On Fri, Apr 23, 2021 at 05:04:00PM -0400, Chris Trainor wrote:

Friend of mine has it up in New Hampshire and likes it. Getting about 100down by 20up. Very low latency.

If this really goes mobile it's going to kill services like Iridium Certus, Inmarsat, etc.

Not clear. Iridium is handheld, the Starlink Dishy is about 3 feet in diameter and requires solid mounting and stabilization. Starlink could absolutely compete with INMARSAT L band domes on boats and ships... but already a lot of that traffic goes via C/Ku/Ka geosat (which Starlink clearly could very effectively compete with if there is enough available bandwidth on the Starlink system). The lower latency would be an enormous improvement for that market. And folks wandering around in RV's can also clearly use the Starlink platform (would be lots better than other alternatives in many places). I imagine Starlink could compete in the DSNG market too... I'm pretty sure the incentive exists to build a Starlink terminal that can be installed on aircraft, there is already a lot of this sort of stuff in existence... and meeting the RF specs from the top of a commercial or private jet seems doable to me... considering that lots of folks are already uplinking to geosats from aircraft via phased arrays at 14 Ghz.. and transmitting to satellites from aircraft has been around a long time, including situations where the beam aim and sidelobes are critical. Starlink depends on being able to aim a beam from a phased array accurately at a specific spot in the sky (and with low enough sidelobes so not to cause problems for geo birds in the Clarke belt snd other leo birds at other angles). This is not a natural for really small and handheld or hand carried applications... but Musk does have some real talent working for him. -- Dave Emery N1PRE/AE, die@dieconsulting.com DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass 02493 "An empty zombie mind with a forlorn barely readable weatherbeaten 'For Rent' sign still vainly flapping outside on the weed encrusted pole - in celebration of what could have been, but wasn't and is not to be now either."