FCC Denies Starlink Low-Orbit Bid for Lower Latency

https://spectrum.ieee.org/starlink-vleo-below-iss

by bluish29 • 2 years ago

46 73 2 years ago

spectrum.ieee.org

Seems kind of odd that the FCC is basing their decision on safety in those orbits rather than something radio or communication based. I assume someone has to enforce that limit, but I'd have thought it'd be the FAA.

NovemberWhiskey• 2 years ago

The FCC perspective is that issues like orbital debris mitigation fall within its remit of understanding whether the public interest is appropriately served by authorizing a particular use of the spectrum; which seems reasonable to me.

vmfunction• 2 years ago

Whoever solves the orbital debris issue will be more important than Gates, Steve and Musk combined! It is a real issues, and nobody has a properly solution. Before we launch a bunch of tech into space, let's figure out how to do that. So we don't turn or orbit like the landfill here on earth.

osigurdson2• 2 years ago

The FCC's job is to keep the space station safe.

voxadam• 2 years ago

Isn't it that more the FAA's job? I suppose if were chiefly talking about keeping the station and it's occupants safe from being harmed by an intentional radiator[0] I could see it being the purview of FCC. In this case it seems like what's of concern is the possibility of an orbital collision, that sounds like the FAA's bailiwick to me.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_radiator

h4kor2• 2 years ago

It's still a mystery to me how building a mega constellation of satellites is more achievable than burrowing some fibers and building cell towers.

The only application I see where Starlink is preferred to "traditional" communication system is warfare.

redeeman• 2 years ago

those things needs all sorts of permits and interactions with governments. This illuminates the true cost of such

lupusreal3• 2 years ago

Turns out that putting things in space isn't really all that expensive, once you move past the Old Space models.

stickfigure2• 2 years ago

You vastly underestimate the scale required to serve a large country like the US with cell towers. Maybe in Kansas sure, but hilly areas block line of sight.

I live an hour from SF and I don't have cell service in my house. I can make/receive calls because of Starlink.

kredd• 2 years ago

I’m actually curious what’s the percentage of people not covered by cell reception in USA vs rural areas of other big countries like China and Russia. I know in Canada it’s somewhat similar, but people who live in northern Ontario/BC in tiny towns still have decent cell reception. Not everywhere, but still.

I could see governments with more top-down approach would be able to complete “everyone gets covered” mission much easier than US/Canada. A lot of money burning since there is no/little profitability, but I could see it being a greater good for the citizens.

op00to• 2 years ago

Can you get land line service? When was your house built?

3D30497420• 2 years ago

Similar reasons why flying can be better than ground based methods. There are lots of obstacles to putting in roads/tracks/etc. (existing structures, mountains, rivers/lakes/oceans, complex jurisdictions, and so on).

ClumsyPilot• 2 years ago

My friends in a village in Romania has gigabit internet. This is literally a first world problem, with mad permitting, and land ownership obscured through shell companies, etc. in UK it’s illegal to put up a cell tower over 20 meters in height. People submit objections to planning permission for underground cables, claiming they will ruin the landscape. Solar panels get noise complaints.

On warfare, it’s possibly the opposite - every major nation has ASAT missiles, and you don’t need to shoot down thousands - destroying just a small fraction will fill LEO with hypersonic debris and turn all remaining satellites into Swiss cheese.

nippoo• 2 years ago

The US isn't the only country in the world, either. Starlink has revolutionised communications at sea, in the air, and in countries where "burrowing some fibres" is nigh on impossible.

h4kor2• 2 years ago

The US (and Germany where I'm from) seem to be the exception. Most countries have virtually complete coverage.

krisoft• 2 years ago

still a mystery to me how building a mega constellation of satellites is more achievable than burrowing some fibers and building cell towers

To get permission to build the mega constellation you need to convince a few regulatory agencies. To burrow fibers and building cell towers you need to convince and appease every local authority and land owner who is in your way.

couchand4• 2 years ago

Worst possible future this one. The brightest minds are all trying to figure out how to speedrun through the previous generation's Chesterton's fences.

account422• 2 years ago

Right but it shouldn't be this easy to pollute the sky.

