 terminal cancers, you might die in 6 months instead of 5 but you're still utterly fucked
Tire technology is also improving to be eco friendly - https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=...
The system doesn't go from bad to good overnight. Every piece needs to be updated, vehicles that don't put out fumes is just one piece of that system.
You're argument reads, 'well the entire system isn't perfect yet, so that negates all improvements to the components' Give me a break. Electric cars are a huge step forward. One of many steps that need to be taken.
The world will move forward while you sit on the sidelines and complain.
It isn't and most likely won't be until upgrading the whole production is cheaper than burning fossil fuel and god knows how long it'll take given how advanced and specific mining equipment is. And even if it was 100% electric, it's still an absolute nasty thing: https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/01/south-america-s-li...
> Electric cars are a huge step forward.
Only if you believe personal vehicles are a good thing in the first place, which is already something you can argue against, but I guess most of us have been brain washed by decades of auto industry marketing. Teslas aren't a step in the right direction, e mustangs either, the new f150 either, we're just making the same mistake all over again "but it's electric so you're saving the planet", no it's just a 3 tonnes pile of e waste moving a 80kg meat bag, putting candy sprinkles on top of a big turd doesn't change its fundamental nature.
> The world will move forward while you sit on the sidelines and complain.
I'm fine on my legs powered bicycle thank you
Spraying kids with DDT was progress, lead in paint and gas was progress, freon in fridges was progress, asbestos was the best thing after sliced bread. Everything is progress if your definition of progress is "the hot new thing that generates money". It's always the same thing, the people pushing for these things are making big bucks while selling you a dream that's going to last xx years until it falls apart and be replaced by the next
It's not so hard to imagine how it all adds up, there are 1.4B personal vehicles on earth, 1 tonne vs 3 tonnes adds up real quick
And what we will be even better a strong competition, so that kind of flights will be available to all.
I bet in 30 years we'll still be arguing that "fully autonomous cars are just around the corner" and "Musk will put a colony on Mars in 5 years"
It's not quite as easy as just slamming an antenna on the roof of an airplane.
I'm sure Elon has a plan, but there's a difference between modding a gulf stream and devising an STC for production installation on 100+ aircraft.
Hawaiian Airlines seems to be the first airline that will be ready when approval hits: https://newsroom.hawaiianairlines.com/releases/hawaiian-airl...
EDIT: typos
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At 25,000/mo, assuming a jet makes 60 trans-con segments in the US per month and a price of $20 per passenger for access on a given segment, you'd need an average of at least 20 people to pay for a full flight's worth of internet access on each segment just to clear the monthly cost, not even counting the up front investment.
And that's for a standard narrow-body passenger jet, not the G650 etc. business jets that they're targeting.
This seems like a flex, not a tool.
You best anchor yourself to the ground... lest you drift away.
Do you have any source that shows that he's committing such fraud?
Suppose that a plane has 250 seats and makes 50 trans-con flights a month.
Airline A decides to advertise having fast internet access in their flight, and raises ticket prices by $2 a seat to fund it.
(250)(50)(2) = 25000
Airline B stays with slow barely usable internet.
Which ticket do you book?
Fast internet is something I would be willing to pay for on certain flights - either as part of the ticket price or as an add-on. Although most of the time I'm content to zone out to a movie or sleep.
Also, while I imagine the logistics of bouncing 350 MBps from satellite to satellite at 1000 km/h will impose significant overhead, a lot of the places where people will want this service the most (trans-Atlantic, trans-Pacific, Kansas cornfields etc) will have very few if any other users.
Also, to me free wifi sounds better than those laggy entertainment systems I never use.
Southwest is not providing free bags out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s purely a profit-oriented business decision.
- Free bags means fewer people putting carry on bags in the overhead bins.
- Fewer carry on bags means faster boarding.
- Faster boarding means less time spent at the gate.
- Less time spent at the gate means the plane is in the air for more time.
- More time the plane is in the air means more profit made (generally speaking, provided loads, schedule and routing allows)
I’m sure it still works out for them, but it’s far from obvious and probably depends on many passengers not maximizing their allowance.
Alternatively being able to work more means I don't have to burn as many vacation days just on the transiting parts of travel.
