It's odd that Starlink don't offer a "walled garden" experience allowing you to perform activation using just the Starlink itself, like almost all DOCSIS providers send down to unprovisioned modems. I can't tell if it's an intentional protection/KYC kind of thing or just an unimplemented feature.
I bought the last two units left at any HD for a few hundred miles; drove them up there Monday.
Apparently my friend had to drive in and out of his (utterly destroyed) neighborhood in Swannanoa because it required the app and cell service to set up. And when they returned home it wouldn't work. Took multiple trips back and forth to get it usable in the area where it was actually needed.
Then of course the Helene intro deal requires an extensive form to fill out, so he just paid for it.
And, incrementally, we all give our money to another publicly funded, government protected, privately held monopoly. And yet... it's charity.
Anyway, the entire neighborhood is using it to coordinate resources to dig out their holler. So hey, she'll do for now.
How is it publicly funded and government protected?
> privately held monopoly
That's a weird complaint, would it be somehow better if it were a publicly held monopoly like Google, Amazon or Microsoft.
And what can SpaceX do to ensure Starlink is not a monopoly? Stop providing service and shut it down?
They have been even launching competitors satellites for them.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-spoke-musk-ab...
Second, poor communities, lots of people had no money to buy pre-storm supplies, let alone pay the equipment cost.
By surrounding areas, are we talking areas people were evacuating to, or within the immense impact area?
Let liars lie, what's the worst that could happen?
Edit: I was referring to this article: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-spoke-musk-ab...
I originally thought the HN post linked to that article, but I see now it was only in a comment. Sorry!
I would hazard to guess that's how Elon found out.
Then came the US around year 2002 and forced the country to a free market, and paradise was lost. Everything is US level now (more expensive, better service is even more expensive, nothing is guaranteed, you get bombarded by advertisements, and other spam types) and the company can no longer provide universal coverage and is now operating at a loss.
It’s modern colonialism.
All of the 25 000 000 000 000 dollars the US generates a year is vacuumed right out of the palm trees of the third world.
All the rest flows out of this.
The US does meddle a lot with other countries, but the main motive IMHO is usually either to further some misguided ideological program or to keep Americans safe (kind of like how Russia's interference in Ukraine these days is motivated by a desire to keep Russians safe in future decades) not to extract wealth.
US meddling is, as you say, a function of them already having a ton of money and trying to use it to pursue their foreign policy.
Well, that's the motivation it pretends/claims to have in any case.
But you're right in that its pretenses/delusions are very similar to the US's in this regard.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic%E2%80%93C...
funny cause sergey is building exactly that - private companies for the win :)
Areas in need of humanitarian aid provided by airships is a too-small niche to (re-)develop entirely new flight technology.
Geeks like blimps, and they need a story, that is all that is.
The government has agreements in place with all of the carriers to reestablish cellular communications. The first phases are around emergency communications for first responders and recovery. The next priority is restoring power to light up recoverable infrastructure.
There a plan, and the people coordinating this stuff are good at what they are doing. That doesn’t mean your uncle will be back watching Netflix - the priority is restoring basic services so that you get closer to normal quickly.
If we use the map from the starlink page I feel like it would be a lot more than "a few" and I'm not really sure you'd get the places that "need" it desperately.
https://api.starlink.com/public-files/HurricaneHeleneCoverag...
We must protect freedom. Sometimes that costs the lives of children and sometimes that of adults. But freedom is important.
I mean, it might not, but you won't know until the environmental impact assessment is complete.
> an additional 140 satellites are being shipped to assist with communications infrastructure restoration.
From:
Biden-Harris Administration Continues Whole-Of-Government Response to Hurricane Helene https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20240930/biden-harris-adm...
I think the majority of this country views them as the go to for "Emergency Management" at the federal level.
Are they using their money on other things that are not related?
https://www.newsweek.com/johnson-house-passes-spending-bill-...
This kind of surprised me though: https://www.fema.gov/grants/preparedness/shelter-services-pr...
I knew that the government was paying big money to buy up hotels and other migrant shelters, but had no idea $640 Million was spent out of FEMA's budget on this year alone.
This will surely turn into a powerful right wing talking point if the word gets out to that side of the media.. (assuming it hasn't already)
I'm not going to lie though, given the current situation and in hindsight how poorly Maui and East Palestine, OH were handled I think it's probably reasonable to ask whether this is what we want/expect from our Emergency Management services.
It seems at first glance like they are creating the emergency via deliberately imported avoidable costs, then short changing the tax payers when they are most likely to need their help in a genuine life or death situation.
It feels like this money should be coming out of the ICE budget or some other agency, but I'm just a proletariat.
The relevant bit: "For Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will provide $640.9 million of available funds to enable non-federal entities to off-set allowable costs incurred for services associated with noncitizen migrant arrivals in their communities.
The funding will be distributed through two opportunities, $300 million through SSP – Allocated (SSP-A) and $340.9 million through SSP – Competitive (SSP-C)."
I haven't even gotten to the other areas where they almost certainly had a similar level of waste, but I suspect over half a billion could be mighty useful right now.
EDIT: Looks like once you know the magic number the news talking about it is easy to find, and it's not just right wing media highlighting this issue: https://www.newsweek.com/fema-migrant-funding-hurricane-disa...
