The Verge: Elon Musk says Starlink internet service will be ?fully mobile? in 2021

[David I. Emery]

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 at dieconsulting.com  DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass 02493
"An empty zombie mind with a forlorn barely readable weatherbeaten
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