It’ll be interesting to see what the Canadian telesat LEO system will be capable of. They’re supposed to be launching satellites next year and are using a higher orbit so will need much fewer satellites than starlink.
But sadly increased latency. Also don’t hold your breath on Canada telecom anything, we have a history of being the worst at it.
Your internet and mobile phone service kicks the UKs arse.
To be fair two cans and a piece of string kicks the UKs arse when it comes to telecommunications.
Yup. Thanks Thatcher.
Oh no, oh dear everything no. Maybe in a few cities sure, but where I am I literally have no functioning internet anymore (they let the lines degrade below 1 Mbps) and have massive patches where cell phones don’t work at all (love when I hit a antelope and have to stand on the roof of my car to maybe get enough signal to call a tow).
Like no joke we have the worst and most expensive telecom in the developed (and a lot of the developing) world.
I should have considered the fact that I was always within an hour or so of Toronto.
I don’t mind a bit more latency (should still be nicely below 100ms) but my use case is more related to mid-Atlantic mobile connectivity than remote region broadband.
Their planned implementation just seems much better than others with beam shaping, linked satellites and less than 200 satellites to maintain and replace.
Although you’re not wrong about our telecom track record…
“European Starlink rival” is a bit far fetched when there’s merely rumours that they might be able to offer a similar service. But that’s the stock market for you.
A man can dream
They have both GEO and LEO satellites. Not on the scale of SpaceX (for LEO), but they do have a network.
I am not commenting on the nature of the stock market or anything like that. Just pointing out that they do have a working network, it’s not 100% speculation (like you see with crypto schemes).
You’re correct but their LEO constellation is over 10x smaller than Starlink, so they’ve still got a lot of catching up to do.
They are doing much better than other fabled starlink competitors though, like amazon kuiper which is still not a real thing after all this time.
They have one strong competitive advantage that Starlink will never have; they are not American.
By definition, you cannot trust an American service. Even if the people who run a given service are not degenerates, there are enough degenerates in the US that they could elect a degenerate who will fuck you over.
They have very, very different business models. Constellation size is meaningless on its own, you have to account for the satellites capabilities, orbits, and the number and needs of your customers.
That’s true and I even thought about trying to investigate one of their satellites bandwidth capabilities versus one starlink satellite before I commented. But ultimately it doesn’t really matter because we’re talking about them being a rival to starlink so In the context of this conversation, they need to match their capacity and capabilities in all aspects to be a worthy rival.
I don’t know, merely not being beholden to Musk is a pretty big competitive advantage at this point.
Alphane_Moon just convinced me to take out a huge loan with my house as security, and invest in Eutelsat. I suggest everyone else does the same.
Now they have to offer a similar service. No pressure then 😊
They do offer a better service, albeit marginally - better download speeds, lower latency, slower upload speeds though. Problem is their antennas - they cost 8.000€ compared to 300€ the starlink ones…
Eutelsat are aimed at a different market: infrastructure. Their intended customers are larger and more demanding: research outposts, small villages, oil rigs, mobile phone towers, ships, and so on, as opposed to Starlink who focus on consumers directly, which is much more low-stakes. I’m genuinely curious if Eutelsat can move into Starlink’s territory.
They will surely do in the future. For example in Spain the government is subsidizing satellite internet through Hispasat for remote communities. I’m sure many other governments do the same in their backyard. If EU throws starlink contracts out the window and start subsidizing EU satellite related businesses and startups things will definitely improve for everybody and the more contracts they sign the lower the prices will go for their clients.
Yes, but:
Oh look, it’s on sale!
What will they launch on? Star Link is barely feasible because they can launch at cost on falcon 9.
Look up Ariane 6. It’s still more costly than the Falcon 9 but who in their right mind would trust the numbers Elon is sharing? Seems like they both cost around 100million $ cost per launch. Elon is claming 30million per launch and that he will make it cost 2 million…
Increased by 3.9X.
