[Starlink] Re: Starlink D2D observation - fwiw

[J Pan <Pan@uvic.ca>]

that's why people say, when look for the next phone, if it does not
support sat sos/comms, don't buy it, but after buying it, one hopes
not to use the function, otherwise, likely in disasters
--
J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM), Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan

On Fri, Feb 27, 2026 at 6:25 PM Ulrich Speidel via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
> On 28/02/2026 5:56 am, Michael Richardson wrote:
> > Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
> >      >> One road opened again the next morning, and the power came back on later that
> >      >> day, along with the 4G coverage.
> >
> >      mcr> In the interlude between the storm and the roads opening, was it sunny?
> >
> >      > It became sunny, yes, but in terms of using something solar PV that day
> >      > you would have had a hard time on the first day after the  storm. I run
> >      > my house (including a granny flat) on grid-connected PV with battery
> >      > backup, and this is what the weather system
> >      > looked like on our PV system monitor two days earlier when it passed over Auckland:
> >
> > I wasn't thinking PV... I was thinking about that you were there to enjoy the
> > outdoors, and when the sun comes out after a storm, it's kinda extra sunny.
> > At least, that's how the emotions feel.
> >
> > In 2003, I was in Halifax a week after a Hurricane took out 100K trees.
> > Cdn Thanksgiving weekend (first weekend of Oct), it was super-bright, warm, dry,
> > with... destruction everywhere.  The contrast startled. Like a dozen clowns wandering
> > through WWI trenches or something.
> It abated slowly and turned to cloudy with a bit of sun overnight and
> then again a bit better the next day. Destruction wasn't immediately
> obvious apart from a few smaller slips (common here) and the occasional
> tree damage from wind - we escaped the worst of that, unlike the people
> on the other side of the range. It wasn't until we started on a few
> walks when we saw just how badly the river and some of the small creeks
> had swollen and how much damage that did to the surrounding bush in
> terms of sediment deposited and mature trees felled. Some of them would
> have carried over 100 times the amount of water that they usually carry
> - I'd never seen anything like it.
> > I would be interesting to learn about the satellite service turn on process.
> > Did they just do it?  Could a government have asked them explicitely?
> > Maybe there is fine print that either expects this or demands it.
>
> I think they just did it without being asked, because it was in their
> interest. Essentially they oversold the service somewhat (they're in
> court for false advertising because of this) by making it look like it
> was a 1:1 replacement for normal cell service. During normal times,
> they're covering 99%+ of people here with terrestrial service anyway.
> Rural areas are covered via a single physical network provider, the
> Rural Connectivity Group (RCG), a jointly-owned subsidiary of the three
> mobile network providers in NZ who all tenant together on the RCG sites.
> So when an RCG site goes down, no terrestrial network works.
>
> This made the telcos here look really bad after Cyclone Gabrielle, and
> obviously some work's gone on to strengthen infrastructure a bit, but I
> guess much of that would have gone into shoring up service to towns and
> cities rather than remote valleys with a few farms.
>
> So this storm would have been an opportunity to show the rural folk that
> One NZ has their backs in such situations, distinguish themselves from
> their competitors, gather brownie points to use in court and curry
> favour with the government. Likewise, it would have been fairly easy to
> do for them because of the low user density and usage profile in the area.
>
> For where we were, I'd estimate maybe 10-15 mobile phones per square
> kilometre (if that much), with maybe 3-4 of them being eligible models.
> Given that the locals there generally have work to do that doesn't
> involve using apps or texting for much of the day, maybe one active
> phone per sq km for most of the time?
>
> Forgot to mention that my phone indicated that it was roaming, despite
> me being a One NZ customer.
>
> --
> ****************************************************************
> 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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