Re: [Starlink] Starlink Internet Speeds Could Skyrocket to 2 Gigabits Per Second, SpaceX President Says

[Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>]

On 24/11/2024 9:05 am, Dave Taht wrote:
>> 3. Elon will own the FCC.
> This FCC promises to open up more spectrum. Where?

I think it's not so much a matter of opening up spectrum. SpaceX's 
spectrum "reserve" at the moment is Ka-band. That's hitherto been used 
for gateways only, but with the lasers, that's becoming less of a 
bottleneck because you can in principle uplink from and downlink to a 
remote gateway or set of remote gateways (unlike with the end user - I 
mean Elon can't simply provide the service Dave's paying for over, say, 
New York, rather than where Dave's boat is). So that frees up a bit of 
resource to deploy directly to users in tight spots. Except that Dishy 
doesn't talk on Ka.

The trouble with Ka is that it's a bit more susceptible to rain fade 
than Ku, and also that the amount of spectrum available there isn't 
exactly an order of magnitude larger either. To the contrary - the three 
Ka-bands in which SpaceX can downlink data have a combined 1.8 GHz of 
spectrum - less than for Ku. The pros of Ka are that the shorter 
wavelength makes for sharper beams and a nicer link budget with the same 
size antennas. As long as you don't get rained on. So you better throw 
in some extra antenna gain, which is what they're doing with the 1.85 m 
dishes (not Dishys) at their community gateways. But that's an entirely 
different business model.

And yes I'm aware that there's some labelling issues as to what counts 
as Ka and what doesn't, internationally, and that the FCC's notion of Ka 
starts at lower frequencies than some other peoples'.

-- 
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Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
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