SpaceX and Starlink have no competitors. They’re so far ahead that it’s not even funny. I really wish Elon had just kept his mouth shut and kept working on it without sullying its image. I bet he wishes that too sometimes.
Idk. Musk seems to have gone completely mental. Dunno what the cause is, but the man is not healthy. Not sure how much self-reflection he’s capable of.
He’s on ketamin. Explains some of it.
He almost certainly abuses ketamine. He got his dealer a job in DOGE, after all.
Clearly not what he wishes. Shows no regrets whatsoever. He wishes for everyone to lick his boots and obey whatever he thinks is right. He’s acting like he’s a king or god or so… He gets what he deserves, disrespect and contracts failing. They might lead technologically but that’s no reason to take all this BS. It’s extra reason not to.
I don’t know, the man is hard to read. I’m extremely cynical and I don’t believe he’s genuine ever, but he gave an interview recently and he did choke up when asked how he was managing to run his companies. I don’t think he’s as good an actor to fake that.
The best conclusion I have arrived is that the man may well be completely self deluded and he might really believe himself the savior of mankind so he needs to get us to mars by any means necessary. Maybe because of the heavy drug use and obvious sleep deprivation, his sense of reality is probably warped. Or maybe the pressure from the Twitter purchase got to him and he broke because that’s when he absolutely went bonkers. He had to overleverage himself in order to do that and he even took money from the saudis.
All in all I don’t expect things to end well for him.
SpaceX and Starlink have no competitors
This is a very soviet mode of thinking.
It’s not a mode of thinking it’s a fact. As of this moment there’s no one who is even close to being a competitor to them. I’m not saying there can’t be one, but there isn’t one right now.
I am not denying Starlink and SpaceX have a dominant market position.
When I said “this is a very soviet mode of thinking,” I meant that it’s unreasonable to think that they are unbeatable.
This is just one thing, but if you use Starlink or SpaceX you have to deal with Americans and Americans cannot be trusted.
Being a reliable partner is a competitive advantage and has an impact on the cost function of a given relationship. Americans (government or companies) are not reliable.
I was just talking about this with a friend today. Musk was basically on track to become a real-life Tony Stark, exactly as he’d envisioned, but he just couldn’t keep his mouth shut and ended up ruining it for himself. Money buys many things, but it doesn’t buy respect - and once you’ve lost that, it’s nearly impossible to regain. The number of young and ambitious people he let down is simply staggering. I was really rooting for him and hoping he’d turn this around but after the nazi salute I no longer do. That was the last straw for me.
It is good he revealed his true colours early.
here’s why
What could it be?
We all know why CNBC. You could have just posted the title.
Because the drug addled used car salesman who’s currently about to default on his Twitter loans decided to embrace his roots and started throwing up seig heils and is currently having a crack team of 4chan incels dismantle a government while he threatens the world and works to make what he’s doing here happen everywhere.
Dude is a comic book villain. Villain of the week level. No real staying power. Either he’ll go broke or die from a ketamine overdose before Xmas. And what a gift that will be. I hope it happens on video.
I’d prefer full on mental breakdown while giving us his 1 bullet point live on TV, just follow Adolfo’s guide all the way to the end
die from a ketamine overdose
Please stop, I’m old and I can only get so excited.
Bye bye future space launches once we have full or partial Kessler syndrome.
Bye bye earth based astronomy.
But dang this tech is so much better than Hughesnet
<ButtonPressingMeme>
Kessler syndrome doesn’t really apply for purely LEO satellites. They all burn up in a single digit amount of years.
It’s not something to worry about yet.
On the contrary, I think it is something to avoid. Imagine letting a single person ground all space launches for 9 years. And all the pollution that adds to the atmosphere. All the junk landing on people’s farms or houses.
I doesn’t work that way. I dislike Elon as much as the next sane person but we don’t need to invent new reasons to dislike him on top of all of the bad reasons that exist.
