| ▲ | Retric 18 hours ago |
| It’s not going to work inside buildings, and they would need to charge you a fairly astronomical fee per minute. However, a Starlink mini dish can let you cheaply make calls from basically anywhere with some minor setup. |
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| ▲ | christophilus 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > astronomical fee |
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| ▲ | inglor_cz 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Compared to what? Traditional satellite phone corporations used to charge something like 8 USD/min. | | |
| ▲ | Retric 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Compared to leveraging the existing cellular networks and using satellites for rare edge cases. ~8$/minute or say 1$/minute averages out to a more reasonable number when less than 5% of calls use it. | | |
| ▲ | inglor_cz 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not for somebody whose job is outside the existing networks, such as sailors. | | |
| ▲ | Retric 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sailors can make calls using the ships Wi-Fi via full sized Starlink dishes, they need coverage on land. But even ignoring that the contention is low in the middle of the ocean and satellites have hardware either way, driving down the market rate for calls at sea. | | |
| ▲ | PaulDavisThe1st 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | The setup cost for Starlink on a boat is still massively higher than on land. | | |
| ▲ | dasv 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, but compared to the setup for equivalent satellite services it is very cheap. The Inmarsat antennas need active compensation and they sit inside big radomes, while the Starlink antennas are smaller and do not need to move thanks to being phased arrays. The bandwidth, latency and stability that Starlink has is also leagues better than geosynch based solutions, for a much lower monthly price. Even without considering the better performance, the price makes it viable now to have a internet connections in places it did not make financial sense before. | |
| ▲ | Retric 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 250$/month gets you 50GB/month on the open ocean and unlimited on waterways, higher demand is cheaper per GB ex: 1TB for 1,000$/month. https://www.starlink.com/boats Calls are ~0.75 MB/minute allowing a 24/7 conversion for for a full month for 250$, or more realistically mostly sending other kinds of data and a sub cent per minute opportunity cost for using that data on calls. The actual hardware installation is relatively trivial compared to operating a boat. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway2037 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | Is the reason that Starlink charges so much more for boats is low competition? Or is there something obviously much more complex / expensive about beaming gigs of data from space over the ocean vs land? I don't write this post with any spite; I am genuinely curious. | | |
| ▲ | Retric 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Starlink is normally a single hop from a home to a satellite and then down to a base station hooked up to fiber. To work over the ocean you pass messages between satellites potentially several hops and then eventually down to a base station, but that’s inherently constrained as with all mess topologies you get far less bandwidth than initially seems possible. So in part it’s overhead to deal with inefficiencies and in part it’s a limited customer base for a lot of hardware, but it’s also just what the market will bare. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway2037 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Starlink is normally a single hop from a home to a satellite and then down to a base station
Is this true? If yes, how do you know it? | | |
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| ▲ | Spooky23 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It’s priced based on value. 8oz of Coke costs vary at a supermarket shelf, gas station and an airplane. |
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| ▲ | threeseed 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There are plenty of YouTube videos showing Starlink on basic sailing yachts. It takes a day at most if you want a simple setup. | | |
| ▲ | lr1970 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | My friend is a boat captain in Florida.He says that Starlink on his boat changed his life. |
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| ▲ | tomjen3 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think OP is pointing out the pun in this case. | | | |
| ▲ | jcims 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Terrestrial fees | | |
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| ▲ | ubj 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yep, definitely beyond sky-high prices :) | |
| ▲ | moffkalast 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Well it's n̵o̵t̵ rocket science. |
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| ▲ | vodkapump 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The inside buildings part would be mostly solved with VoWiFi.
At least anywhere with a network you'd be comfortable connecting to. |
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| ▲ | bilsbie 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Could future versions work in buildings? What’s the issue there? Just that it’s father away than a cell tower is? |
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| ▲ | 0xffff2 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Starlink signals are essentially line of sight right now. The bump up in power to penetrate even a single layer of drywall is almost certainly way outside the power budget of a Starlink satellite. | |
| ▲ | jazzyjackson 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Whether a material is opaque to it. Buildings are transparent to lower frequency radio. Imagine that the satellites transmitted in visible light, doesnt really matter how powerful it is if you're in a room with no windows. |
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| ▲ | ChocolateGod 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Could Starlink receivers not act as a mesh like network and broadcast LTE themselves, gaining inside coverage. |
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| ▲ | Retric 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | Starlink is used in low density areas. You could setup LTE towers at a remote mine and use Starlink for the back haul, but for their customers using WiFi calling gives the same benefit without extra hardware. |
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| ▲ | User23 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| My 5g doesn't work inside of many buildings. |
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| ▲ | Scoundreller 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | because providers retain their more penetrating frequencies on the 3G or 4G signal to maintain universal coverage keeping the close-by phones on 5G to ease congestion and letting the fringe sit on 3G or 4G makes sense | |
| ▲ | dotBen 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Definitely on T Mobile, then |
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