If this doesn't stir the pot, I don't know what will. No matter what happens, people are going to be irrationally (or I guess maybe rationally to an extent) angry.
The people complaining about the $640 million would still be complaining if it was $200M. Or $1M. Or one dollar.
> It feels like this money should be coming out of the ICE budget or some other agency
FEMA is the agency that's built-up processes and procedures for helping people get housing and other aid, because that is one of its main focuses. That's not what ICE does, they enforce immigration and customs. We're complaining about waste in government but you're wanting lots of agencies specializing in the same thing.
Also it's not as if this is the -only- money spent on these endeavors. This is one agency in one year, doing something which was unprecedented until they could manage it via Covid 'emergency' measures.
You can stick your fingers in your ears if you want, but people are going to be pissed and have every right to be -- just like you have the right to handwave it away if you so choose.
I just said ICE off the cuff, but it could just as easily have been Border Patrol or some other agency. At the end of the day, I doubt if you asked many people "Do you want your countries emergency management fund setup so they blow their budget flying in people from other countries and putting them in hotels that you can no longer utilize, more cash benefits than disaster victims that grew up paying taxes here - or would you prefer that money be spent on national emergencies?"
I think you would have a hard time finding people who say "oh please, spend that on hotels and shelters and migrant flights! Their wants come before my family and friends needs."
And before you give me some spiel about how that's a 'false dichotomy', I'll remind you that FEMA is currently saying they can't afford another storm and are being raked through the coals in how badly they are handling the current one. So it is not a hypothetical situation - they literally said that American citizens are going to have to donate their personal already-been-taxed money to make it through this.
That's 640 million that could have not been taken on TOP of the taxes from Americans, because of course people are going to pony up to save their communities.
On top of taking at least 1/4-1/3 of every paycheck, they are TELLING us that we have to fund our own rescue.
Honest question - what number IS worth quibbling about in your mind? What dollar value legitimizes scrutinizing government spending? I didn't know there was a threshold we had to meet for the concerns to be valid. By that logic if an agencies budget grows large enough, there is simply no valid criticism that can be leveled, and the budget must always go up just like the stocks!
I haven't even heard of a single account of someone successfully getting the $750 'immediate need' funded, but I have seen dozens of videos of people crying or angry that they got denied immediately without any reason. Admittedly that's selection bias, but I actively looked for people who did.
I also have yet to see a single person who things this is being handled well... and I see a lot of active duty service/reserve members very angry they can't help their friends and family while they are standby to go die for another middle east war we have no business in.
Things I learned from this thread: 1) Elon Musk bad, despite using what resources he has to help -- any help is an automatic bait and switch to monopolize the internet (lol) 2) Government spending criticism irrelevant, you have to meet a hazy threshold for the concern to be worth 'quibbling about' 3) HN Users are largely in a very bubbled social circle (online and off), and are going to be shocked when reality penetrates that bubble.
You'll probably also complain the government isn't helping communities affected by immigration crisises while also complaining about the help being disbursed.
Got it. So we mustn't criticize policies and spending vel0city agrees with. I'll add that to the rulebook to make sure no one else wonders aloud if perhaps that money could be of use right now (or used better in general).
That $20 could have been useful. Imagine how much more money the average taxpayer would have if the government didn't spend that 0.001% of it's budget.
You'd be complaining about any amount.
Or do you think they wouldn't have complained if it was only $600M?
Just be honest and state what you really feel: the government shouldn't spend any money assisting communities with migrants other than to get them out.
Can you tell me why I am supposed to answer your questions, but you have successfully dodged all of mine while levying personal attacks however? Seems .... a tad imbalanced, dont you think?
Go ahead vel0city, tell us what number you think the threshold is for questioning governments spending of the money they took directly out of our paychecks? You have to have one in mind at this point. How could you not? How else could you backup your claim?
EDIT: Actually I should ask - are you an American citizen? Do you have a dog in this fight? Is this money even coming out of your check? If not, it would explain why you think these budgets are beyond reproach, given that it would mean it's not your friends, family, or neighbors being effectively sacrificed, nor is it your money being spent in that case.
On another side, government budgets are not zero sum. Saying we should spend on X before we spend on Y is also saying you don't think money should go to X. A personal household budget is zero sum, government not so.
Zero sum or not, the attitude you have about budget discussions is why we are about to print ourselves into a depression. If you can't discuss prioritizing spending based on whatever criteria applies to the situation, you simply can't discuss budget concerns.
I do not take the view that the budget our taxes pay for is beyond reproach. I have no problem evaluating it from the perspective of 'money is not infinite, and no specific agencies spending is so inherently special that it can not be discussed under the context of where potential waste or inefficient spending happened, and how it can be adjusted to avoid that in the future."
'X seems like a better use of the money and more representative of what the taxpaying public wants it spent on, to ensure things are prioritized properly while properly representing 'We The People' -- as such it may be worth looking back to determine if this money was allocated in a manner that provides the most benefit to the taxpayers while maintaining consistency with the agencies core responsibilities' -- there is nothing wrong with this type of discussion/analysis, and anyone trying to claim there is has there own agenda they want to impose on you.
