On Fri, 7 Apr 2023, Ulrich Speidel via Starlink wrote:
Remember how cellphone networks evolve: You start with a few towers in high spots using high power to get wide area coverage while you have few users. At this point (which corresponds largely to where Starlink is at now), spectrum isn't much of an issue (and even that is only partially true for Starlink - see Mike's excellent article on this: https://mikepuchol.com/modeling-starlink-capacity-843b2387f501). As your user base grows, you move off the hills into the valleys and lower your power so your cells become smaller and shielded from each others, because now, frequency re-use is the name of the game. You use beamforming off phased arrays in order to further separate users.So what we are seeing now is Starlink as the new kid on the block turning up with what are in analogy effectively cell towers high in the sky. Their current user base is maybe at 1/1000th (ballpark) of potential demand before growth. Population growth on this planet alone adds a lot more potential users a day than Starlink does. So what options does Starlink have to scale? Unlike a terrestrial network operator, Starlink can't really come down all that far from their "space hills" without burning their satellites up in the atmosphere more quickly. "Space hills" also consist of vacuum only, which unlike earthly hills can't separate base stations by blocking signal. The distance from/to space also requires vastly larger phased array antennas for the same spot beam coverage area contour on the ground. It also places limits on transmit EIRP both ways. Larger antennas and solar arrays constrain the number of satellites that can be launched at a time, making constellation building and replacement harder.
All of this is correct, I will note that in the Starlink plans, there are plans to put a layer of satellites at a sigificantly lower altitude.
By launching 10x as many satellites, and each one being able to handle 10x the data, they _may_ get to 100x, but that is really going to be pushing it. (note that this is for ~10x the number of satellites lauched by everyone other than SpaceX since Sputnik)
If you can get fiber, it's always going to be better than a wireless option, DSL is threatened by Starlink in many suburbs, cablemodems depend so much on the ISP it's hard to say
David Lang
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