Starlink's speed tests may look impressive, but experts say SpaceX's satellite-internet project is unlikely to win any federal subsidies

[grarpamp]

On 9/2/20, jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>     On Tuesday, September 1, 2020, 11:05:10 PM PDT, grarpamp
> <grarpamp at gmail.com> wrote:
>  On 8/28/20, jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> "Starlink's speed tests may look impressive, but experts say SpaceX's
>> satellite-internet project is unlikely to win any federal subsidies
>> "https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-beta-speedtest-results-bandwidth-ping-latency-fcc-rdof-2020-8
>> Jim Bell's comment:
>> I doubt SpaceX NEEDS any Federal subsidies for Starlink.  If it is a
>> working
>> system (and these reports seem to show that it works well) then it will
>> provide competition to the incumbent wire- or fiber Internet services we
>> have been locked into for too long.
>
>>If they accepted an assortment of major cryptocurrencies such as
> Bitcoin, Bitcoin_Cash, Monero, Zcash, etc
> and enabled fully prepaid service and user owned prepaid hardware,
> they might get a lot more customers around the world from those.
> More customers = less subsidies. And accepting cryptocurrency
> is a big marketing win that matches Starlink's tech image.
>
> I'm hoping that Starlink management will become rather UNcooperative with
> the various nations in which their customers reside.  Unlike fiber-line
> internet, which must "play nice" with the tyrant-in-chief for fear he will
> cut them off, in principle Starlink could smuggle in their "UFO on a stick"
> devices, which could be hidden and thus operate "unauthorized".
> I talk to a person who communicates with Philipines and Cambodia, and
> apparently those governments will simply turn off the Internet in those
> countries.   I have also read that India is rather quick on the 'off switch'
> in neighborhoods.   https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50819905

India, China, Pakistan, everywhere really, it's growing as a potential
and active tool in sick minds of Govt and political censors of
internet freedom for humanity worldwide, it's sad.

And with Starlink service and hardware fully prepaid via crypto,
there's no reason,
and nothing, to turn off or shut down (beyond the boring DoS etc which Starlink
already handles as any other ISP does... customer's node gets blocked
at the headend after some number of abuses). Nasty oppressive countries aren't
going to be able to land-jam Starlink users that have their narrow
directional shielded
dishes pointed up, and can't launch wide coverage jamsats pointed down without
jamming everyone including the respective Govt and Govt Approved Users
themselves.
Starlink needs to accept cryptocurrency so that abusive Govt's can't censor its
citizens offline by ordering banks to block their bankcard payments to Starlink,
and then murdering their citizens by their associated name / address /
phone / ID / email / credit checks
(none of which *ever* need to be collected by Starlink in fully prepaid mode).
Prepaid hardware can be delivered, or smuggled, in to freedom repressed users.
And the Starlink RF and protocol specs could be fully opened so that such
users and communities in need could even use gnuradio SDR as their land
node if they can't get a sexy box labelled "Starlink" shipped in past their
censorius customs units, building inspectors, thought police, etc.


> I wonder if a small village could share a single Starlink device, running a
> WiFi router for local distribution.

Yes, it's just a standard LAN connection like any other access port.
All the One-Laptop-Per-Child's, internet cafe's, farms, etc can link up to that.
Villages will pool funds to prepay for the next 1/3/6-month or years service
just like any other prepaid user would, no prepay no service, no big deal...
prepaid is already a simple, easy, popular, and well known service
model worldwide.
Eventually many such shared users will become individual subscribers when they
outgrow what one node can supply, and tire of the travel needed to get
to the node.

Starlink can have a big win and leg up on the competition
by servicing these all these features and needs.