Starlink Mini brings space internet to backpackers
theverge.com
theverge.com
As a backpacker and avid hiker, no thank you. I go outside to intentionally avoid screens and the internet/connected world. Fortunately I can just not buy this and it won’t have an impact on my life.
Another interesting thing I’m curious about is if this would provide any benefits to SAR crews over traditional sat phones. I could potentially see some benefits there, maybe, but I guess time will tell.
For their communications, I doubt it, unless they happen to need low-latency video (e.g. for telemedicine for complicated cases). Existing solutions are pretty robust, and for anything you use on the move you probably want an omnidirectional antenna you don't have to rest on some surface in operation.
I could imagine this being interesting for drone-based/agumented missing person search, though!
> Fortunately I can just not buy this and it won’t have an impact on my life.
Thank you for saying this. So many people have a knee-jerk reaction of "this will ruin the outdoors" or "this means I can never disconnect anymore", which both kind of imply a concerning lack of agency. The outdoors are large enough for everybody, and nobody can force you to buy and bring one of these things!
Then again, I've also encountered large groups of hikers basically screaming to be able to all hear each other, sometimes while walking on narrow trails (making overtaking hard). It really doesn't take technology for people to be unaware of the space that they're in and be inconsiderate to others.
- FlexSolar 40W panel: 1.35kg
- Nitecore NB20000 ~75Wh battery: 300g
- Starlink Mini: 1.1kg
- Smartphone: 250g
For 3kg you have something that should give 2-3 hours of Internet usage on an average EU/USA good weather day (assuming 20% solar panel for 10 hours = 80Wh/day, 25-35W power usage of Starlink Mini + smartphone).
For each extra 1.65kg you get an additional 2-3 hours, resulting in 7.95kg for 8-12 hours, 11.25kg for 12-16 hours.
Not bad, but not good either.
I realize that some people don't have that luxury due to work or family obligations, but for these, doesn't affordably connectivity actually open up the possibility of spending extended time outdoors that they just didn't have before?
If you can live without Internet when backpacking, enjoy the outdoors! If you need it for whatever reason, this just cut the cost per megabyte by about 95% and the cost for the terminal by 99%. You'll probably also not hate LEO latencies compared to GEO.
From an individual perspective, if you want Internet access and don't have to be in a specific place, the current alternative to Starlink is to simply limit your wilderness living to places with or near areas of cell phone coverage (which potentially results in tradeoffs, of course).
As someone that has explored a lot of Australia, Alaska, Yukon, Africa and South America, I'm having trouble parsing your statement.
I've driven more than 1,000 miles for 10 days with absolutely nothing. No town. No people. No cars. Nothing.
I've canoed for 15 days well over 3,000 miles from the nearest town, road, building or electricity.
The idea you could cover the globe in LTE cell towers is unfathomable.
The remaining 70% are ocean, and people sometimes go there too! Some densely traveled oceans actually do have LTE coverage, e.g. parts of the north sea, since it has existing infrastructure in the form of wind parks that make adding a base station fairly easy, but that's the absolute exception, globally.
A single direct-to-cell satellite can cover a circular area measured in hundreds or thousands of kilometers. Due to the Earth's curvature, that's simply not feasible using terrestrial base stations.
It'll probably get used on boats, where people actually do kinda want to watch netflix at night and don't have to personally carry every gram every day. The current options are very expensive and power hungry.
And probably a bunch of other outwardly similar but culturally distinct groups that could use it. Remote wilderness hunters, ice fishers, who work out of a seasonal camp but otherwise are pretty cut off.
In fact, they almost don't do any marketing at all, and they probably don't need to, given how far ahead their service is at this point.
- Car campers, vanlifers or people living in a place permanently, which can just use the heavy Starlink version or go where there is LTE coverage
- Thru-hikers who hike every waking hour and want to be as light as possible and for which this system isn't even remotely light enough
- Casual weekend hikers for which it's going to be too expensive and also unnecessary since they'll have Internet access on Monday again.
It's only really a consideration for those who regularly go on multiweek trips or live long-term in the wilderness and move camp on a weekly/monthly frequency (rather than daily or never), and these people seem to be relatively rare.
Don't get me wrong, this is cool and emerging tech, and I support it (I pray it doesn't ruin the wilderness). Just saying there IS a comparison
Iridium does offer voice and data services too, but terminals for that are significantly larger and draw more power, and the price per megabyte might bring tears to your eyes for recreational use. (Iridium Certus gets you 88 kbps at around $5/MB, and devices start at around $1500.)
It is insanely good. Out of this world.
A few years ago I spent 3 years driving around Africa and looked into satellite internet options from all the existing providers. Any plan that offered anything remotely close to 1GB per month was 5x the cost of the entire 3 year expedition.
This WILL change the world.
What I'm saying is Starlink in general is a complete world-changer compared to just 5 years ago.
This mini just continues that trend.
The 630g Anker 737 PowerCore 24K might be a good option, and also the 765g HyperJuice 245W.
So this adds 0.3-0.45kg to the estimate.
But yeah, options like the Anker 737 24K should work great (which supports 20V/5A and 28V/5A). I happened to pick up a few of the 737s recently, so I'll be curious to try them out with the Mini soon. Just waiting for Starlink to actually add the usb-c to DC barrel adapter to the online shop.