Your line of thinking leaves absolutely no room to discuss the budget in a meaningful way, because 'having priorities' is not allowed under that framework.
It's a dialectical trap meant to make people fall in line. I'll pass, thanks.
I'll ignore (beyond pointing it out here) that you are putting words into my mouth and conducting a personal attack.
I did mostly want to draw contrast that government budget is unlike household and not zero sum.
Whether we print ourselves into depression is unclear. Particularly since there are other levers and continues to be economic growth.
I agree spending cannot be 100% for every need.
> I have no problem evaluating it from the perspective of 'money is not infinite, and no specific agencies spending is so inherently special that it can not be discussed under the context of where potential waste or inefficient spending happened, and how it can be adjusted to avoid that in the future."
I agree. Though saying we should not spend anything on X until we spend all on Y is not the same as saying we are spending too much X (in part given that we need to spend on Y)
Sure, and I have a similar view. Show me what we bought for $640M instead of just saying we spent $640M. How many people did we house for that? How many people weren't living on the streets because of it? What kind of conditions were they in? How many nights did we cover? What was average spent per person per night? Is that a reasonable cost? Just complaining about $640M answers none of these things.
You've got an overly simplistic view of government spending if just looking at a dollar amount (which is peanuts in terms of the overall spending of even this one agency) is enough for you to get upset about it.
We're going to need many, many billions from FEMA for this, which comes from a separate budget entirely. If this disaster costs FEMA $50B in relief (probably a way too low estimate), that migrant cost is only 1.3% of the total outlays of just this one storm. But FEMA has already spent over $20B on disaster relief this year so if this storm does end up costing $50B that's really $70B in disaster relief alone along with the several billion in other spending FEMA usually has. So really more like 640M / 75B == <1% of spending.
Arguing that $640M spent on migrant housing efforts is somehow massively impacting FEMA's responses to disasters is just ignoring reality. Its less than 1% of the money FEMA has to spend. Argue you don't think the migrants deserved the housing, but don't act like FEMA's response would have been materially different to any disaster if that money hadn't been spent. Because that's not based in reality at all.
And if you're upset about FEMA's allegedly poor responses to other disasters (not personally claiming either way here to any specific response), what makes you think just throwing more money at those responses would have solved whatever problems were there? I thought we were wanting to argue for the government to give us more bang for our buck not just throw more money at problems without going into deeper analysis of supposed failures. Maybe those issues were underbudgeting, maybe they were management issues, maybe they were issues outside of FEMA entirely.
Having a really big focus on <0.01% of the spending while seemingly ignoring the 99% of the rest of the spending really makes it seem like it's not the amount that troubles you. Arguing <0.01% of spend is going to spend us into a depression really shows how divorced from actually understanding the numbers one is, if the amount is what truly troubles you.
Any amount of government waste is worth talking about to me. But just throwing out an amount and saying it was spent on migrants isn't telling me its waste. Pointing out that half that was spent at a Ritz-Carlton for a dozen migrants would be, but that's probably not the reality of the spend.
Second, better to just plop a generator next to the existing infrastructure. The cell towers were recently "unlocked" and are serving any carrier.
Third, where are you going to base the blimps? They are not known for speed, even if you truck them in and inflate them. Part tovthis, why spend money on blimps when you can buy rescue helicopters and supply trucks instead? Comms is important, but short of the value of water rescue and food.
Four, what happens if the post hurricane weather is not favorable? Didn't hurricane Harvey last most of a week?
Isn't this then just ... kinda a normal "free 30 days" offer?
This seems not far from handing out free AOL disks, except you also need some added hardware?
No.
Ordering this costs $320 and takes 1-2 weeks. They even charge for shipping and handling.
By the time you get this, internet and cell service will most likely be re-established. I live 20 miles outside of Asheville, this is basically profiteering off a disaster imo.
Much easier for the richest man on Earth to simply install a hundred base stations himself. Instead, people who just had their lives washed away need to pay his company 300 bucks.
I follow a half dozen accounts in the area, and they're all donating a lot.
Here is one, for example. Ignore the politics and just scroll through the Starlink posts -
Here's another that claims Starlink drove the units straight out. Unclear if they were free or not.
As for the number, it's happening fast and I only happened to follow a few, so don't even want to provide a guess. More than 100 units just in what I've come across in the last week. Pinning down an exact number is likely impossible.
FEMA claims to have set up 40 units.
I was satisfied with the other person's response.
Dishes and service paid in full for by FEMA, organizations and individuals.
Some people have dishes and are having trouble signing up for service, usually new Starlink dishes have an hour of free service. Now that's 30 days.
If you already have a dish and you turn it on it will just work. No sign up, no accounts
Some folks wanted to stock up, but couldn't. [1] Storm was near the end of the month, people were waiting for their paycheck, and so just had no money to buy supplies, let alone a starlink kit or the service.
[1] source: I have family in the Asheville area. I hope to be with and helping them soon.
Wherein good samaritans are bringing hardware into the affected areas and having trouble/ delays using gift cards to get the accounts online and in service
Not too surprising, seen that, must be a fraud thing.
It’s pronounced a run for their money, i.e. competition.