I didn’t realize how addicted to the internet I was until I did a 15 hour flight from Boston to Incheon in the spring. Never again. I’ll gladly fly Delta instead.
But yeah having internet would be even better.
But removing seat-back would be bold - 100 people using a shared 350 connection would probably not work well. 200-odd using it would kill it. Leaving your passengers with a very unhappy experience.
And on top of that all the major streaming services allow for download for offline viewing. I'm just going to download a bunch of stuff ahead of time to make sure I can watch what I want.
This just serves the folks who want to pay to access the rest of the Internet. And I don't see incentive for anyone to pay and try to use a streaming service. More useful for someone traveling on business needing to join a call or something.
Airlines still rely on those massive clunky boxes under each seat, plus a server rack which adds a fair bit of weight.
Swapping to an all-in-one system - essentially a smart tv built into each monitor that just provides a browser and basic apps for major streaming services would reduce the overall weight of the plane, fix the annoyance of that big box where your legs are supposed to go, and provide entertainment on board.
There's also the costs that airlines normally have for licensing content - those would go away completely if everyone can just log into their own netflix or prime account.
350 Mbps for the entire flight. You're looking at speeds in the 5 Mbps territory optimistically per person. No way can you remove a NAS serving video content with that.
When planes come to be refitted:
- You take out the IFE server rack - weight saving. - Replace the seatback tv's with essentially an all in one smart tv system with apps for major streaming services - Take out the underseat IFE box as its no longer needed - The airline no longer has to pay for tv/movie/music licensing
Easy in North America... But all other regions of the world a typical flight might go over 20 countries. If you can't secure a license for just one, you're gonna have a 5 hour flight with 20 minutes of no internet... Not great.
And I don't think they're getting a license for Russia, Iran, China, half of Africa, etc any time soon.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Air_Lines_fleet#Current_...
[1] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/geforce-now/sy....
A network that is not oversubscribed and provides full non-blocking throughput to downstream devices is by far the exception: high-end datacenter spine/leaf systems come to mind as an example.
It might be a problem for SpaceX if their satellite network were to be deemed a military asset -- a foreign government might consider them a legitimate military target and destroy the satellites if they have the means to do so.
Also even if it was facing upwards, the entire reason why they're using LEO satellites is to get low latency to get network performance similar to what you get with terrestrial service. If you're far away from the Earth then none of that is true.
That's latency, not throughput. Streaming a pre-filmed movie is sensitive to the latter, not the former.
A movie is only a few GB - you can already store them locally on your phone.
Like large planes on long distance routes (at least) have shown films for decades, and we watched films from discs or cassettes at home before broadband internet.
Which aircraft types are supported for Starlink Aviation?
Supplemental type certificate (STCs) are in development for the following aircraft: ERJ-135, ERJ-145, G650, G550, Falcon 2000, G450, Challenger 300, Challenger 350, Global Express, Global 5000, Global 6000, and Global 7500. The Starlink engineering team will update this list as development begins on additional aircraft.
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Presumably if you have something with a large flat upper surface that flies at fairly low speeds it would not be impossible to install physically, though possibly without a STC to make it legal/legit for the FAA...
You are unlikely to get one of these officially working on a hondajet or any of the small to mid size Cessna for instance.
Something in the size range of a twin otter could almost certainly mount one without serious problems, though might only be okay legally in a non faa jurisdiction.
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What a thread, full of people complaining about unrelated things rather than what the actual link talks about.
I think it'll be interesting as this rolls out to more airline customers even though this specific product is more aimed at corporate jets and similiar aircraft.
From the FAQ:
Which aircraft types are supported for Starlink Aviation?
Supplemental type certificate (STCs) are in development for the following aircraft: ERJ-135, ERJ-145, G650, G550, Falcon 2000, G450, Challenger 300, Challenger 350, Global Express, Global 5000, Global 6000, and Global 7500. The Starlink engineering team will update this list as development begins on additional aircraft.
Sure, great on private charter jets where it’s you or a couple of people who know each other.
Also, generally in favour of the march of technology, so I love this.
Do Not Ever want on a flight where I’m sitting beside some random ass stranger who will chat or video chat to whoever at the top of their voice while I’m trying to relax.
