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<p>I noticed this some time ago but it seems to come up as
"available" again.<br>
</p>
<p>There are two ways in which Starlink can run out of capacity:</p>
<ol>
<li>Lack of beams. This is fixable by having more sats in orbit in
your neighbourhood (or sats with more beams).<br>
</li>
<li>Lack of spectrum. That's when you have enough satellites with
beams available but you can't use the extra beams because they'd
collide at the receiver with another beam on the same frequency.
This isn't really fixable with more beams or sats if you've used
up all available spectrum. They don't really make any more of
that ;-) What you can in principle do there is make beams
narrower (=cells smaller), but that's a matter of flying
appropriate hardware in order to increase frequency re-use.<br>
</li>
</ol>
<p>Some time late last year, a lot of areas around the globe started
popping up as "sold out" on Starlink's availability. These areas
have since increased, especially in the Americas. For all I could
tell, most of these areas have the following in common:
significant population density and severe lack of terrestrial
broadband infrastructure. A lot of that looks like they're running
out of spectrum, especially since there's been relatively little
in terms of areas coming back on-stream for sales. Note that when
you get away from the "crowded" target area ("other parts of the
Yukon"), that problem goes away.<br>
</p>
<p>Note that given Starlink's roaming plans, they have to throttle
back on selling fixed units in an area well before they hit
spectral capacity there. That's so they can accommodate roaming
units that come into the area. This may have been the case last
year with a lot of RVs coming up to Whitehorse over summer, with
pressure now relenting over winter, offering a breather (and
perhaps reworked roaming rules for next summer's roaming units).
However that isn't really a perfect solution: Locals desperate for
a domestic connection can bring in roaming units and use them in a
de-facto fixed location, even if they're more expensive to run
than the fixed unit that their neighbour bought earlier. This has
also been the case in places where Starlink offers roaming service
but isn't locally licensed to offer fixed service (Kiribati comes
to mind). </p>
<p>SpaceX seem to have been addressing this by roaming price
increases, attempting to justify this with the fact that you can
now take your RV with the unit offshore for a few miles and still
get service under maritime coverage. Now I'm not sure that this is
what a lot of people do given that most RVs don't float all that
well. SpaceX have also tried to restrict the amount of time that
you can operate a roaming unit in the same place (and have sent
comms to users exceeding that time requesting them to move the
units - or else). I guess there's probably a business plan in
renting out roaming units on a rotating basis for a few weeks at a
time ;-)</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 28/02/2025 4:40 pm, Daniel AJ
Sokolov via Starlink wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:cec3601d-9fd7-4120-8889-b9931ae0c96b@falco.ca">I live
North of 60, in Whitehorse in the Yukon. With about 35,000
inhabitants, We are the largest Canadian city in the North.
<br>
<br>
Here, we could get Starlink for a while. But last year, they
introduced a waiting list. There is no more capacity to go around.
<br>
<br>
I assume this will remain so for a couple more years, until we get
new satellites.
<br>
<br>
In other parts of the Yukon, I am not aware of waiting lists.
<br>
<br>
Cheers
<br>
Daniel AJ
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 2025-02-27 at 14:02, Ulrich Speidel via Starlink wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">I had a quick look.
<br>
<br>
The most important bit of information I was looking for is on
page 7, and it's not explicitly mentioned despite its importance
- rather it's delivered on the side of the figures: the latitude
of the measurements. Ballpark 65 deg north. That puts the
measurements beyond the range of the bulk of the Starlink shells
at 43, 53, and 53.2 degrees inclination, leaving only the 70 and
97.6 deg inclination shells within view.
<br>
<br>
Why does this matter? Two reasons:
<br>
<br>
1. A location at 65 deg north sees on average around 8
qualifying
<br>
satellites at any time - those are satellites that are at
least 25
<br>
deg above the horizon (so their beams don't get into
terrestrial
<br>
microwave link receivers). That compares to over 40
qualifying
<br>
satellites should you find yourself luck to live between 40
and 45
<br>
deg north, and over 20 at the Equator (even keeping GSO
protection
<br>
into account).
<br>
2. The qualifying satellites you see north of about 60 deg are
still
<br>
>90% version 1.5's. They have lasers for backhaul but a
<br>
comparatively small number of Ku band beams for downlink to
Dishy.
<br>
South of 40 degrees, almost half the qualifying satellites
you're
<br>
going to encounter are from the version 2 series, which have
a lot
<br>
more beams. These beams are also higher capacity ones.
<br>
<br>
Why does the number of qualifying satellites and beams matter?
Basically, if you add up all beams on all satellites within
view, you get the pool of beams that Starlink can pick from to
serve your Dishy. More beams in total = more options = bigger
cake = bigger slice of capacity for your Dishy.
<br>
<br>
Now how big a slice of the cake you can get depends not only on
the satellite mix in view, but also on how many other user
terminals in your immediate (cell) and wider (nearby cells) in
your neighbourhood want to access that capacity cake. This
depends a lot on population density and on what the competing
terrestrial connectivity options are. In a place with low
population density, fibre to almost everywhere and a good 4G and
5G coverage, all at good prices, there won't be a lot of
competing users for the cake. The Oulu area in Finland, where
they took the measurements, appears to be in that category,
mostly. The paper doesn't discuss these determinants of
performance, however.
<br>
<br>
On 28/02/2025 4:04 am, Hesham ElBakoury via Starlink wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Hi Craig,
<br>
No it is not my paper.
<br>
It has interesting results that I would like others to see and
provide feedback on.
<br>
<br>
Hesham
<br>
<br>
On Thu, Feb 27, 2025, 6:36 AM Craig Polk
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:c.polk@comsoc.org"><c.polk@comsoc.org></a> wrote:
<br>
<br>
Hesham,
<br>
<br>
Is this your paper? Are you submitting it for the WG to
review as
<br>
a possible INGR Topic article?
<br>
<br>
Best regards,
<br>
Craig
<br>
<br>
----
<br>
Craig Polk, MSEE, MBA
<br>
Program Manager
<br>
Future Networks Tech Community | futurenetworks.ieee.org
<br>
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Office: +1
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<br>
On Thu, Feb 27, 2025, 12:01 AM Hesham ElBakoury
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:helbakoury@gmail.com"><helbakoury@gmail.com></a> wrote:
<br>
<br>
This paper [1] This paper evaluates the Flat High
Performance
<br>
(FHP) terminal's performance in Finland, Northern
Europe.
<br>
<br>
*_Abstract_*
<br>
"Starlink has introduced the Flat High Performance
(FHP)
<br>
terminal, specifically designed to support the
vehicles and
<br>
the vessels in motion as well as the high-demand
stationary
<br>
users. The research on FHP terminal throughput
analysis
<br>
remains limited, only a few existing studies evaluate
FHP,
<br>
focusing on the limited parameters and scenarios. This
paper
<br>
evaluates the FHP terminal's performance in Finland,
Northern
<br>
Europe. We examine round-trip time (RTT), uplink, and
downlink
<br>
throughput for both stationary and in-motion use. We
measure
<br>
network efficiency across six geographically diverse
servers
<br>
and get insights of network routing strategies. Our
results
<br>
show that Starlink provides high-speed, low-RTT
connectivity,
<br>
however, the throughput experiences fluctuations with
slight
<br>
degradation when in motion. Additionally, we compare
Starlink
<br>
and terrestrial network RTT and possible routing
paths."
<br>
<br>
Hesham
<br>
[1] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.15552">https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.15552</a>
<br>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel
School of Computer Science
Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
The University of Auckland
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz">u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/">http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/</a>
****************************************************************
</pre>
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