This could be a game changer. Direct Starlink/Cellular smartphones.

[transmaster]

In light of the disaster in North West North Carolina and South West Georgia were all communications was cut off save for Amateur radio operators or those with iPhones with their emergency satellite texting. The death toll is at least 500 souls and reports I am hearing via my Amateur radio contacts in the area say it is likely to go over a 1000. Elon Musk is in testing with T-Mobile a Direct Starlink system. The FCC has given Starlink and T-Mobile an authorization to test it. If I can get a iPhone/iPad with a direct satellite connection it would be a no brainer in Wyoming were there are countless square miles with zero cellular service. I experienced this when my 14 Pro Max informed me that it had enabled satcom texting because it had no cellular signal.

 

[transmaster]

I have a sneaking hunch that if this service is approved the ground based ISP's are going to sue big time.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Personally, I devoutly hope that it isn't approved.

 

[transmaster]

Personally, I devoutly hope that it isn't approved.

Pray tell why not? Living in Wyoming that has large areas in the wild with zero cellular service it would be very nice to have a reliable connection. This would only be enabled in the States, and its possessions anyway. The Block 2 Starlink satellites would have a Cellular radio incorporated in to it. This is good that means that whatever platform you use can communicate through it.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Pray tell why not? Living in Wyoming that has large areas in the wild with zero cellular service it would be very nice to have a reliable connection.

I'm not American.

This would only be enabled in the States, and its possessions anyway.

Indeed.

If true, perhaps I may consider conceding this point.

The Block 2 Starlink satellites would have a Cellular radio incorporated in to it. This is good that means that whatever platform you use can communicate through it.

I detest, - in fact, I loathe - Elon Musk, and believe that he holds far too much unaccountable power in our world.

Personally, I would be most concerned at arrangements that grant him yet more.

 

[rhett7660]

I'm not American.

Indeed.

If true, perhaps I may consider conceding this point.

I loathe Elon Musk, and believe that he holds far too much unaccountable power in our world.

Personally, I would be most concerned at arrangements that grant him yet more.

Somehow I knew this was the reason... lol.

I hope this does go through... This would be huge for a lot of areas that are not covered by the big two/three cellular companies.

 

[icanhazmac]

Pray tell why not?

Run for your lives!!!!

I'm on board, sounds like it could be useful.

 

[transmaster]

I'm not American.

Indeed.

If true, perhaps I may consider conceding this point.

I loathe Elon Musk, and believe that he holds far too much unaccountable power in our world.

Personally, I would be most concerned at arrangements that grant him yet more.

I kind of figured you hated Elon Musk, I suppose in their day you would have hated Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla. Ask the people in North West NC, and South West GA what they think of Elon. He has SpaceX engineers installing Starlink systems everywhere, he is not charging anything for it and they have free service until things recover.

 

[GusBougadis]

I think they’re will be a third mobile OS. X or Tesla phone. Elon had dinner with the Samsung CEO a month ago. There’s rumours that the phone will run a super app X. Like in china, believe everything runs on a we chat app. Also running star link for connectivity, I read a month or two ago that it may be mobile ready by October.

 

[TokyoKiller]

I kind of figured you hated Elon Musk, I suppose in their day you would have hated Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla. Ask the people in North West NC, and South West GA what they think of Elon. He has SpaceX engineers installing Starlink systems everywhere, he is not charging anything for it and they have free service until things recover.

Nothing is ever free my guy

 

[GusBougadis]

If a starlink plan is cheaper than my current carrier. I will definitely look into it . I will possibly buy the rumoured X phone too, as a second device.

 

[klasma]

This can only work at low bandwidth, with direct line of sight to the sky (i.e. not inside a building or a car), and will drain the battery. Good in emergency situations, but not a game changer for general use.

 

[transmaster]

 

[Analog Kid]

If a starlink plan is cheaper than my current carrier. I will definitely look into it . I will possibly buy the rumoured X phone too, as a second device.

The question isn't only whether the plan is cheaper, but whether cheaper plans are sustainable. There's no end of examples where "disruption" has simply meant undercutting pricing of existing players long enough to choke them out and then raise the cost of the new service (either money cost, privacy cost, or cost to experience).

 

[Shirasaki]

I loathe Elon Musk, and believe that he holds far too much unaccountable power in our world.

Personally, I would be most concerned at arrangements that grant him yet more.

Given what Elon Musk is, I sincerely DO NOT want him to take over our communication entirely. That monopoly is even scarier to deal with. He is way too powerful and way too successful to be a threat to us all.

With their Starlink systems they are getting over 300 mbps connections

Which either speed will drop to something like 1-2 mbps soon or the sky will be painted with satellites 🛰️. Not only this means human will never be able to leave the Earth again, completely shuts down related research, but also means Elon Musk can suddenly control the entire world’s communication with impunity. Even US government would not be able to do anything about it.

 

[LouisPiper]

I kind of figured you hated Elon Musk, I suppose in their day you would have hated Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla. Ask the people in North West NC, and South West GA what they think of Elon. He has SpaceX engineers installing Starlink systems everywhere, he is not charging anything for it and they have free service until things recover.