Free starlink is meant to be a temporary patch to aid evacuation and lifesaving efforts until the communities can be reconnected physically.
If anything, the monopolists should be paying for their customers to get free starlink until their own networks are back up.
I don’t particularly like Comcast but the internet has been successfully preserved as a commodity, and communities worth serving are very well-served. I can choose from at least four competitive ISPs that I know of, and I am not in a particularly strong market area.
This helps setting up internet at regional centers that weren't devastated, for contact and comms. Not for browsing Reddit, taking Zoom calls, and playing Roblox.
I've been solar powering my mini since I got it with some old hardware I had laying around, just to see if I could.
As far as regional centers not devastated, those would be functioning cell towers? This disaster largely incurred four issues: (1) mud slides and flooding that killed people, (2) washed out roads, (3) power outage, (4) water outage
Cell towers are what you want to get back up and running. A cut off community needs food, water, or evacuation from the area.
The starlink I think has its use case for the first responders. At this point, I'm not sure how it is useful anymore.
Starlink was available ages ago. This offering was requested by people on the ground.
> This offering was requested by people on the ground
I agree. Though, I just don't see there being scale behind it. Is it still worthwhile? Sure. Meaningful at scale? I would want to see the data for that claim.
There's people with pack mules delivering aid. Including starlink receivers. Without collaboration with SpaceX
Before that, a more direct response to my question would have been appreciated too.
I finally see you are responding mostly to: "Those in the cut off areas (via land transit) can't get the equipment anyways, and to boot any cost is a complete barrier."
By that I was mostly thinking of people going out and getting the units themselves. That scales well. I see the statement was not super clear though as to why I was saying that.
The claim in contention is whether the starlink units are more than marginal. I was not willing to accept that claim, and I added the claim that had they been widely deployed in the immediate first two days following - the utility would have been super significant. Stores going from cash only to allowing credit cards is huge. Now that we are almost a week later, the "conventional" systems are coming back online.
Comms before the storm would either have been via cell tower, landline, sat phone, satellite plus generator, or ISP (perhaps other?). The more remote, the more likely there will be satellite (from my observations, I suspect that would be true provided that the remote area is not that impoverished; which they might be). Which does leave a niche that would still benefit from starlink. Early on, most of conventional comm systems were down. That niche would have been even larger. A week later, a lot of "conventional" comms are back. Yet, there is still a niche of utility (even at this time) for starlinks.
Per FEMA, they deployed 40 starlink units to NC [1]. That is potentially 1000 to 4000 people benefitting. Cajun navy efforts might have deployed more. I'm guessing the small towns that most benefit are order 50 to 100 people. If there is another 60 units deployed via cajun navy, we might be talking 10k people. Of 1M in western NC, that is getting significant and certainly very helpful for those people. With those wild ass guesses, I would concede that the utility is likely more than just marginal (which is me changing my mind here and starting to accept the claim of more than marginal utility).
I will point out as an observation, even earlier deployments would have been even more useful. Specifically my family in western NC would have benefited. They had SMS only comms the next day of the storm. The "cash only" for a week was one of their major challenges.
I think for grocery stores, them having conventional satelite is a good backup since that is more cost effective. Though, there is still a place for starlinks since they are highly portable. Particularly for getting payment systems back online, and emergency comms for places without cell coverage (that don't already have someone with conventional satellite plus generator or solar)
[1] https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20241003/biden-harris-adm...
The SMS you speak of were likely delivered over satellite(not necessarily starlink). A lot of sites with the transition to 4G don't have microwave backhaul anymore.
But let’s change the story a little: Local ISP has all their infrastructure destroyed, but Comcast’s network is still online. Comcast offers a one-month-free promotion but you have to purchase several hundred dollars in equipment, so you are strongly incentivized to continue with Comcast afterwards.
In what way is this win-win?
People who are donating have zero chance of a positive financial outcome. That is why it is called a donation.
You can't take that away.
It is extremely likely that your marginal costs for that month are only internet transit/egress to the tune of less than $0.05 per GB, and you soft cap their access such that maybe 100 GB is their practical limit for the month, you just sold a $300 device that sales were slowing on for worst-case $295, with a likely future revenue stream.
Starlink users are growing not receding. The devices have other places they can make money today.
You can talk margins all you want. Opportunity costs exist. So does fixed cost amortization.
Lots of these people already bought the hardware, and we're having difficulty paying for service. Imagine giving up $100+/dish guaranteed and someone talking about cents on the Internet.
People like you literally cannot be happy about anything. Good grief.
I mean, Comcast and Xfinity will probably not go down the next time this happens, right? At worse this is nice gesture that will result in a slight market correction and better outcomes for all next time.
Someone who had dishes asked for this.
It's not a wouldn't this be nice gift. Someone needed this enough to ask for this
https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/starlink-internet-review/
They didn’t do anything but offer the same deal they would to anyone else.
That's a 30 day trial where you pay for the product and service in full and get a full refund if you don't like it.
It's nothing like what's being offered right now where people are complaining about activation issues and the service just works.
Usually you get an hour free on new devices. Now it's 30 days
Details on the differences is illuminating, the "you don't know what you are talking about" is unhelpful.
