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Comment by _1tem | Hacker News Reader

What does this actually mean in practice? Internet service everywhere even when out of range of a cell tower? Does it work indoors?

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Definitely not everywhere. Starlink cares a lot about national borders, neutralizing the one major advantage it has over most other internet access technologies. This just begs me to say "you had one job".

Starlink disregards national borders when the US government gives them the greenlight for that, not otherwise. That's why it works in Iran. SpaceX / Starlink are an American company with personnel and property on the ground, they cannot simply defy their host government and do whatever they want, causing diplomatic incidents where they please. That's not realistic.

Yeah the list of governments where they defy the local government is mostly VERY isolated (politically) countries. They’re certainly not in the business of simply providing access everywhere based on principles.

I also think their starlink system still needs localized ground base stations -- their network isn't at the point they can do satellite<->satellite communication.

It does have satellite<->satellite communication, but the latency is way worse if your traffic has to flow like that, so ideally they're building as many ground stations as they can all over the globe. But laser service is always how cruise ships in the middle of the pacific will get full starlink internet.

If you're resident in a country where StarLink is legal (like Mozambique), you can procure the service and then roam in a country where it's illegal like South Africa. I don't think that will ever change.

StarLink's definition of "resident" and "roaming" might change a little bit over time.

StarLink has been quite good in surrounding the countries where they stand to make a lot of money (like South Africa) with "friendly" countries. So, due to roaming, South Africa is losing out on a lot of tax revenue (VAT) and other economic benefits. Speculation is that they will give in.

Are you sure this is still true?

I remember hearing that this used to be the case, but this is a pretty blatant violation of international law and regulations, and I think by now roaming is also technically disabled in countries that didn't grant them a license.

Their own support site is a bit ambiguous:

> If your new location is not in an authorized territory (marked "Available" or "Waitlist" on the Starlink map), your service may be immediately suspended.

I have no first hand knowledge, but there are some news articles and forum posts on https://www.mybroadband.co.za/ that will give you an indication of how StarLink is handling it.

Surely international law can't force StarLink to detect where their terminals are. Or force StarLink to block their signals from leaking into neighbouring countries.

They won't market or distribute their terminals in countries where it is illegal.

So it's up to customs to seize terminals when they cross the borders or communications regulators to seize terminals after they came in.

At this stage, I think StarLink is clamping down on roaming because they don't want to jeopardize their negotiations with the SA government.

> Starlink cares a lot about national borders

Isn't is moreso that _laws_ care a lot about national borders? And Starlink has to care about laws to operate?

Well, Starlink has been known to provide roaming services in countries they haven't reached a full agreement with yet, with the exception of the ones who legitimately might have the power to shoot down SpaceX satellites if they got angry enough (India, China, Russia).

The number of Starlink satellites and the rapidity of their replenishment vastly outnumbers the number of ASAT interceptors, and launchers, that any nation could produce.

Shooting-down Starlink satellites is economically infeasible, never mind the fratricide it would cause to the aggressor's own LEO assets.

True, but it would still be a very expensive inconvenience for SpaceX, I think enough that it isn't worth serving roaming users there and pissing off the countries.

> "you had one job"

Violating international treaties and national law of almost all countries and potentially getting their assets seized, or worst case serving as a casus belli (economic or kinetic) in case the US does not enforce claims of other nations against them?

It seems right now, assuming you're in the test (is anyone that is not working for Apple?), an emergency button (no voice, no text, no nothing, other than the fact that you pressed the button and a location, not sure how accurate) (I guess maybe it's as featured as the Google feature)

MAYBE in the future text messaging service. Text only.

Note: Text messaging currently actually works on some Samsung phones on T-mobile, if you request to join the beta.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/t-mobile-begins-cellular-starlink...

Emergency SOS over Starlink works on recent pixel phones, which appears to provide text chat with emergency services:

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/15254448?hl=en

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