[Starlink] Re: Starlink and Iran

Ulrich Speidel
2026-01-15T10:51:25Z

On 15/01/2026 11:32 pm, Inemesit Affia wrote:
>
>
> You don't often get email from inemesitaffia@gmail.com. Learn why this
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>
>
> Something more about d2c and other things.
>
> In 4G the network can limit services to say SMS only. Or calls only.
> But once you give the phone access to IP, the phone is responsible for
> limiting itself. Hence satellite enabled apps. Without this we've seen
> people do speed tests on the DTC network.
>
> More spectrum in use means more power or sometimes more equipment to
> do jamming. Only GPS and the Ku uplink seem to be jammed.

Ku uplink would be the easier target but you'd have to have a lot of
jammers (one per sat you want to jam), all with tracking antennas, and
it'd pretty much work for a cell (or perhaps cell cluster) at a time -
you'd need a separate set for each city I guess.

BTW I should have said "access request channel" not "access grant channel".

>
>
> Expertise for RF work doesn't have to be local. Huawei is a world
> leader. And I'm sure you're familiar with expats.
I was referring to people who'd go track down Dishys locally by RF
direction finding ... so having an expert in China doesn't really help
here. That needs boots on the ground.
>
>
> As for underserved areas, Starlink may be advertised as a rural
> service, but in poorer countries, most users aren't just suburban but
> actually Urban

True - Manila is a great example for this, and there are others. But
Iranian cities are not. Iran was targeting 20 million households and
businesses on fibre by the end of last year, and of course there was
mobile Internet on top of that.

I'm sure there would have been a segment of urban users also,
specifically to get at otherwise firewalled content.

--
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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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