Do you mind demonstrating how you can unpackage the device and connect straight to the internet without going through the activation hurdles?
If not, this is the most irrelevant piece of information you could possibly use to make your misguided point.
First responders on their own volition brought StarLink terminals on site, which REQUIRE ACTIVATION regardless of the 30 days free. This activation effort was getting in the way of rescue efforts, likely due to credit card processors being wary of gift cards. They literally couldn't connect due to this barrier (which has since been removed).
They removed the activation wall, and now anyone with a dish in the vicinity can connect. Do you see how that is different than buying a dish, taking it home, activating it in a safe area with an active credit card that the processor approves? And can you fathom a situation where maybe removing that activation wall will do tangible good?
How can you possibly not see the difference here?
Why don't you go pick up a StarLink kit, take it home and try to connect to the internet without activating it first - then come back when you have an understanding of what you are trying to explain to those who actually have used the things. Or sell your elite hax0r 0day on the dark-web for big money if you succeed.
You can even cost "StarLink" or whatever evil company dared offer their gear a restocking fee when you return it out of malice or frustration.
It should be a win-win if you want to stand on that point.
What you're saying has value and interest, but the delivery is violating the discussion guidelines and heading into the vitriol territory.
I suspect a mod might have shadow banned a chunk of this thread now, and if not, probably should.
I have personally activated, paid for, and sent on expeditions multiple Starlink systems, including the newer marine version.
You seem very upset about something I’m not talking about.
At worse this is a non-gesture. For the actual relief effort itself, those travelling to do rescue - starlink has its use cases (as would a satellite and sat phones, but starlink does somewhat shine for first responder use cases)
These people can't get Internet via WiFi or cellular and you know it.
This is concern trolling at best
I mostly wanted to correct that to say at worse it is a non gesture. Somewhat helping a couple hundred people out of a million plus, is not quite the "nice" gesture. Particularly a relatively poor population. IDK, a pedantic debate of "nice and meaningful" vs "nice but not significant" is not interesting. Non-gesture I would equate to the latter. It is not like 10k of these devices were rushed in, fully activated, on the second day when it would have counted most.
The help here is now coming late. 5 days ago (Monday) and this would have been much more helpful. To boot, just "first month free"
Which is my same response when you say someone, yeah that is some people. Not many, does not really move the needle as much as it could. Though, for those where this first month free was helpful - that is great. Except overall, "first month free" is not really a gamechanger for the significant population on the ground. Find specific evidence otherwise if you want to make that claim. I'll be in the area in a week or two, I'll ask about this.
> This is concern trolling at best
Concern trolling vs savior complex.. The quality of this dialogue is now severely degraded after this insult.
My family is in western NC not far outside of Asheville. Town of 100k. For _all_ of them, this "gesture" is meaningless since both factors of cell phone coverage and money are at play. Cell phone coverage (for SMS) came back online last sunday, and they reported to me a lot of people are badly off because the end of month paycheck was not soon enough and those people could not buy supplies in preparation.
I do not know where you are located. I have the impression this forum is dominated by people that don't understand how poor rural parts of the country can be. Appalachia is one of the very poor parts of the country. Poverty rates in western NC are typically 15 to 20% [1]. Per capita income in appalachia is roughly $40k [2] (consider the implications for the distribution). About 1.2M people [3] in western NC, with 200k of them unable to even buy food. As far as pre-existing deployments, $300 for a starlink and $120/month is way out of the question.
I don't see the numbers working out where a "first month is free", even with the device being donated as all that terribly useful en masse here.
Though, in fairness, I do see utility to have a starlink on the back of a pickup truck with a bunch of supplies heading into a small, cut-off, town of 100 and then coordinating further relief effort. At the same time, supplies and evac are more priority. Which is to say, the use case where I think this shines is for emergency workers. Again, first month free is meaningless there.
Worst case, yeah - essentially a non-gesture (worst case)
[1] https://www.arc.gov/map/poverty-rates-in-appalachia-2013-201...
[2] https://www.arc.gov/map/per-capita-income-rates-in-appalachi...
The world and Asheville doesn't exist only for you. And as I've pointed out a lot of those towers are backhauled over starlink. They could very well have received those texts over it before fiber was restored.
Even today, days later, there's people asking for starlink to be delivered because x town is down
Fema currently only has 40 in. (Citation in another comment, kindly take my word for it). Do you know how many immediately afterwards, any data or evidence? Even wild ass guess?
> The world and Asheville doesn't exist only for you.
This sounds like your own bias and frustration and assumptions. I'll respond to the insult by asking we calm down and have dialogue. This is not twitter.
> a lot of those towers are backhauled over starlink.
Do you have more information on this? How many? Which ones? Do I have starlink to thank for enabling SMS to waynesville?
> They could very well have received those texts over it before fiber was restored.
This is speculation. Can we firm up this claim?
More than 40 is my guess. Understand that these are individuals. No link to charities or organizations. Just people going in on their own.
In every disaster, mobile providers bring in tower on wheels. Starlink is the cheapest provider.
Lots of cell towers these days don't have microwave. If you only get calls/SMS on a tower these days you've definitely lost your fiber connectivity. With connectivity over SATCOM or even another 4G network. i.e a hotspot.
