[Starlink] Re: Starlink D2D observation - fwiw

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

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.

-- 
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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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