Inconvenient truth about Starlink: it'll take competitors years to offer an on-par service

RaptorSA said:
Satellite internet is tos and I don't care what numbers f**kface puts out, I still find it almost impossible to believe this money burning pipe dream is sustainable.

Meanwhile, get more fiber in the ground. It's always been called the "100 year infrastructure" for a reason.
If you're on terra firma you shouldn't need satellite.

"In 2025, SpaceX launched 170 rockets, averaging one nearly every two days."

They also deorbited 260 satellites in Six Months, funny how that never gets mentioned.

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How the living f are we gonna have fibre on boat, plane and in the middle of a Karoo farm where even Vodacom aren't installing?
Civilisation today is more dependant on internet access than ever before and last mile is still a major issue everywhere around the world - that's the whole point of the problem that Starlink solves, - to have fibre-speed internet without fibre.
Starlink isn't traditional satellite either - it's 300x faster than the "legal" satellite internet in SA.
 
JerryMungo said:
No different from every other piece of communication equipment. There is potential, but to claim that's it's aim? Evidence?
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the difference is the scale and coverage.

and its only one provider they need to have a back-end agreement with, or better yet, an covert backdoor SpaceX can deny all knowledge of.

Snowden showed that the US government was doing it with nearly all telecoms providers decades ago already. Starlink would be the exception if they don't have it.
 
charlieharper said:
How the living f are we gonna have fibre on boat, plane and in the middle of a Karoo farm where even Vodacom aren't installing?
Civilisation today is more dependant on internet access than ever before and last mile is still a major issue everywhere around the world - that's the whole point of the problem that Starlink solves, - to have fibre-speed internet without fibre.
Starlink isn't traditional satellite either - it's 300x faster than the "legal" satellite internet in SA.
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The Irony is that there is an increasing group of people with a boat, plane or farm in the middle of the Karoo, for which the lack of connectivity is the attraction.
 
charlieharper said:
How the living f are we gonna have fibre on boat, plane and in the middle of a Karoo farm where even Vodacom aren't installing?
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Just keep in mind that Vodacom will use Starlink for example to provide backhaul to their towers. In cities and big towns, it is feasible to put up a tower with terrestrial backhaul, or on Microwave if that is the only option, but in remote and small towns, that becomes a very big hurdle where there is no fibre and most likely no microwave available for the backhaul.

Linking the tower via Starlink for example would make this much more economical and speed up the process of putting up a tower. Very small towns by and large on Vodacom have 3G max. I saw that for myself driving through the Karoo from JHB to Cape Town. And soon as you are abou 3 - 4 km out of the town you are without coverage until the next town which is may 100 - 200km away. This could enable these towns to be upgraded to 4G and maybe even 5G. And if you leave the Vodacom coverage area, the slack can be picked up by Sat - Mobile so if you get into trouble on the road you have a way to get help.
 
Starlink is only part of the story. SpaceX also have their Starshield satellites for military grade communications.
 
JerryMungo said:
No different from every other piece of communication equipment. There is potential, but to claim that's it's
Communication does not equal surveillance. If they were USG funded, it's to be ahead of the Chinese and have a product that citizens can purchase from a government they trust.
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A Government they can TRUST ?

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Actually they can trust their government to spy on them, their phone calls there data their daily activities
 
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JerryMungo said:
The difference between what? If you don't understand how basic WiFi works, why should we trust another word you say on the subject?
You're speculating in the dark boet. Admit it.
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Wi-fi broadcasts at 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz and 6Ghz. Starlink has already demonstrated they can do 2 way voice communications with cellphones in the 1.6–2.7 GHz range, which is a lot more challenging than capturing SSID beacon frames.

The antenna on a Starlink sat is around 8000 times more sensitive than the wifi antenna in a laptop or cellphone. People doing wardrives have demonstrated that with a stock laptop, they can detect and identify those beacon frames 300-600 meters away from the source.

cellphones broadcast similar identifiers at even higher power levels in similar frequencies.

so the evidence is circumstantial yes, but the physics and the capability checks out.
 
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