VHRanger• 2 years ago

There's a bunch of stuff in the way when installing fiber. Also humans telling you you can't build there.

Starlink also makes sense for rural uses.

somenameforme2• 2 years ago

Oh my friend, you should step into the country sometime! The US, alone, is 105,847,090,000,000 square feet. I used that awkward unit because it's easy to visualize. Not that we can visualize or even really imagine a hundred trillion, other than that it's just absurdly stupidly vast. Covering all of that region (or even just the parts with a human within a reasonable distance) with towers and wires is an absolutely massive undertaking.

This is why, to this day, many places in America still lack access to high speed internet. And then when a tower goes down, or a wire gets cut - it's a major issue that will result in downtime and require costly maintenance. By contrast a relatively small number of satellites can provide coverage to this entire area. And when a satellite goes down, it's not a problem at all - it's a perfectly normal part of the system, and is seamlessly replaced by another instantly. And all of this is just for one country! Starlink covers the entire globe meaning regardless of the state of the country you live in, you can get access to reliable high speed internet.

cma2• 2 years ago

Ultimately everywhere that has wired power should be able to get fiber, if right of ways were reasonable.

Retric5• 2 years ago

You just included a lot of land nobody lives on in that number.

The US only has 4.09 million miles of road, that’s roughly how much fiber you need to get it to everyone’s driveway. At ~1-10$ a foot we’re talking ~20-200billion dollars etc and most of it’s already in the ground or dangling from utility poles.

We don’t have fiber everywhere because we didn’t mandate it the way we mandated electricity or phone lines to every home. It was billions of subsidies without sufficient strings so of course companies only built the most profitable networks.

ftth_finland3• 2 years ago

This is a silly argument.

The US is about the same size as Europe.

Size is not a reason why the US has lack of access to high speed internet.

this15testingg• 2 years ago

coverage to an entire area is either via "small number of satellites" in geostationary orbits or massive amounts of satellites for low earth orbits, you cannot have both.

"Just replaced by another" is massively oversimplifying every aspect of this, not just the act of putting an object in orbit, but also the coordination of that many MOVING satellites, their fuel levels / end-of-life procedures, all the ground infrastructure needed to support it, and the total amount of energy that this system requires (both on the side of the service providers and users).

Connecting rural or places without internet is not a technical problem, like everything in the world we built it is an issue of priorities. Starlink was not created "for the good of the farmer".

izacus• 2 years ago

So how did this great rich nation, leader of the free world, owner of the largest army, manage to get cables to all those imperial square feet of people for power, telephone and water and is now in 2024 at the height of its power incapable of getting a much thinner cable in the same direction?

What happened in the last generation that you just so easily buy this cheap copout of "oh no, the whole nation is big and we now can't even cover a small state"?

dzhiurgis• 2 years ago

Satellites got cheaper and land work became more expensive

panick21_2• 2 years ago

only application I see

You have never seen a ship or a plane before? Are you just perilously saying nonsense?

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF• 2 years ago

More generously, those examples just hadn’t come to mind when they were writing their comment.

Vespasian• 2 years ago

A company I know, uses it to build out internet on inside industrial construction sites. Even if the basic infrastructure like power is there, sufficient internet often isn't (yet).

Much easier to setup a few starlink terminals and/or LTE antennas on the roof/container and temporarily bolt a few wifi router to the ceiling than run cables all around.

Ekaros• 2 years ago

Exactly LTE or 5G... If there is enough demand, supplying that should be reasonable enough if the system wasn't entirely broken. And if there was no demand, well there would not be enough paying customers either...

randomcarbloke• 2 years ago

It's still a mystery to me how building a mega constellation of satellites is more achievable than burrowing some fibers and building cell towers.

NIMBYs is why

notquiteright• 2 years ago

Yet the US spends a greater amount EVERY year on building fiber into ever more remote areas (between FCC and NTIA programs, over $10 billion per year) than it has cost Starlink TOTAL to build a network that covers the entire country. Starlink needs more satellites to increase the max number of subscribers they can support, but their costs are actually going down.