I fly regularly, and it will absolutely become a problem on day 1.
Like I get why we have cultural norms and stuff for the most part, but if it's something that you can easily solve for yourself imposing on other people seems very selfish.
Just let people live their lives and don't be mad.
Because you are in a captive environment at increasingly close quarters on increasingly fuller flights. "Live and let live" is a great philosophy but flying coach today is not the same level of "shared public space" as say walking on a city sidewalk or sitting in a park.
Earplugs, noise cancelling headphones etc are imperfect just like masks are.
decent, working anc is still out of financial reach for many people flying in economy. there's no way not to be classist when talking about what flying economy is like today, but the average hn participator probably has more disposal income than the average american.
> I think in general the onus to take care of something should be on the person getting annoyed
i'd agree, except it takes one person to be magnificently annoying to 5 or 6 people at once. sometimes less, often more.
To the degree it's permitted by airline policy, it will almost certainly be on a premium Wi-fi tier and restricted to call booths.
on an airplane? there is no way that could possibly work.
Etiquette will fail.
If this ability is there, the airlines need rules. People will use it.
There is no feedback whether they are talking too quietly or too loudly.
My phone will pick up my voice if I whisper as well as if I yell, and the person on the other end will be able to hear either just fine. People just have a hunk of metal that they hold up to the side of their face (not really in front of their mouth), so they think they need to compensate.
If the TV ads for phones showed people whispering into their phone and advertising how good the microphones and noise canceling is, then we might not have this problem, but they don't.
Beyond this, yes it’s rude to talk at length on a plane to other people on a long haul flight, for example. I mean I get it but flying is by default a stressful experience as is.
Talking to new people in public is social. Talking on the phone in public is antisocial.
The objective when designing any environment where people are forced together is to limit interpersonal friction and, where possible, encourage civility and cooperation. From that perspective, all verbalizations to or from people not interacting with the environment are detrimental.
huh? connecting with someone you love over a video call is detrimental to the environment you're in?
If two people are sitting next to each talking I have the ability to easily tune them out. If one person is talking to a phone I can't. There's a study about it here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
"one-sided conversations still impacted participants’ self-reported distractibility and memory, thus showing people are more attentive to cell phone conversations than two-sided conversations"
[0] https://www.alaskaair.com/content/travel-info/flight-experie...
Well that's the target for this service. They don't even support larger commercial jets yet.
Which aircraft types are supported for Starlink Aviation?
Supplemental type certificate (STCs) are in development for the following aircraft: ERJ-135, ERJ-145, G650, G550, Falcon 2000, G450, Challenger 300, Challenger 350, Global Express, Global 5000, Global 6000, and Global 7500. The Starlink engineering team will update this list as development begins on additional aircraft.
The real question is, what are the prices of the services they're competing against? I'll bet those prices are higher.
And the only coverage failure I've had while traveling, with ViaSat, is for an hour or so on polar routes (for me, SEA - DOH/DXB).
We'll see how the actual speed (and reliability) shake out in practice, though.
[1] https://viasat.widen.net/s/clgfbt6sdz/1487977_business_aviat...
Assuming we're talking about fixed address residential service here and not the RV de-prioritized service which anyone can order at any time.
I do not think that word means what you think it means. Besides, you definitely can't claim it's "objectively" better unless you're really cherry picking the stats/features you're comparing.
What if I want a pickup? I can buy a Rivian. I can buy a Ford. I will be able to buy a Chevy before the Cybertruck is available. What if I want an SUV but don't want to pay Model X prices?
Tesla is sitting back on their early success, riding a wave of popularity. Good for them. But real competition arrived in the last couple years, and it looks really good. I enjoyed my Model 3 and when I bought it there was no competition, but I'm in the market again and I cannot find a compelling reason to choose a Tesla again. Even if there were feature parity, Tesla's consumer-hostile behavior has me worried about committing to another relationship with them.
I would have assumed that this issue would be quickly addressed by aftermarket suppliers just like it would with any other car manufacturer. Are Tesla like Apple? (i.e abuse laws and technology to lock customers in)
Do they go after third party suppliers/parts?
Why would it? What does your contract say? It sounds like you just gave a company your money and got nothing legally binding in exchange. Don't do that.