If you find recent documents about TOW's you'll see you can lease one and they mention you have to bring your own starlink. When they tell you how much alternatives cost you'll be happy to go with it.
Yeah no correction needed here buddy - I get it you have anti-Elon syndrome and anything any of his companies do are bad, and you have decided to use your intellectual prowess to delude yourself into this conclusion regardless of facts.
These devices are not even being setup by the locals, and no one is forcing them to buy into the ecosystem. The FIRST RESPONDERS REQUESTED THIS CHANGE, because they are bringing them on the ground with them. They successfully removed a hurdle which was preventing them from a rapid rescue effort. The fact you are willing to cast that as some sort of evil advertising campaign to hook them on hardware they can't afford is perhaps one of the dumbest things I have read here -- and apparently quite a few people here are influenceable enough to fall for this nonsense.
How you can manage to be so upset that they removed the device activation hurdle is beyond me -- but I'll go ahead and judge this situation based on the facts on the ground not my pre-conceived decision about a companies motives.
How poor appalachia is entirely irrelevant, the people aren't helicoptering out to bring StarLinks back to trick the community into getting locked into hardware. First responders had trouble activating and responding and made a direct request, which was granted for humanitarian reasons whether you like the company or not.
The fact that you are letting your biases cloud your judgement and drive absurd villain arcs is clear for everyone to see, and I for sure don't need you 'correcting' me (you also spelled my name wrong btw).
You are calling out other people for polluting the dialog by accurately calling you out, and in the same breath claiming this is really about Elon's savior complex. Maybe if you stop letting Elon live in your head rent free, you can make room for some nuance and critical thinking. Every claim you made here is based on a complete misrepresentation of the facts.
With that said, I now concede there is more than marginal utility happening and I've done the numbers in sibling comments. The fact I've evolved my opinion based on further information I think makes most of your screed moot.
> The FIRST RESPONDERS REQUESTED THIS CHANGE,
Are you referring to FEMA? Since there is at least one cajun navy style person who requested this that I am aware of, I would largely agree.
My contention is whether any of this actually all that meaningful. For that, I'm not going to assume it. Which was my initial position.
> and I for sure don't need you 'correcting' me
My apologies. I am stuck on a phone and my diligence is not what I would like it to be. Rather than "correcting", I was disagreeing with you (pending more information). I should have said something more like: without yet seeing the full numbers of how much this helping, I am not sure whether this is worst case even more than a non gesture. Since you wrote "worst case", my initial thought is the "worst case" was even lower on the spectrum than "nice:
> Every claim you made here is based on a complete misrepresentation of the facts.
Every claim?? Can you give a few examples? This feels like hyperbole.
Though, I try not to make unsupported claims. It would be a useful learning to me to know which claims I positively made without facts. (Please keep in mind not accepting claims is very different from putting forward a claim - perhaps you are conflating the two?? If not, I'm happy to apologize and retract any unsupported claims.)
"Are you referring to FEMA? Since there is at least one cajun navy style person who requested this that I am aware of, I would largely agree."
No - I am referring to the on the ground actual FIRST responders who were there helping immediately (and continue to volunteer their time, money, and skills) -- not the government agency that came in after. Are the only first responders that matter FEMA? Is this supposed to be some kind of logical fallacy gotcha like "OOOHHHHHHhhhhhh that dude that bought 50 StarLinks on his own credit card and hauled them out to those in need is actually SECOND to respond, doesn't matter if FEMA didn't help those people yet FEMA First, FEMA best." I know off-hand of a handful of volunteers that got over a hundred terminals out -- that could easily make a tangible difference for 1,000s of people alone. I'm sure there are many many more I don't have direct knowledge of.
You literally just fake quoted things I never said, misconstrued what I did say, laid out several logical traps, and somehow smugly think that everyone does not see through you.
"Every claim?" Yep.
Will I continue to dissect your disingenuous points? Nope, my time is more valuable than yours - and it's clear you have no problem pissing yours away to waste mine.
Yeah no thanks, I will patiently await your totally non-biased post-mortem-analysis of the data. Until then I have nothing more to say other than I feel sorry for you.
My question to you whether you were talking about FEMA or civilians was a QUESTION!! It was not a logical trap. I wanted to understand what you were saying better. That you ranted about it, put words into my mouth - does not bode well. It was a clarifying question. I don't need you feeling anything about me just as much as you don't need correcting. I do think you are reading way more into what I'm writing, and are conflating the lack of accepting your claims with making those of my own. If you can clarify, it would be helpful. Otherwise calm down since the personal attacks are not in the spirit of this discussion board.
"Is that a real example?" Yes. It was one of the people who were specifically asking that this action be taken, after they cleaned out all of their local home depots and drove them out there and was having trouble with activation.
That is just one person out of many who are trying to help, while you spend hours hovering in this thread looking to use your carefully crafted but incredibly transparent attempt to look very 'logical' and 'unbiased' as a cudgel, while you attempt to de-legitimize and minimize their efforts.
Again, I feel sorry for you and hope you find peace within yourself (or at least go back to reddit).
I would agree it is better ended.
