[Starlink] It’s the Latency, FCC

[Colin Higbie]

> I have now been trying to break the common conflation that download "speed" 
> means anything at all for day to day, minute to minute, second to second, use, 
> once you crack 10mbit, now, for over 14 years. Am I succeeding? I lost the 25/10 
> battle, and keep pointing at really terrible latency under load and wifi weirdnesses 
> for many existing 100/20 services today.

While I completely agree that latency has bigger impact on how responsive the Internet feels to use, I do think that 10Mbit is too low for some standard applications regardless of latency: with the more recent availability of 4K and higher streaming, that does require a higher minimum bandwidth to work at all. One could argue that no one NEEDS 4K streaming, but many families would view this as an important part of what they do with their Internet (Starlink makes this reliably possible at our farmhouse). 4K HDR-supporting TV's are among the most popular TVs being purchased in the U.S. today. Netflix, Amazon, Max, Disney and other streaming services provide a substantial portion of 4K HDR content. 

So, I agree that 25/10 is sufficient, for up to 4k HDR streaming. 100/20 would provide plenty of bandwidth for multiple concurrent 4K users or a 1-2 8K streams. 

For me, not claiming any special expertise on market needs, just my own personal assessment on what typical families will need and care about:

Latency: below 50ms under load always feels good except for some intensive gaming
(I don't see any benefit to getting loaded latency further below ~20ms for typical applications, with an exception for cloud-based gaming that benefits with lower latency all the way down to about 5ms for young, really fast players, the rest of us won't be able to tell the difference)

Download Bandwidth: 10Mbps good enough if not doing UHD video streaming

Download Bandwidth: 25 - 100Mbps if doing UHD video streaming, depending on # of streams or if wanting to be ready for 8k

Upload Bandwidth: 10Mbps good enough for quality video conferencing, higher only needed for multiple concurrent outbound streams

So, for example (and ignoring upload for this), I would rather have latency at 50ms (under load) and DL bandwidth of 25Mbps than latency of 1ms with a max bandwidth of 10Mbps, because the super-low latency doesn't solve the problem with insufficient bandwidth to watch 4K HDR content. But, I'd also rather have latency of 20ms with 100Mbps DL, then latency that exceeds 100ms under load with 1Gbps DL bandwidth. I think the important thing is to reach "good enough" on both, not just excel at one while falling short of "good enough" on the other.

Note that Starlink handles all of this well, including kids watching YouTube while my wife and I watch 4K UHD Netflix, except the upload speed occasionally tops at under 3Mbps for me, causing quality degradation for outbound video calls (or used to, it seems to have gotten better in recent months – no problems since sometime in 2023). 

Cheers,
Colin