"Doctor, it hurts when I poke my eye!" Uh, then stop doing that.
Obviously you need to be careful, know what your options are to cancel, and make sure you trust the company - especially if they require a deposit. But for me getting something a couple of weeks or months earlier than I would otherwise be able to is a benefit that I am often willing to assume some amount of risk for.
If you wait for service in residential area it's because it's oversubscribed and SpaceX has to put more satellites in orbit or build more ground station.
Those satellites are the same that support airplanes so they benefit all use cases.
The issue is coverage i.e. bandwidth per area. The way Starlink works is that bandwidth (satellites) is more or less uniformly distributed over area. They can't just add one satellite over a city in Canada to provide more service there. To double available bandwidth in Canada they have to double the number of Satellites.
Airplanes (and boats) don't compete for bandwidth with residential because most of the time they are over areas without other Starlink users.
The antennas are not the same so it's not like an airplane antenna fights with residential antenna.
If anything, making more money boats and airplanes helps SpaceX build satellites and antennas faster so this service is a win for residential as well.
They are working as hard as they possibly can to get Starship working, which will enable Starlink V2, to dramatically increase capacity and get you service. And the revenue from serving planes is going to help them get there without going bankrupt first.
no, planes spend most of their time in populated areas. specifically near major airports, and the WiFi needs to work on the ground as well.
airlines bank on you not using it or charging a lot to keep the numbers down. JetBlue does it for free by subsidizing through the ticket price since people pay a premium for the name.
Except most of a passenger's time in an aircraft isn't spent sitting on the ground (if it is, something's gone wrong) and they can use cell phones and wifi hotspots in such locations anyway.
Further, major airports aren't _populated_. People don't live there and airports are large enough they fill up a significant fraction of a starlink cell.
> no, planes spend most of their time in populated areas
These statements are not mutually exclusive. Even if planes aren't spending an absolute majority of their time in unpopulated areas, it's still a lot of time compared to the 0% that a fixed terminal in a suburb would spend. Starlink needs paying customers in those unpopulated areas, even if they are only there some of the time. And the customers need Starlink too, even more than rural customers, many of whom could in theory be served by fixed wireless or something; that's not a possibility for planes over the poles or what have you.
Personally, I think that Starlink should pursue deprioritization of heavy users. Note, that's not a bandwidth cap or limit. If there's excess network capacity, there's no reason to prevent a user from using it. However, when there's congestion, I think it makes sense to give priority to lower-usage users. I think it would be reasonable to do this in stages. The average US household uses about 350GB/mo (according to data made available by T-Mobile US and Comcast/Xfinity).
Given that Starlink has capacity constraints and given that they are serving as a bit of an internet lifeline to people without other options, it seems reasonable that they could have staged deprioritization maybe like this: first 250GB/mo is full-speed; next 250GB at 80% speed when there is congestion such that their usage would be reducing speeds for others; next 500GB at 60% speed when congested; next 1TB at 40% speed; next 2TB at 20% speed...
I know, many people's reaction would be that they shouldn't slow you down, they're advertising unlimited service, etc. At the same time, it's a shared link and a user using 10TB of data means that Starlink can't provide service to around 30 people. Do you prioritize one person using a lot over the needs of dozens? And this is only at times of congestion and realistically 40Mbps or even 20Mbps is still quite usable - especially when the alternative is 3Mbps DSL. 20Mbps will even allow 4K streaming and many full-HD streams.
To make it even better, one could only count data usage during congested times, but that's a lot harder to reason about because we don't always know congested times in advance and while I have data on average monthly usage, I don't have information on usage during congested times. The different thresholds would need to be adjusted accordingly.
Still, given a shared link with demand way exceeding capacity, I think it makes sense to offer the service to more users with the knowledge that there will be some traffic shaping around usage. I worked in IT at a university and one of the big things was that the top 50 users on the network usually consumed more than half of the available bandwidth. The university liked supporting students, but thought it reasonable to give their traffic lower priority than the thousands of other users on the network. The techie students liked it because they could do what they wanted without impacting other users.
Starlink is more capacity constrained, but I think almost no one would notice being deprioritized to 80% during congestion. I think most usage wouldn't notice further deprioritization.