Digging trenches in the ground is expensive. It’s a big country. You need immense amounts labor and at the end of the day, you just have a barely profitable fiber line, if that. Many of the new fiber lines will only survive on further government subsidies. Meanwhile, Elon builds a spaceship to launch satellites and people pay him handsomely for access to it. That’s not to mention that construction is heavily unionized, requires locality by locality planning permission and rights of way, etc.

idiotsecant2• 2 years ago

Let me resolve that confusion for you. Its because there's not enough money in rural fiber. Its not worth it or someone would have already done it.

account422• 2 years ago

There is also not enough money in rural powerlines or rural roads yet somehow we manage to build those.

wkat4242• 2 years ago

It's not a replacement for land-based connectivity. The available bandwidth will not permit the same density (by far) nor cell coverage indoors.

This is for the more rural areas, or downright remote ones.

lupusreal3• 2 years ago

The ISS will be gone in a few years anyway, so this problem should sort itself out.

plopz• 2 years ago

It's not even clear that the ISS is the issue, that's just the opinion of one dude from the UK. It's a very strange article.

wtfwhateven• 2 years ago

It's quoted in the article in the first paragraph and is mentioned on page 16 of the order that is linked in the article...

frumiousirc• 2 years ago

Nobody seems to be talking about the main point. Latency.

very low earth orbits (VLEO) ranging from 340 to 360 kilometers
Starlink currently has nearly 6000 satellites orbiting at around 550 kilometers
its service ... with average latencies ... over 30 milliseconds at best, and double that at peak times.

What is unsaid in the article is how much of that latency is due to time of flight and how much is due to buffers and processing inside a satellite.

The stated fact that the latency "doubles at peak times" implies that some portion of the stated 30ms is not time of flight So how much is actually due to time of flight? One of the linked articles claims:

8 ms is the absolute minimum latency for a satellite at 550 km

When a satellite is exactly above head the round trip time at the speed of light is a bit shy of 4ms. This "8ms" must be some average over a minimum solid angle that still allows for an acceptable level of signal reception. It is a reasonable number.

Lowering to VLEO gives the above head latency of a bit over 2ms. Being lower, the solid angle for reception is less. They may actually need in total more satellites than at higher orbits. In any case, the average would probably be something less than the 2x from the 550km case. But, let's say "4ms" compared to "8ms".

So, by going to VLEO, the best they can do is knock off about 4ms from their "30ms at best". It seems that polluting VLEO will not even achieve "The biggest single goal for Starlink from a technical standpoint is to get the mean latency below 20 milliseconds," said Elon Musk.

There is some other reason for pushing into VLEO than reducing latency.

pid-1• 2 years ago

Maybe closer to earth -> better signal -> less processing needed / cheaper satellites? I don't even work with RF so this is baseless guessing.

Tuna-Fish• 2 years ago

You seem to only consider the roundtrip to the satellite and back. To talk to anything other than the satellite itself, you need to double that. The lowest allowed angle to the horizon is 25°. This makes the worst-case RTT for talking to someone near you on the ground 17ms.

They may actually need in total more satellites than at higher orbits.

This is a desirable feature. There are limits on how much bandwidth they can push through a single satellite, and minimum allowed angular separations between two satellites the same place can be talking to. Lower orbit allow larger constellations, because the ground stations cumulatively have "more sky".

The primary reason to push for VLEO is that it is a safer orbit. As a general rule, everyone is better off the lower large constellations are, because in case of a worst-case collision the debris will deorbit faster. It's also better for astronomy.

wonderwonder• 2 years ago

How does the FCC have jurisdiction in space? If one was to say its because signals are being sent back to the US, fair enough but why would the point of origin of the satellite from earth come into play. At what point does their jurisdiction end?

Genuine questions

inemesitaffia2• 2 years ago

Jurisdiction inherited from the ITU

FCC Denies Starlink Low-Orbit Bid for Lower Latency

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