To be fair, the network being crushed by high demand is extremely unsurprising. Cellular networks have always had this problem in dense areas, where it’s no way you’re reaching the advertised speed. This is mainly due to the available channels being shared by everyone in a relatively large area, connected to the same cell. Which is mitigated somewhat by setting up more cells with shorter range for a higher cell density in cities.
How could a satellite based network ever scale? Where you have what, a handful available cells to cover an entire state?
I thought the whole point of this service was to provide internet to places that traditional services couldn’t reach. Meaning they wouldn’t be over populated because those people already have good internet.
Now that I think it through, there’s no way that demographic is generating enough money to make this work.
That would be a reasonable expectation, but I want to remember this being talked about as a revolution for internet in the US; how much better it would be compared to shitty cable providers and how you would get Gigabit speeds without having to run fibre.
Sure, it looked impressive early on, but a wireless system like this will always degrade the more customers they get.
I also remember it was cautioned early on that they had limited bandwidth and so focused on rural areas and a backup for cell phones. For rural areas this is better than having to run fiber (rural areas typically didn’t have cable, though they were running fiber close enough to get DSL - better than nothing but very slow)
The whole point is war not helping consumers. Wire and cell towers are already not only cheaper but straight up better in every measure: latency, bandwidth, cost, maintenance, deployment, maturity.
You could literally cover entire land mass of earth for space x valuation with fiber and cell towers and still have left over money to do the ocean too.
The sats pass by every location, because of physics they circle the globe constantly rapidly. They can’t only operate in rural areas. So you will have some people in cities use it just not very much.
To be fair, the network being crushed by high demand is extremely unsurprising. Cellular networks have always had this problem in dense areas, where it’s no way you’re reaching the advertised speed. This is mainly due to the available channels being shared by everyone in a relatively large area, connected to the same cell. Which is mitigated somewhat by setting up more cells with shorter range for a higher cell density in cities.
How could a satellite based network ever scale? Where you have what, a handful available cells to cover an entire state?
I thought the whole point of this service was to provide internet to places that traditional services couldn’t reach. Meaning they wouldn’t be over populated because those people already have good internet.
Now that I think it through, there’s no way that demographic is generating enough money to make this work.
Whoops?
That would be a reasonable expectation, but I want to remember this being talked about as a revolution for internet in the US; how much better it would be compared to shitty cable providers and how you would get Gigabit speeds without having to run fibre.
Sure, it looked impressive early on, but a wireless system like this will always degrade the more customers they get.
I also remember it was cautioned early on that they had limited bandwidth and so focused on rural areas and a backup for cell phones. For rural areas this is better than having to run fiber (rural areas typically didn’t have cable, though they were running fiber close enough to get DSL - better than nothing but very slow)
The whole point is war not helping consumers. Wire and cell towers are already not only cheaper but straight up better in every measure: latency, bandwidth, cost, maintenance, deployment, maturity.
You could literally cover entire land mass of earth for space x valuation with fiber and cell towers and still have left over money to do the ocean too.
The sats pass by every location, because of physics they circle the globe constantly rapidly. They can’t only operate in rural areas. So you will have some people in cities use it just not very much.