Remix clone Hacker News

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 10 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?

	▲	mike_hearn 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		When it launched there was no inter-satellite connectivity at all.

▲ 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.

▲ threeseed 16 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.