[Starlink] Main hurdles against the Integration of Satellites and Terrestial Networks

[David Fernández]

I have not seen a report, it is a couple of web pages to read, isn't it?

Just my two cents:
"Standards are the distilled wisdom of people with expertise in their
subject matter and who know the needs of the organizations they
represent – people such as manufacturers, sellers, buyers, customers,
trade associations, users or regulators.
Standards are knowledge. They are powerful tools that can help drive
innovation and increase productivity. They can make organizations more
successful and people’s everyday lives easier, safer and healthier."
https://www.bsigroup.com/en-GB/standards/Information-about-standards/what-is-a-standard

Look to what is reported about Rohde & Schwarz and Satixfy in the
Satellite 2023 about the DVB-S2X and DVB-RCS2 standards. I think that
the satellite industry has standards (DVB-S2X being the most notable
example), and these standards are not going to be replaced by 5G NTN,
3GPP ones, so easily. In any case, the 3GPP has defined since release
16 the N3IWF and the ATSSS with MPTCP, which is kind of standardized
way of doing the same that can be done with SDWAN (propietary
technologies): https://romars.tech/en/pubblications/n3iwf/
https://romars.tech/en/pubblications/atsss/
In the case of 5G NTN, if I think that the idea is that the terminal
is doing roaming between the terrestrial and the satellite network,
managing the links as when you have multiple SIM cards in the mobile.

Finally, related to the use of standards, I have been recently very
disappointed to see that this service is using a non-standard return
link, preventing Router Freedom for SATCOM users:
https://fsfe.org/activities/routers/routers.en.html

New GEO based Internet access for rural areas in Spain (Hispasat)
sponsored by Government

Up to 4 million subscribers are entitled all around the country, in
areas where there is not any terrestrial network providing Internet
access at least at 50 Mbit/s, and there are quite a few spots:
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/a1efc4ec0e4b42ad90274ad6febb1608/

100 Mbit/s downlink DVB-S2X, non-standard? MF-TDMA uplink at 5 Mbit/s
/ 10 Mbit/s

Hughes modems: https://conectate35.es/#equipamiento

35 euros/month, 150 GB.

Average total (monthly?) maximum latency: 690 ms (two way?) (VoIP compatible)

99.5% availability

https://conectate35.es/#servicio

Regards,

David

> Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2023 12:35:59 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Lang <david at lang.hm>
> To: Inemesit Affia <inemesitaffia at gmail.com>
> Cc: Alexandre Petrescu <alexandre.petrescu at gmail.com>,
> 	starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net
> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Main hurdles against the Integration of
> 	Satellites and Terrestial Networks
> Message-ID: <4o116qp9-6108-91r8-pn91-o37o6629npqo at ynat.uz>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-15"; Format="flowed"
>
> Exactly my thoughts (I haven't downloaded and read the full report yet).
> What
> are they looking to do with this 'integration'? I can integrate my starlink
> just
> like any other ISP.
>
> or are they looking at the 'cell phones to orbit' functionality thats due to
> roll out very suddently
>
> or are they looking for "intergration" as another way to say "force SpaceX
> to
> open the specs for Starlink and allow other user terminals to interact with
> the
> Starlink satellites?
>
> The cynic in me says it's the latter.
>
> long term it may make sense to do this to some degree, but we are WAY too
> early
> to define "Interoperability Standards" and block people from coming up with
> better ways to do things.
>
> the Apple vs SpaceX cellphone-to-satellite have completely different ways of
> operating, and who wants to tell all the Apple people that their way isn't
> going
> to be the standard (or worse, that it is and they have to give everyone else
> the
> ability to use their currently proprietary protocol)
>
> David Lang
>
> On Wed, 30 Aug 2023, Inemesit Affia via Starlink wrote:
>
>> With the existence of solutions like OpenMTCProuter, SDWAN, policy based
>> routing or any solution in general that allows combination in a sense of
>> any number of IP links, I really don't see a point for specific solutions.
>> Can anyone enlighten me?
>>
>> For home users an issue may be IP blocks for certain services like Netflix
>> when the egress is out of a VPN or cloud provider richer than a
>> residential
>> provider
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 2:57 PM Alexandre Petrescu via Starlink <
>> starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Le 30/08/2023 à 14:10, Hesham ElBakoury via Starlink a écrit :
>>>> Here is a report which summarizes the outcome of the last Satellites
>>>> conference
>>>> [
>>> https://www.microwavejournal.com/articles/39841-satellite-2023-summary-linking-up
>>> ]
>>>>
>>>> The report highlights the two main hurdles against the integration of
>>>> satellites and terrestrial networks: standardization and business model.
>>>>
>>>> "/Most of the pushback against closer integration of terrestrial
>>>> wireless and satellite networks revolved around standardization. This
>>>> may just be growing pains and it likely reflects the relative
>>>> positions of wireless and satellite along the maturity curve, but some
>>>> of the speakers were arguing against standardization. The basis of
>>>> this argument was that the mobile industry only understands standards,
>>>> but the satellite industry is currently differentiating based on
>>>> custom systems and capabilities. The feeling was that the satellite
>>>> industry had focused on technology and not regulations or standards
>>>> and changing that course would not be helpful to the industry in the
>>>> short term. Timing is important in this analysis because almost
>>>> everyone agreed that at some point, standardization would be a good
>>>> thing, but the concern was the best way to get to the point in the
>>>> future. The other interesting argument against closer integration
>>>> between wireless and satellite had to do with the business model.
>>>> Several speakers questioned where the customers would go as
>>>> terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks become more integrated. The
>>>> underlying issues seemed to include who is responsible for solving
>>>> network issues and perhaps more importantly, who recognizes the
>>>> revenue. These issues seem, perhaps a bit simplistically, to be
>>>> similar to early wireless roaming issues. While these issues created
>>>> turbulence in the wireless market, they were solved and that is
>>>> probably a template to address these challenges for the wireless and
>>>> satellite operators."/
>>>> /
>>>> /
>>>> Comments?
>>>
>>>
>>> It is an interesting report.
>>>
>>> For standardisation standpoint, it seems SDOs do push towards
>>> integration of 5G/6G and satcom; there are strong initiatives at least
>>> at 3GPP (NTN WI proposals) and IETF (TVR WG) in that direction.  But
>>> these are SDOs traditionally oriented to land communications, rather
>>> than space satcom.
>>>
>>> I wonder whether space satcom traditional SDOs (which ones?) have
>>> initiated work towards integration with 5G/6G and other land-based
>>> Internet?
>>>
>>> Alex
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hesham