[Starlink] Starlink "beam spread"

[David Lang]

They are going for simple to use. That favors per-location uses. I haven't seen 
them doing anything to discourage local ISP type networks, and some of the 
things I've seen them do (in terms of starlink to remote Indian villages) seems 
like they are probably doing a single Starlink + local wifi.

Their 'business' version seems ideal for this local ISP approach.

But that takes someone on the ground willing to take the work on to 
build/maintain such a network. Not hard for someone who knows what they are 
doing and has an in with the local regulators, but for SpaceX to push it would 
be a distraction to their staff and bring on even more accusations of their 
service being unsuitable (remember, this started off from the claim that a 
dedicated dish per house wasn't acceptably fast)

David Lang

On Wed, 31 Aug 2022, Ulrich Speidel via Starlink wrote:

> There's another aspect here that is often overlooked when looking purely at 
> the data rate that you can get from your fibre/cable/wifi/satellite, and this 
> is where the data comes from.
>
> A large percentage of Internet content these days comes from content delivery 
> networks (CDNs). These innately work on the assumption that it's the core of 
> the Internet that presents a bottleneck, and that the aggregate bandwidth of 
> all last mile connections is high in comparison. A second assumption is that 
> a large share of the content that gets requested gets requested many times, 
> and many times by users in the same corner(s) of the Internet. The conclusion 
> is that therefore content is best served from a location close to the end 
> user, so as to keep RTTs low and - importantly - keep the load of long 
> distance bottleneck links.
>
> Now it's fairly clear that large numbers of fibres to end users make for the 
> best kind of network between CDN and end user. Local WiFi hotspots with 
> limited range allow frequency re-use, as do ground based cellular networks, 
> so they're OK, too, in that respect.  But anything that needs to project RF 
> energy over a longer distance to get directly to the end user hasn't got 
> nature on its side.
>
> This is, IMHO, Starlink's biggest design flaw at the moment: Going direct to 
> end user site rather providing a bridge to a local ISP may be circumventing 
> the lack of last mile infrastructure in the US, but it also makes incredibly 
> inefficient use of spectrum and satellite resource. If every viral cat video 
> that a thousand Starlink users in Iowa are just dying to see literally has to 
> go to space a thousand times and back again rather than once, you arguably 
> have a problem.
>
> And yes, small neighbourhood networks of the type Mike described could put a 
> significant dent into that problem. But do Starlink actually see Mike 
> supplying 100 people as helpful, or do they see it as 99 customers they can 
> no longer sell a dishy to? Given how they push their services into the 
> market, I suspect it might be the latter.
>
> On 31/08/2022 10:07 am, Brandon Butterworth via Starlink wrote:
>> On Tue Aug 30, 2022 at 02:01:49PM -0700, David Lang via Starlink wrote:
>> > You are absolutly correct that people who can get fiber (and probably 
>> even
>> > most DSL) are far better using that than Starlink, and
>> > last-few-hundred-meters wireless can be better (like DSL, it depends on 
>> the
>> > exact service available)
>> ...
>> > People who can get that sort of service are not the target users for
>> > Starlink.
>> 
>> But unless Starlink turn them away some will still take the
>> service despite better options.
>> 
>> I do UK FWA and FTTP in rural areas and know others in the
>> industry. Some have reported being turned down as the
>> odd customer is waiting for Starlink (instead of taking a
>> government GBP4k+ subsidy giving them free fibre/FWA install)
>> 
>> There's no telling some people.
>> 
>> brandon
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>
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