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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Musk will do this, Sanders can talk about it but will still need years to implement it. Free for him to suggest he will be able to do this but the problem has more chance of being solved at the technical level than the political one.

2020 will be the year for Starlink, if it really works as advertised by the time Sanders could be elected this will be a reality (or a dud).

https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-internet-ser...

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As long as it works in all weather, I agree Starink is superior to digging trenches. But if Internet goes out during storms, especially multi-day winter storms, then rural/distant areas would be better off with DSL or Fiber, even ignoring the bandwith or latency differences.

Also, Starlink is run by a single, private company. If anything happens to the company, do we really want a vast chunk of the country offline? At least with GPS we know they don’t need to be profitable. What if the shareholders don’t find Starlink worth it?

That being said, I can’t wait for Starlink myself!

I don't know if you live in a rural place but in New Hampshire, when there are storms, it can take days for electricity to come back, and then even more time for cable (there's no fiber) to come back.

Why wouldn't Starlink be an improvement over that? Just because it doesn't work during the storm?

FWIW there are other people entering the low-orbit satellite constellation internet business (though, still big companies -- but better than a single big company).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company)#Kuiper_System...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneWeb_satellite_constellation

The frequencies they're using are fairly susceptible to rain fade. You can fix that by throwing more power at your transmissions.

Couldn't Starlink benefit from relays so that receivers in non-cloudy/non-stormy areas could boost signals to cloudy areas?

That sounds like using microwave towers again.

I hope starlink succeeds too. That said, it is still important to fight back politically. I should help in the longer term and it also makes it clear to other industries with large monopolies that they may be next on the chopping block. They have had it easy for too long.

Starlink or TMobile ISP is a prerequiste for building a house where we want to build. Hopefully nobody buys the lot before we do!

Every business or municipality which has tried to go against the corrupt titans and their legion of lobbyists and bought-and-paid for congresspeople have failed at this.

Musk may have the technical ability here, but he does not possess the political ability.

Inversely, Bernie wants to get the political ability, but will not have the technical ability.

Just because Musk has starlink doesn't mean Congress won't pass a law that cleverly neuters his project in the United States to ensure that established monopolies and duopolies aren't hurt. It doesn't mean that former employees of broadband companies who fully control the regulators won't intervene on behalf of their former (and future) employer.

It's not as simple as flick a switch and turn it on, these services are heavily regulated and as we see with the current american government, it's very easy for corporations like Comcast to get former high level employees like Ajit Pai put into charge of the entire regulatory scheme, with vast power to protect established corporate interests and destroy all competition be it business or local government.

I would go so far as to say that if Donald Trump is re-elected and the regulatory capture of the FCC continues, Musk is doomed to failure. Comcast, Verizon et al has pwned the FCC, and currently the federal broadband regulators exist as a tool to protect corporate interests.

Where are you seeing 500ms latency? The whole point of starlink is to be in low earth orbit, where latency is in the low tens.

I'm not sure why you would believe Musk's grandiose proposals at this point given his abysmal success rate (Tesla vs every other promised "breakthrough").

What is abysmal with the best selling electric cars in the world?

> The Tesla Model 3 in 2019 has seen nearly 3 times more sales than the second best selling plug-in vehicle (EV) in the world, China’s top selling BAIC EU-Series.

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/12/05/tesla-model-3-13-percen...

SpaceX has now proven they can reuse first stages repeatedly, when sending spacecraft to orbit. Like no other organisation has done. They have 10 reusable first stages, some which have flown 3-4 times. Hardly abysmal.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceX/wiki/cores#wiki_.2810.29_fli...

I specifically said Tesla was a success. How's Hyperloop coming along? Or Neuralink? Or SolarCity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolarCity#Litigation_and_inves...)?

Those have nothing to do with Starlink.

They have everything to do with Musk's credibility.

There is nothing in particular wrong with Musks credibility, not all of his projects pan out, but compared to your average starter-upper he's doing pretty good, against all odds in some cases.

The one thing you can rightfully accuse him of is plugging one hole with another but so far he's managed to escape the consequences and being a complete idiot on Twitter. It certainly doesn't help but his track record so far is good and bankable and I wouldn't be surprised at all if Starlink succeeded. If you look at Inmarsat's turnover then you'll see why, and that's with low bandwidth geosynchronous satellites, now imagine that with high bandwidth, low latency LEO. Just that is a game changer for some industries, bringing fast internet to rural areas is going to be a doozy compared to the offshore applications and what that's worth.

Inmarsat revenue: US$1,465.2 million (2018)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmarsat

I'm not the biggest Musk fan by any stretch of the imagination, in fact there are plenty of things that Musk has done that I really disagree with. That said, between SpaceX and Tesla you've got to admit he knows how to move and as of this writing two batches of Starlink sattelites are in orbit. It's well beyond the proposal stage.

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