> I want to make this point abundantly clear for anyone who is clicking 'expand' on all of your downvoted comments
In a similar vein, you did not identify any fake quotes that you accused me of, nor identified any unsupported claims (though I concede you could have identified one, which was poorly written and reasonably could have been considered a claim)
> "Is that a real example?" Yes.
That is excellent. Quite cool.
> That is just one person out of many who are trying to help, while you spend hours hovering in this thread
I am in a hotel right now. Staging and waiting to go in. My presence is not going to be a net benefit right now compared to my own resource usage. I'm going to be in western NC in a few days. FWIW
> looking to use your carefully crafted but incredibly transparent attempt to look very 'logical' and 'unbiased' as a cudgel
If it looks that way, and I never brought out the cudgel, how do you know it was dishonest and not just questions? I even agreed with and asked if you were talking about citizens or FEMA. You then went off accusing me of laying some trap and all these other things (after I _agreed_ with you!) You further accused me of saying civilians could not be first responders, a diatribe that put your words into my mouth.
> while you attempt to de-legitimize and minimize their efforts.
Respectfully, you read that in. You attributed motive. I am not a random person on Twitter or reddit just trying to dunk on you.
I did not accept, at first read, that "first month free" was significant. I see how it is more so now. (And you accused me of extreme anti-Musk bias, to which is disproven when I say following everything I have changed my perspective. I see how first month free is helpful and supported a significant assistance, of which starlink was a very notable part).
Yet, questioning "first month free", does not delegitimize what people are doing. It is skepticism.
> hope you find peace within yourself
FWIW. I am okay with all of this convo and have never been upset. Annoyed and disappointed perhaps, but not upset. I might not have clearly conveyed everything I wanted to, but my questions were honest questions here. Not logic traps.
> (or at least go back to reddit).
Ironic since I don't read reddit, and never once started an X (twitter) account. This is why I was pointing out and reminding you to avoid personal attacks & shallow dismissals (per the discussion guidelines). The guidelines say as conversations go on, they should get more interesting. Which is why I asked you to point out unsupported claims so you could illustrate why (and give more information, and add context and light). Instead you tellingly refused to point anything out, resorted to incorrect hyperbole and personal attacks. I feel that was about half of what you wrote in the end.
I don't want to close on that. I did find 50% of what you had to say to be informative and genuinely interesting and did cure me of some ignorance (and i feel this would have been a very good convo had we been able to stick to that.)
I can concisely now say that all along I have only been asking: "is this useful?" I would postulate, for the starlink and month free to be useful the following are needed: (A) access to the device, (B) ability to pay (C) meaningful numbers deployed (D) no other alternatives (ie: existing conventional means)
We hashed out A, B, D already. C is difficult to know, perhaps only SpaceX can answer. Counting twitter responses can give us a minimum, but that is only so useful.
This response from Astroid I think exemplifies how this conversation went off the rails:
> How poor appalachia is entirely irrelevant, the people aren't helicoptering out to bring StarLinks back to trick the community into getting locked into hardware.
This is an example of arguing against an imagined conversation. Who is able, and how they are paying for the devices is important - otherwise they are not useful. The suggestion that I am instead implying a nefarious motive to get device lock in is imagined. That was not this conversation. A case study of what it looks like when people are talking at each other and not to each other.
More than whatever FEMA is providing. I've seen video of single people with more dishes than FEMA claimed.
This is access at central locations where people gather. Retail stores, homes, government agencies like Police and fire, County Offices etc
It's free at the point of use to residents so questions about paying are words in wind.
This devices are for the use of first responders and temporary access for local residents. By first responders I don't mean government, not even State/Local.
They already had dishes, before FEMA was there, before the cell providers were there, before any SpaceX intervention. and today there's still people without access to communications. Towers still gone, wired services out. And more starlink dishes coming in. There's flooded towns officially out of the disaster area where both FEMA and SpaceX aren't.
For many people in the region, starlink dishes whether directly, on towers, or on cells on wheels or some other SATCOM provider was the first time they were able to communicate post disaster.
I was curious about this and triple checked. Some claims had citations. Therefore at least some were supported.
I wrote:
> Somewhat helping a couple hundred people out of a million plus, is not quite the "nice" gesture.
I understand a bit more the disconnect now. I did not write carefully that I meant that as a hypothetical, in the context of an "at worst." As a claim, I would agree it is unsupported. And I agree it can reasonably read that way. I can see how that would bias the reading of the rest of the content.
> that dude that bought 50 StarLinks on his own credit card and hauled them out to those in need
Is that a real example? I'm willing to take your word for it. I don't read twitter nor reddit. Those types of anecdotes are not reported on from the sources I read.
Which is to say, you genuinely have some info I don't have. No logical traps. I am learning more about the scale and utility of starlink. Anecdotes do not make data, at the same time I appreciate the info. I do wish you could unbias the conversation, make it about ideas and data, and not make this personal.
30 days is just an obvious number to start with and give enough time to make a reasonable assessment for better next steps.
I don't believe there is a theoretical or practical upper limit which would exclude very wide adoption of Starlink and similar competitors.
Put in another way, I think it is possible that in a decade or two the only cell phone/data service that doesn't come from orbit will be a few terrestrial towers in dense downtown urban areas and around things like sports venues.
