Cellular Starlink expands to support IoT devices

https://me.pcmag.com/en/networking/31452/spacexs-cellular-starlink-expands-to-support-iot-devices

by teleforce • 12 months ago

88 76 12 months ago

me.pcmag.com

mvid• 12 months ago

So you won’t even be able to isolate devices to your home network anymore, they will be phoning home by satellite

cma• 12 months ago

If anyone walks past your house with a device in the same bluetooth p2p network as your device this is already true (Amazon sidewalk). This could give them a more uninterrupted connection though.

rightbyte• 12 months ago

I think these e.g. Verizon guest wifi:s might be used to try to spy on us too.

Spooky23• 12 months ago

Regular companies are gonna need SCIFs.

CamperBob2• 12 months ago

Never mind corporations, your next 'smart TV' will need a SCIF.

wkat42427• 12 months ago

It won't work very well indoors anyway. If at all.

Amazon sidewalk is a much bigger threat in this regard. I'm really glad we don't have this in Europe.

hypeatei• 12 months ago

I'm sure this costs money to use, just like regular cell service would for the same theoretical IoT device. That's probably the main barrier to having its own network.

pixl97• 12 months ago

I mean, if you're looking to spy on or attack someone with wealth it's probably well worth it for some organizations.

fc417fc8025• 12 months ago

Phoning home with a few packets here and there via the cell network is quite cheap. An adversary, pardon I mean OEM, doesn't need to upload 4k video to gain value here.

LeoPanthera• 12 months ago

I'm pretty sure it doesn't work indoors.

eddythompson80• 12 months ago

That's already possible, it's just expensive. Remember when the kindles[1] used to have the option for built-in 2G/3G connectivity "for life" to download books from Amazon that you never had to sign up for or maintain or pay for. Until networks dropped support for 2G and 3G in 2021.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

birdman3131• 12 months ago

So that started out as unlimited. After people abused it to tether it got dropped to like 50mb of non amazon traffic a month.

Gigachad• 12 months ago

For small amounts of data transmit only you can do LoRawan with The Things Network for free.

paradox460• 12 months ago

I've explicitly bought all my Kindles with that feature. Amazon cheaped out a few years ago and it barely works on my 3rd Gen Oasis, which uses LTE

_Algernon_• 12 months ago

Future homes will have built in Faraday cages.

contingencies4• 12 months ago

Awesome insight.

toast03• 12 months ago

If you've got stucco siding and radiant insulation in your attic, you've got the home of the future.

MisterBiggs• 12 months ago

I think more worrying is devices mesh networking with devices owned by your neighbors.

wkat42427• 12 months ago

Exactly, like Amazon sidewalk. They market it as an easy configuration feature but it can also be used for tracking and telemetry. So your smart TV can call home even when you don't connect your own WiFi.

fh67• 12 months ago

It it actually using starlink or the old swarm.space system that supported 'off the shelf' antenna

KaiserPro• 12 months ago

Good question, I imagine its using m2m 4g if its "off the shelf"

wkat42427• 12 months ago

Swarm used pretty big antennas (due to a much lower wavelength) on the ground segment. It was pretty impractical. And that frequency, starlink sats are not capable of it.

Swarm's network was very incomplete, there were hours of no coverage at all. I think that they just bought it to remove a potential competitor.

cozzyd2• 12 months ago

Yeah but one rug pull, shame on you...

sharpshadow• 12 months ago

More scrap parts for Russian drones.

fc417fc8025• 12 months ago

Does this type of satellite link provide the operator with the ability to derive fine grained location data the way the terrestrial cell network does? If not, would using such a network provide a significant increase in end user privacy?

lupusreal2• 12 months ago

Starlink by the nature of how it works, knows exactly where receivers are. Perhaps even more accurately than GPS.

fc417fc8025• 12 months ago

Would you care to elaborate? I thought GPS required diffing extremely high resolution clock signals. Meanwhile 5G has beam steering.

DecentShoes2• 12 months ago

Are you sure? I know the dish needs to know where the satellite is, but that doesn't mean the satellite needs to know where the dish is...

ianburrell• 12 months ago

This isn't regular Starlink, it is Direct-to-Cell. Direct-to-Cell uses regular LTE/5G. There is no way for the phone to tell the satellite where it is.

