[opendtv] Re: SpaceX wants to beam Internet down to Earth. Here's how it will start.
- From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2018 08:56:37 -0500
On Feb 17, 2018, at 9:59 PM, Manfredi, Albert E
<albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Monty Solomon posted:
SpaceX wants to beam Internet down to Earth. Here's how it will start.
The company is launching its first test satellites on Sunday.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2018/02/16/spacex-wants-to-beam-internet-down-to-earth-heres-how-itll-start/
We've seen this before, recently, and my knee-jerk reaction is and was, look
up Teledesic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/04/business/can-craig-mccaw-keep-his-vision-of-teledesic-from-crashing.html
We're up against the same issues, only of course, 18-20 years later, way more
bandwidth is required.
What issues are we still up against Bert?
Is there a shortage of bandwidth?
I just posted an article about new technologies that may open up the Terahertz
spectrum. Not many years ago we were still struggling to deliver TV pictures
reliably via UHF. We are now starting to deploy millimeter wave 5G products to
the masses.
The problem with telegenic was obvious - the cost to launch the satellites.
Somehow, Bert has completely missed the fact that Space-X has reduced the cost
to launch satellites by a factor of ten, if not more. And Bert also ignores the
fact that there are other near earth ISP proposals that use existing
constellations of what? Commercial airliners that fill the sky’s...
The economic problem, I think, is not so easy to solve. To keep these schemes
affordable, it becomes virtually impossible to compete against cabled
broadband, offering the same level of service at comparable price, in high
density locations. So the answer that comes back is always, yes, but this
would be for rural or extreme rural areas. And the answer to that is, how to
make it affordable? Rural and extreme rural are always the problem, because
there aren't enough people, rich people, to generate the revenues. And we
have to expect that just as bandwidth demands grew enormously, from
Teledesic's 2000 timeframe to today, the constellation of satellites sent up
today would be unlikely to meet the demands a few year down the road.
You were doing good Bert, until you blew it with your conclusion. The main
reason that satellite ISP services are not in wide use in rural areas is
latency, not spectrum availability. When you sole this problem - i.e. near
earth constellations - you provide another viable solution for rural broadband.
It’s not like LEOS are the only technology being developed to deal with the
economics or low density population areas.
Back when, McCaw presented his plan based on how many equivalents of
telephone lines (each 64 kb/s) the constellation would offer. To some, it
sounded impressive, in those terms. Today, "thousands" of telephone line
equivalents don't impress anyone. Just one household needs at least 390 of
those telephone lines, for 25 Mb/s broadband, and even that is becoming
eclipsed in a hurry. So, the scheme is primarily to serve sparsely populated
areas, where the potential revenues are not, and then you have to compare it
with terrestrial wireless alternatives. Not a slam dunk.
What’s the end game here Bert?
When will everyone have enough bandwidth?
I have enough for everything I need today, and I’m nowhere close to gigabit
service. No doubt, when everyone has gigabit service and virtually all TV
entertainment is delivered over the Internet, there will be new applications
that will gobble up massive amounts of bandwidth. There’s a lot of talk about
the Internet Of Things, but we are not talking about delivering 4K UHDTV
to/from the thermostat...
Based on my DirecTV Now service, we’re still struggling to provide the QOS
necessary to replace the legacy infrastructures you cite, like cable. But this
too is just a matter of evolution and investment in infrastructure.
Then again, for specialty and high cost service, ships at sea, military
applications, there's always the Iridium example. It was meant to be
satellite-based cell phone service. Same economic problems as Teledesic, the
inability to offer affordable service to the average mortal, but it was
bought out and is used for specialty applications.
You just made the case for LEOS as a component of the networks of networks we
know as “the internet.”
Regards
Craig
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