(right now you only get a Starlink Mini if you are an early Starlink customer and it requires an existing residential subscription)
I wonder how much more bandwidth this uses compared to their stationary terminals. There's almost certainly a power/size vs. data rate trade-off here, which can explain why they don't offer it standalone in the US yet (the reasoning probably being that people will use their more efficient larger antenna at home most of the time), but do have standalone plans in areas where they probably have less users overall.
It's not unusual for us customers to pay a higher premium for the same service that is sold at a lesser costs around the world. This is for a great many things. This can be due to companies actively using their us customers to subsidize their market share and other places but I don't imagine that's what's at play here. It could be that the government in the Netherlands is offering some sort of subsidy that is allowing the price to be less. Also could be that local competition is necessitating a lower price as well in that area.
Relative to what? It's not marketed at population centers. My 10Mbps DSL was 90/mo, bonded I could get 25M down 1.5 up for $140/mo.
I live in the country a good 6 miles from any City and that City is maybe 8000 people. My service is $99 a month for 1 gig fiber. The only other options I would have is some satellite-based internet or a cell based internet.
Often, identical medicine is sold in the US for 5-20x the price that it is sold for in even North-West EU.
If US customers as a whole really couldn’t pay this, the price would drop.
And you're up there's two things at play the government is subsidizing the cost of drugs but also demanding a lower price. If you're up was the only market or the primary market at the prices they're demanding there would be no more research and development for a great many of the drugs that we have.
If Starlink achieves reasonable service, for many customers in the US it can get away with charging a lot.
I now pay €67.50 for 4gbps up / 4gpbs down. I'm actually getting those speeds and the day I arrived service was already turned on. I just had to ride my bike down to the post office and retrieve my modem.
Starlink has indeed tested a video call to one phone, but you can probably do about 10-30 of these per cell until you max out the capacity (single-digit Mbit/s for everybody in a 15 mile or so radius).
For more, you need active steering and more powerful antenna arrays, which are also larger. Fitting that in a phone will probably take some time, and it might end up being awkward anyway (and slowly cook your hand/ear).
> That means you can power the Mini dish for two to three hours from something like an Anker Prime 27,650mAh (99.54Wh) power bank, or a little over an hour with smaller 10,000mAh (40Wh) portable batteries you probably already have laying about. It requires a USB-C PD power source with a minimum rating of 100W (20V/5A).
Literally we all use eSIMs and just have downtime occasionally, which is partially the point of it.
It's a toy and another damn thing to carry around and a load of marketing around it to sell it as a suitable replacement for proper kit.
This is useful for working away from home somewhere on the mountains. Where you have a cabin, have some proper solar panels setup and doesn't make sense (finantially-wise) to keep a starlink installed permanently there. The other option is car-travelling, not everything needs to be solar and using electricity from a gasoline car works great while using little space on the storage.
It isn't meant as side partner for your walking hikes.
If you need high speed data in the middle on nowhere then Starlink is great
Data speeds are measured in a handful of bits per second, though.
Ty Gagne wrote a book about the death of Kate Matrosova in the White Mountains of New Hampshire[0]. The search and rescue effort took place in absolutely harrowing conditions. That was enabled by the fact that she had a Spot/InReach/equivalent.
People backstopping their safety on extremely limited SAR resources and an assumption of being able to get them deployed in the first place is not an overall improvement in the safety of hikers or the people who stick their necks out getting them out of trouble.
[0]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36019816-where-you-ll-fi...
> Starlink Mini is a compact, portable kit that can easily fit in a backpack, designed to provide high-speed, low-latency internet on the go.
In no way whatsoever is this marketed as a replacement for a satellite messenger or a PLB. I think the chance of somebody getting only this and ending up in a pickle is much lower than that of somebody just outright bringing nothing at all. Besides that, all recent iPhones support satellite SOS these days, and with Starlink direct to cell, all other phones will likely catch up very soon.
And why does the fact that backpackers are mentioned as one possible user group enrage you so much? Have you considered that people enjoy the outdoors in all kinds of ways, some very different from you, and maybe that includes internet access? Again, nobody has to use it!
I didn't even have 4G there. I was just wifi hopping as and when I needed it.
On the other hand, while this is less common (in my experience) in e.g. the alps, and people will probably reprimand you if you attempt it, I've heard some mind-boggingly loud, annoying conversations between hikers shouting across switchbacks in a large group so that everybody can hear as well. That doesn't even require a battery!
It's a social problem if anything, not a technological one. But realistically, the outdoors are pretty large – you can almost always just wait a few minutes and let people that bother you pass by.
considering that this is an add-on, not standalone, and the fact that it would mean like 2-3kg of extra weight to carry, backpackers who hike in places with good cell reception are not the target market.
doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people who would use this.
eg: my mother and her husband live in a small town and use starlink since none of the local or national ISPs service that town. they also own a camper trailer and travels quite a bit now that they're retired.
the mini would be perfect for them. they could power it off the camper trailer's 12V, which would be a lot more efficient than going DC->AC->DC even if you ignore the power difference, and it would take up less space when not in use. they could also pause the mini service or use it as part of their home mesh for better bandwidth.