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Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

> interesting to see SpaceX launching a direct competitor to Starlink

It isn't, exactly, a oneweb terminal is MUCH too big and expensive for an ordinary residential consumer or small business. It's two active tracking parabolic antennas with their own RF chains in radomes, takes up about a 2.5 meter long x 1 meter wide space on a roof or similar.

More than 1.5 years ago oneweb pivoted to a plan to sell high capacity uplink services for regional ISPs and telecoms on a business to business basis only. The oneweb terminal is still much larger and more costly than the recently announced starlink premium.

oneweb in its current plan to sell services to ISPs currently dependent on geostationary is more like a cheaper/slightly smaller o3b terminal.

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Surely Starlink's addressable market is a superset of OneWeb's? A fully-launched LEO constellation will make many of OneWeb's customers' use cases obsolete.

That said, as others have pointed out, whether OneWeb does or doesn't use SpaceX as a launch provider doesn't really change that outcome (whatever it happens to be).

In that case, isn’t it oneweb helping their competitor more than their competitor helping oneweb?

I think OneWeb is backed by the british government, and as we're finding out, global satellite networks are quite useful in military conflicts. While there's definitely a commercial aspect that has value, the military value is likely significantly higher.

If one web requires car sized antennas the military value is probably much lower - though that might just be the commercial offering and not a fundamental issue.

I had been talking with AST Group about getting OneWeb set up on my boat and the size of the terminals was a blocking issue; only place I could put them would be shading solar panels much of the day.

Unless you have a gargantuan yacht the monthly recurring cost is going to be prohibitive anyways, I'd be shocked if it's less than $1200/mo to start.

Right, but that is cost I could potentially swallow; worth it work from paradise anchorages with little other connectivity. You don't pay rent at anchor.

What I will probably end up doing this summer is a stern-to mooring to some trees with a Starlink terminal sitting on the beach with an Ethernet cable running out to the boat.

> stern-to mooring to some trees with a Starlink terminal sitting on the beach with an Ethernet cable running out to the boat.

How come? What's the problem with having the Starlink terminal on the boat?

It doesn't deal too well with all the movement; it works sometimes but not reliably. I don't know if it is only the rolling or also the lateral swinging around the anchor that throws it off.

In perfectly flat seas it might work fine, but you don't often find yourself in those conditions.

Seems 'marine stabilized platforms' of many specs and sizes are advertised. Surprising if none suitable to mount a starlink on.

A catamaran would be a nice "marine stabilized platform"

Not necessarily.

Catamarans tend the roll pretty aggressively, even if they aren't going to roll over a wide angle.

A SWATH - small water-plane area twin hull - would be a better choice. Basically two completely submerged pontoons with small pylons passing though the water surface up to the superstructure.

Because they have very little boyancy change when the waves change the water surface level, they have very gentle roll characteristics.

It deals REALLY well with movement. I’m very curious what you’re seeing and if you’re on the latest firmware?

My guess would be the moving radio shadows cast by mast, rigging, boom.

Last tried in April of last year

Can’t you set it on a gymbaled gyro to stabilize it?

If you're that close to the beach that you can string a cable, do you not have 4G LTE/5G services available? With a high-gain antenna I would imagine you could get speeds and latency that would rival Starlink in many places. Of course, this will vary wildly and depends on how remote you are mooring.

It just depends; every anchorage is different however it's not uncommon to be cruising in area with great coverage, but once you lay anchor you find yourself without service because the rocks of the bay you chose to shelter you from sea waves also shelter you from radio waves.

What about point to point WiFi instead of a cable? WiFi 6 will handle anything that Starlink can possibly hand out. With a directional antenna, you'll have more range than you would ever want to store cable for.

Then again, I would think you could make a stabilized platform that could keep a starlink connection up.

The advantage of Starlink over point to point WIFI is there is so much less set-up involved; just update your service address and boot your terminal and you're good to go. Conveniently the ethernet cable will also power the terminal from the boat's batteries.

> with an Ethernet cable

Just use a WiFi bridge, eg: https://mikrotik.com/product/wap_60g_ap

Starlink is likely to eventually have a mobile-base capable terminal. Probably not by this summer, though.

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