Direct-to-Cell probably can't resolve smaller than the cell. I found mixed results if they use the 25 mi cells or if they use the whole dish, hundreds of miles.

oatmeal_croc• 12 months ago

The starlink terminal literally has GPS - so Starlink already knows the location - whether it needs to get more accurate coordinates using beamforming is a question.

wmf2• 12 months ago

I assume no. Regular Starlink beams are 15 miles wide. I don't know if DTC uses the same size or wider beams.

wkat42427• 12 months ago

Yes but its not just about the beam. Signal timing can be used for more precise location. Even with one sat receiving the signal. Because they move so fast, much faster than the user could possibly move. So it basically could triangulate with itself as the other receivers. And there's also Doppler like the other poster mentioned.

I don't know if they actually do this, I guess not. And it would not be simple to do. But I'm sure it can be done. There's enough information available.

testing22321• 12 months ago

Elon said they could use the sats to make a GPS like service in the future, it’s just not a priority right now.

inemesitaffia3• 12 months ago

It's already done for the regular receivers.

But this is a different service.

WhereIsTheTruth2• 12 months ago

Starlink is a DoD front, so.. privacy? lol

bigyabai2• 12 months ago

So is Tor and Ghidra, if we're being pedantic. And both of those are very private.

phendrenad2• 12 months ago

They say when smoke signals were invented, someone in the comment section asked about privacy concerns.

contingencies4• 12 months ago

monitor beehives in remote areas

The European honey bee is not a native species in New Zealand or Australia. Well meaning naive people think hosting bees is a great idea. The reality is it robs the native insect population of a food source.

nosignono2• 12 months ago

It's more complex than that. That's like saying planting a garden robs the local ecosystem. Maybe! Maybe not!

Native pollinators have different life cycles and different plants they evolved to get food from. Honeybees, likewise, will only visit some flowering plants. That may increase competition for scarce resources, or it may not.

You are correct that honeybees are non-native, and that honeybees do draw a few lbs of nectar and pollen every day from the environment (up to a 3 mile radius from their hive), but it's unclear how much of that nectar and pollen is surplus from the plants or removed such that local bees experience pressure.

contingencies4• 12 months ago

Planting a garden does rob the local ecosystem. Even purely native gardens lack the diversity, in particular mycodiversity, of undisturbed areas. While long term native planting can move an area back toward endemic biodiversity, it is rarely or never achieved (I'm not aware of any well-cited claims to the contrary).

It is similarly naive to view the introduction of a species through the lens of pollen quantity being 'surplus' or 'enough'. The presence of rival pollinators affects native insects whether or not there is a shortage of food - for example by discouraging presence, by occupying nesting sites, by altering endemic predation webs, and similar.

everfrustrated• 12 months ago

The article isn't very clear but this seems to be standard fixed IoT device using a mobile SIM card is able to communicate via Starlink's mobile support.

Not sure why this is news. Starlink is known to be rolling out mobile support to certain regions. Due to spectrum licencing this is working with local telcos not a Starlink retailed service.

btown• 12 months ago

IoT makes a lot of sense for a satellite-based network. If some amount of recorded data can be buffered on device, it can be enqueued to upload during a period of non-peak traffic, essentially using "spot bandwidth," and benefit from Starlink's extensive coverage at a much lower cost than consumer on-demand applications. Indeed, the satellite could instruct transmitters on their allocated time-slices far ahead of time, reducing round-trips and negotiation.

Now, maybe all of this is already such a trivial amount of bandwidth that it's barely a rounding error to save it - but the possibilities it opens up for telemetry in remote regions are fascinating.

cjrp• 12 months ago

Isn't power consumption an issue though?

thatoneguy• 12 months ago

It doesn't take a lot of juice to send signals straight up. Iridium has been using transceivers to do similar IoT things for decades and my old Inmarsat satphone used a fraction of a watt to get my voice up to geosynchronous orbit just so someone standing next to me on an outdoor landing could hear a message from space.

Brajeshwar• 12 months ago

There is no mention of Swarm. I think, part of this is what came from the acquisition of Swarm Technologies. Swarm manufactures and operates ultra-small satellites for IoT devices.

- https://starlinkinsider.com/starlink-iot/

droneship• 12 months ago

Starlink's official website [1] says its IoT offering uses LTE Cat 1(-bis) and Cat 4, so Swarm appears to be gone for good.

[1] https://www.starlink.com/business/direct-to-cell ("Empowering Mobile and IoT Connectivity" section)

inemesitaffia3• 12 months ago

Swarm isn't gone.

Swarm has transformed to Starlink DTC.

The satellite designer is the same person.

I believe the old spectrum is used for TT&C/PNT

tamimio• 12 months ago

I don’t see anything technical worthy in here, it feels like a promotional article, can we see some architecture, diagrams, components, some interesting stuff?

Cellular Starlink expands to support IoT devices

Related Stories