I think net neutrality is very important, but I do think with a shared link like Starlink there can be some opt-in traffic shaping that can work in concert with deprioritization. For example, let's say you want do download CoD Modern Warfare at over 200GB. Should that be given equal priority to someone trying to video chat with their family? Well, that might depend on your personal views - maybe you're really looking forward to the game. However, I do think that Starlink could build in an opt-in feature that would move bulk data transfers (like game downloads) from congested times to non-congested times. Even during peak times, there are lulls in congestion and I think many people would say, "yes, please save network bandwidth for 'important' or real-time needs compared to my non-time-sensitive transfer and in exchange that transfer doesn't count toward deprioritization limits." But you might also decide that you want CoD Modern Warfare as fast as possible - and that would be your choice. I'd also point out that there are lots of transfers that aren't "fun" like a new game. For example, you need to download OS updates for your smartphone or laptop, but you generally aren't champing at the bit to update and restart immediately - we've all played the "not today" game with updates. There's no reason for those downloads to happen during congestion while that Netflix show you're watching has packets that need to be delivered.
I think Starlink has been trying to offer an unlimited connection without caveats like deprioritization and I think it's putting them in a tough spot. I'm guessing many of their users got Starlink and had minimal usage the first few months. They weren't the types to spend a lot of time online because their connectivity was terrible - but as they became accustomed to Starlink's level of service, that changed. If Starlink was averaging 50-100GB per user, that might have gone up to 300GB per user or even more as people cancel things like satellite TV for streaming services and get accustomed to having a good internet connection. People without good internet wouldn't be in the habit of using it, but that would certainly change over the months and years.
> Shouldn't providing down payment legally guarantee to buy a service at original said price?
I can't comment on legally. Morally? Maybe the dish itself and maybe the service for a limited time like 1 year, but internet service prices usually only offer a 1 or 2 year price guarantee (yes, there are exceptions, but this is shouldn't be about holding Starlink to a higher standard than the industry in general).
Yes, it's frustrating that the price has gone up for both the service and the dish itself, but it can be hard to price new services. You don't quite know how much data people are going to use, you don't totally know how the network will perform, etc. As I noted, it seems likely that they're getting greater than expected usage as users get accustomed to using it more and more. Fuel prices, supply chain disruption, and general inflation don't help Starlink continue offering service or the dish at the original price.
Again, I really understand the frustration. However, I think Starlink's premium products (aviation, maritime) will only help the company serve home users better.
I knew this was coming, but I am still not ready for it. Can you imagine being on a 5+ hour flight next to someone on a call the entire time? You know there will be people who will take their entire work day from the plane.
What do you mean? I've flown before and 14" or 13.3" laptop fits just fine on the seat tray.
If all you're doing is watching video then it's fine. But trying to get real work done is incredibly awkward. The only way I'm able to do anything is to use a separate Bluetooth keyboard I hold underneath the tray over my knees. But that means exclusively writing or other things I can do solely with the keyboard, without a mouse/trackpad.
Also, forget it if the person in front of you reclines. It's game over.
that's what the trackpoint is for, if you have a thinkpad ;)
I will admit to using a Thinkpad.
For other laptops I've had, I use my thumbs + tap-to-click. Also a healthy dose of KB. I am buried in the console, so I will admit that a more graphically driven user may not appreciate thumbing the touchpad and navigating by KB.
Sometimes, the options for edge-inertial-scrolling, tap then hold to drag (i.e. click dragging with a mouse), etc seem to mostly be limited to synaptics touchpads and sometimes features disappear with OS or driver updates. Really annoying, when those features are what make marginal touchpad usage shine, IMO.
What? lol
Listen, if I'm paying you a 1 time fee of $150K you better be contractually obligated to provide my expensive ass internet each and every month I want it.
"High-speed, low-latency, in-flight internet with connectivity across the globe. $12,500/mo-$25,000/mo with a one-time hardware cost of $150,000. Reserve now with deliveries starting in 2023."
https://go.viasat.com/BAV-Viasat-Select-Business-Jet-WiFi.ht...
... if you're ok being limited to 15 GB per month.
Practically, the offerings are $10k for regional or $14k for global for the no cap plans.
