Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink

[David Lang <david@lang.hm>]

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On Fri, 7 Apr 2023, Ulrich Speidel via Starlink wrote:

> Remember how cellphone networks evolve: You start with a few towers in high 
> spots using high power to get wide area coverage while you have few users. At 
> this point (which corresponds largely to where Starlink is at now), spectrum 
> isn't much of an issue (and even that is only partially true for Starlink - 
> see Mike's excellent article on this: 
> https://mikepuchol.com/modeling-starlink-capacity-843b2387f501). As your user 
> base grows, you move off the hills into the valleys and lower your power so 
> your cells become smaller and shielded from each others, because now, 
> frequency re-use is the name of the game. You use beamforming off phased 
> arrays in order to further separate users.
>
> So what we are seeing now is Starlink as the new kid on the block turning up 
> with what are in analogy effectively cell towers high in the sky. Their 
> current user base is maybe at 1/1000th (ballpark) of potential demand before 
> growth. Population growth on this planet alone adds a lot more potential 
> users a day than Starlink does. So what options does Starlink have to scale? 
> Unlike a terrestrial network operator, Starlink can't really come down all 
> that far from their "space hills" without burning their satellites up in the 
> atmosphere more quickly. "Space hills" also consist of vacuum only, which 
> unlike earthly hills can't separate base stations by blocking signal. The 
> distance from/to space also requires vastly larger phased array antennas for 
> the same spot beam coverage area contour on the ground. It also places limits 
> on transmit EIRP both ways. Larger antennas and solar arrays constrain the 
> number of satellites that can be launched at a time, making constellation 
> building and replacement harder.

All of this is correct, I will note that in the Starlink plans, there are plans 
to put a layer of satellites at a sigificantly lower altitude.

By launching 10x as many satellites, and each one being able to handle 10x the 
data, they _may_ get to 100x, but that is really going to be pushing it. (note 
that this is for ~10x the number of satellites lauched by everyone other than 
SpaceX since Sputnik)

If you can get fiber, it's always going to be better than a wireless option, DSL 
is threatened by Starlink in many suburbs, cablemodems depend so much on the ISP 
it's hard to say

David Lang

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