Ah yes, Edison and Tesla, two famous buddies. Surely nothing untoward happened between them and everything was on the up and up.

The real soul of America is not idolizing solitary men.

 

[leman]

Starlink in a phone sounds great for emergency situations, not practical for everyday use though. I am also wondering about the size and weight impact, especially if one seeks reasonable performance. Of course, the usual caveat of this tech being owned by unstable megalomaniac Musk applies, he does not have a track record of being a reliable business partner.

For those of you living in remote areas, I am wondering why not pursue legislations that seek improving the connectivity. To me this sounds like a more sustainable long-term solution rather than relying on a private entity with a known history of random changes in direction.

 

[Ta_whirimatea]

Great that the satellites are opened up for disaster situations. Bad for ground based astronomers. Elon is a visionary & thinks outside the box. I wouldn’t put all the success of space x / Tesla / implant company purely on Elon as he has a vast work force and deserved credit should go to whoever creates up the weird new stuff. Elon gets the attention tho as he’s the quirky CEO who loves limelight. He balsed up buying twitter & lost lots of his own money.

It’s all these large tech companies, Amazon. Google, meta, apple. MS. They created their products which have become too big to be controlled by any person / organisation / country. Meta now is a disgusting pile of 🐩💩 that started out as a nice easy way to keep in contact with friends. Now it’s a datawhore grabbing everything, destroying every function & fabric of digital society. Governments can’t do anything about.

Genius’s created something but they didn’t stop to think if they should have. Result is society is ruined & everyone bickering away on devices that record every key stroke to push you with adverts / scam u once said large company gets hacked! Sad thing is kids growing up think this is societies norm so cycle will repeat & get even worse.

Days a coming when humanity will be wiped out by technology. Only person left will be Elon sitting on his mars rocket. Hmm maybe he is a genius after all 🤔

 

[Wando64]

I kind of figured you hated Elon Musk, I suppose in their day you would have hated Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla.

Please tell me you are joking.

 

[transmaster]

Please tell me you are joking.

No I am not. The AC DC war between the two was legendary.

 

[cjsuk]

Ex RF engineer that used to build things that actually went into space. Ignoring the politics which is a whole other discussion, this is a totally crap idea from an engineering perspective.

Firstly the problem is already solved for the majority of the population on the ground adequately, cheaply, reproducibly with low aggregate infrastructure costs and vendor independence. This is a net loss for society becoming dependent on something financially and logically worse.

Secondly, all space bound systems suffer from various physical effects such as rain fade, link SnR problems and interference over long paths through the atmosphere. That doesn't even cover things like channel aggregation issues and multiplexing huge quantities of signals which is an issue even on local 4G/5G systems. Making smaller microwave antennas is a massive damage amplifier for all these issues both on the transmit and receive paths.

This whole thing is the antithesis to engineering. Thus it must be marketing to push growth / stock.

 

[cjsuk]

No I am not. The AC DC war between the two was legendary.

No it wasn't. It was two idiots muck slinging. Neither were right. Neither were wrong. We use both AC and DC power transmission systems today on the planet where appropriate tradeoffs can be made. Both of them told many lies.

The mystique about Tesla really does my head in. He was a one trick wonder who spent most of the rest of his life running a grift operation on faith rather than science. Only naive people (and marketers at a car company) managed to leverage this mystique to build a cult and brand on. He was literally wrong on so so many things and died poor because the ideology collapsed.

Edit: actually that's quite appropriate for the car company 🤣 (note I owned a Model S 🤮)

 

[cjsuk]

In light of the disaster in North West North Carolina and South West Georgia were all communications was cut off save for Amateur radio operators or those with iPhones with their emergency satellite texting. The death toll is at least 500 souls and reports I am hearing via my Amateur radio contacts in the area say it is likely to go over a 1000. Elon Musk is in testing with T-Mobile a Direct Starlink system. The FCC has given Starlink and T-Mobile an authorization to test it. If I can get a iPhone/iPad with a direct satellite connection it would be a no brainer in Wyoming were there are countless square miles with zero cellular service. I experienced this when my 14 Pro Max informed me that it had enabled satcom texting because it had no cellular signal.

This is what happens when you cheap out your infrastructure. Most of the damage to comms infrastructure in the US comes from that root cause. FCC should probably be beating infra providers with a big stick here about their MTTR and T-mobile should be throwing money into redundancy and infrastructure rather than pretending this is a cheap, reliable way out of the problem...

In context, the US is just about the only place amateur radio (I have a license for ref) is still used for emergency comms.

 

[WarmWinterHat]

I kind of figured you hated Elon Musk, I suppose in their day you would have hated Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla. Ask the people in North West NC, and South West GA what they think of Elon. He has SpaceX engineers installing Starlink systems everywhere, he is not charging anything for it and they have free service until things recover.

I have some close friends in Asheville, and they dislike Musk as much today as a month ago. They like Starlink, and being where they live on the north side of town in the mountains, it's their only option, but they still hate Elon.

One can dislike the head of a company and still like the company. There is more to SpaceX than Elon.

I don't personally care if this works out or not as I carry an inReach when backpacking, but sure, why not.

 

[TPadden]

The real soul of America is not idolizing solitary men.

The real strength of America is individualism.