$2795 is for 15GB data cap which is nothing.
Their unlimited local service is $10k, unlimited global service is $14k
$14k is more expensive than the cheapest $12.5k from Starlink and less expensive than $25k most expensive plan.
Except Starlink is 350 MB/s vs. 30 MB/s from ViaSat. Starlink is 5x-10x cheaper per speed.
"Available in 2023". We'll see. I mean FSD has been "coming this year" since 2016. And I regularly see people here complaining that they're still waitlisted for their terrestrial Starlink service.
Who knows what ViaSat will have by whenever Starlink actually makes this happen (you know, with the mobile RV service that's "coming soon", and the maritime service, also "coming soon", and now this...).
I live in Australia (118ms round trip), and whenever I'm in SF, I'm amazed at the quality of life increase brought about by decreased latency. It feels like the whole net is on localhost.
I don’t know what is going on, and I don’t use either service.
Not sure where you pulled 30 Mb/s for Viasat service but it regularly tests more than 2x as fast as that (on the current-gen satellites, the newest of which is 5 years-old by now. Viasat-3 Americas has actually over 5x the capacity of Viasat-2 along with a big bag of other goodies that will enable a class of service heretofore unseen.)
(sorry, couldn't help myself)
Obviously this is aimed at people that want: higher bandwidth / lower latency internet connectivity on airplanes?
Compare to what’s currently available to jet charter. StarLink’s product is currently priced (monthly) around an hour or two of flight time, depending on airframe class.
> Wi-Fi is currently available in the Phenom 300, Citation Latitude, Challenger 350 and Global 6000.
> The first three models have a satellite-based connectivity with a shared bandwidth going up to max speeds of up to 0.43Mb per second (depending on the aircraft type) while the Global 6000 is equipped with a new satellite solution called Ka-Band. Ka-Band allows for internet speeds that are ten times faster than the previous solution, going up to 4Mbp/s. It allows good internet browsing, including streaming or file download, and provides better coverage than SwiftBroadBand, specifically over Greenland. This is a very positive development as this area is mainly flown over during international flights on long range cabins. Due to the size and weight of the equipment, this solution is only available on large cabin aircraft like the G6000.
The most important difference is that Viasat uses a couple of GEO satellites where Starlink uses a massive swarm of LEO satellites.
Viasat's satellites are flying just short of 35,800 kilometers over the equator, which means that your absolute best case scenario user standing right next to a gateway, both directly under the satellite, bare minimum latency connecting to an internet server is almost a full 500 milliseconds. Users not close to the equator can add a fair bit more.
Starlink's satellites are flying around 550 kilometers over basically everywhere with 53 degrees of the equator, so anyone who has a gateway close enough to not need to use the inter-satellite link can get 20-40 millisecond latency to the internet in real world usage.
They only recently enabled end user access to inter-satellite links so I haven't seen any real world tests on that but it could be a lot worse than single-hop while still beating GEO.
As someone who recently spent a week at a vacation house that had HughesNet, you have no idea how wrong this is.
Every single individual request your browser makes has an extra half second attached to it even starting. Every TLS handshake takes a full second and a half, multiplied by every different host you're connecting to while loading content. Every packet lost (and there will be a few) has an extra half second to be resent. Downloading files over satellite internet isn't the worst thing in the world, but browsing the web over it is not an enjoyable experience. It feels like back when I was still on dialup while most of the internet had started to assume broadband.
The main reason QUIC exists as a protocol, aside from working around decades worth of horrible middleboxes that prevent new protocols from working on top of IP directly, is to reduce the number of back-and-forths required to establish secure communication which most significantly benefits high latency and mildly lossy connections like satellite and older cellular networks.
No doubt everyone has different experiences and tolerance levels for latency, but, really, I think the latency issue is vastly overblown.
owners of airplanes
Normal airlines are promptly going to need some no-phone-calls rules. (TBH I think they already have them.)
this is trying to compete with the very high $ per MB and slow speed products that already exist from iridium and inmarsat.
Okay maybe that was too snarky.
It's for more low latency solution's and/or more bandwidth. It also competes with existing solutions because why shouldn't they compete in a field where they can compete and make money.