What evidence do you have? I’m going of of what experts are saying on the fediverse:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacexs-starlink-could-cause-cascades-of-space-junk/
It does work this way, and Starlink is waging a PR campaign that it’s no big deal.
invest in community run broadband instead
Yes, but the surge is for Ukraine and Europe is gearing up to defend itself. It’s easier for Ruzzia to take out community broadband than it is satellites in orbit around earth.
And it’s harder to do both at once.
I didn’t read the article but I’d bet the “why” is because it’s been on the news and people think it’s an easy way to make a quick buck. However, these people are amateurs - when it’s in the news you’re already too late.
This is why I will never be rich. I never see business opportunities to buy tons of stock and act upon them.
You also need a ton of money to invest or you’re just getting pocket change.
Even if I would see them I probably wouldn’t have enough money to benefit of of them
Of course it did, are there any programmes clean up space junk ?
People neglect that problem. There is so much garbage flying out there at such high speeds that unless something is done, we will never be able to have functional satellites or space launches again.
Elon’s StarLink WILL accelerate the Kessler syndrome, also reminder that the Nazi literally put a tesla-sized space-junk in space
I actually remember that. When I saw the car in space I thought it was a reference to the 1980 movie Heavy Metal. This was when I first learned about Elon.
Good. Fuck Starlink.
Sat internet is so overhyped. As it’s limited by physics cell towers will always outperform them. Simple as that.
- cities - cables and 5g
- country side - 4g and cables in high concentration areas
- middle of nowhere or war zones - low orbit sats.
This is purely a security issue not a consumer one.
Spoken like a true spoiled city person Good luck getting the necessary infrastructure built (cables, towers, et al) to really remote places. It’s probably more expensive in the long run than having a satellite constellation.
Good luck? Most of the world is already there. I had 3g in deep jungles of Thailand last weekend and even in the most remote places in China have wire these days.
The main point is that sat is limited by physics so cell towers and wire are upgrades over sat so it makes much more sense to start with better technology now as we’ll never need less connection.
And wires are not bound by physics? To run cables over such long distances you have to boost the signal at periodic distances to avoid voltage drops and noise
If we can figure out how to put them on the bottom of the ocean and pipelines over just about any terrain, I think we can figure this out
Yes and we can also use a solution which requires absolutely no cables and digging at all, and that doesn’t disrupt any natural environments and occupies land.
And yes I’m aware of the impact satellites have on the atmosphere. There’s no free lunch.
Because building space ports and rocket launches have 0 impact as well.
But you acknowledge this, so what’s your point? Why pay a techno billionaire when we can publicly fund cables way cheaper and more friendly?
Oh I’m all for Musk to eat shit. I was arguing that satellites are better, not starlink in particular. Lemmy seems to have issues separating their (valid) hate for muskrat with some of his companies or related technologies. And OP was arguing that cell towers are an improvement over satellites? Wth
Why can’t we have a publicly funded satellite constellation?
Idk i live in a country where we have wifi in some forests and free wifi in every large city. And we’re an ex soviet shithole.
Americans honestly think their shitty infrastructure is the best in the world.
Infrastructure can be a real problem in some places.
I’m currently on a mountain and since they upgraded to a hybrid satellite/cable system the speeds have skyrocketed. Laying cable/towers is just not viable, especially with dense rock peaks blocking line of sight.
Also I have coworkers in Nigeria who lose internet multiple times a day (and often don’t have the bandwidth for a video call) but most of them have bitten the bullet and paid the high up-front cost to get starlink at home. And now can do HD video calls with zero interruption (unless they have power issues, but that’s a whole other thing).
So I think there’s a lot of use-cases for sattelite, especially for people who aren’t considered worth the investment in non-sattelite infrastructure.
It’s just unfortunate that yeah, space junk is going to one day (suddenly) be a massive problem.
Edit: ah I may have replied to the wrong comment