With satellite internet you're sharing the medium with everyone, and that doesn't scale well. Beamforming probably helps a lot, but I don't how accurate it can be on that distance.
Design for NYC density and 99% of satellites would be redundant at any given moment. The solution for increasing density is dropping costs so it’s viable for satellites to be idle 95% of the time. At least as a first approximation, there’s some tricks with how you setup orbits after the basic network is done.
As of September 2024 they have 6,371 operational satellites and ~ 4 million customers globally.
Which gets back to my original point where increasing the maximum density inherently reduces the average utilization of each satellite. There simply aren’t enough people living in Iowa etc to balance the east coast.
It’s actually less than you expect because you can make use of satellites a hundred miles out to the sea, over the Hudson River, and even suburbs. And that’s before considering how few people would pick Starlink when they can use cheap fiber.
>And that’s before considering how few people would pick Starlink when they can use cheap fiber.
Obviously we're talking about how dense an area Startlink can service on its own.
I’m going to simplify because you seem to misunderstand what’s going on.
Your eyes allow you to see a clear image of your surroundings because photons come from even slightly different angles aren’t interfering with each other. Starlink uses a phased array antenna to achieve a similar effect where satellites in different locations broadcasting on the same frequency can be clearly distinguished by two base stations physically next to each other. And similarly two different satellites can receive clear signals when two Starlink antennas are broadcasting when physically next to each other at the same instant.
There’s physical limits and the phased array antenna in use are much worse than theoretically possible. But, the technology they are currently using really does scale vastly beyond what’s economical viable.
>Starlink uses a phased array antenna to achieve a similar effect where satellites in different locations broadcasting on the same frequency can be clearly distinguished by two base stations physically next to each other
If by next to each other you mean several km apart, yes. edit: Ok, I didn't think of that, if the satellites are far away from each other it'll work indeed since it's both the sender and receiver which have directivity. That indeed would make it scale better.
Sure the technology can be improved, but there's only so much you can do at several hundreds of km distance and the sizes of antennas you have. Especially with mobile phones which are small and power limited I really don't see how it could work in anything but very low density areas.
> If by next to each other you mean several km apart, yes
By close I mean inches. Phased array’s aren’t great at directionality, but both the satellite and the receiver are using them which makes a real difference because the satellites are in different locations even if the receivers aren’t.
At the limit satellite A has a few spot beams one is aimed at say one World Trade Center which also covers several blocks around it. It’s 5 miles from satellite B which isn’t aiming at that location, but another satellite say G that’s 20km away is.
Hypothetically 2 ground stations X1 and X2 are 1 foot apart on the roof of one trade center. X1 can get a signal from satellite A at 25 DB higher than the signal from satellites G because there’s a few degree difference in incoming angle and 50DB higher than from B which is both a degree off and aiming elsewhere.
Similarly A receives a single from X1 that’s 25 DB higher than from X2 because their signals are aiming in different directions. (DB numbers were picked from a hat but I had a several variables already.)
The real world isn’t that simple, and there’s no way in hell their software is setup for that many satellites but phased array antenna on both side makes a big difference here.
It’s always worth remembering that efficiency and technical limitations are different things. We could absolutely blanket the US in 5G towers but the cost is vastly higher than the benefit.
It's fine, but it's highly dependent on having extremely low customer density. The system doesn't work well if everyone is using it all the time.
What is your extremely low customer density source? In theory they could reduce beam size and throw more satellites in space. How much they can handle is up for speculation, but your “extremely low” claim could use a source.
Wired networks can include fibre optic to the house like we have in Australia where the speeds can reach a consistent 1Gbps even in highly dense areas at peak times. And internal testing is happening on 10Gbps.
If US cares about supporting the internet of tomorrow satellite services like Starlink will never be capable enough.
Cheaper fiber to homes definitely made last mile scale better bandwidth-wise, but it didn’t change the fundamental nature of needing to heavily oversubscribe to make it affordable.
So they don't need to have equivalent transit capacity.
Which is not a capability Starlink can provide.
Fiber to your home doesn't mean you've got dedicated bandwidth to your ISP. You're still usually on a shared medium. You're likely to get all your speed most of the time though because most residential customers aren't constantly using anywhere near a gigabit of throughput constantly.
That said though, a regular ISP can just run another line out. Starlink can't just will additional useful frequency ranges out of nothing. There's only so much spectrum to be used in the giant shared medium of the sky. Beams are only going to be so tight at those distances (outside of using lasers), only so many useful orbits, etc.
Youtube meets you at exchange points and if you’re an ISP anywhere that isn’t a major city, there isn’t an exchange point there.
Take a place like Boise and a municipal fiber provider there. They aren’t big enough for Netflix to offer an OCA and there isn’t an exchange in Boise with good content provider density on the fabric. So that provider needs to pay for transit or a private lease to the nearest big exchange (SEA, PDX, barely SLC) where it can get connectivity.
Your mental model is completely wrong for ISPs that aren’t serving the same city as one of the <10 major exchanges in the US.
It's just the nature of the technology.
That’s… very incorrect.
When an ISP runs fiber to a new building (be it in a business park or rural farm), the math is almost entirely based on recuperating their installation costs - which they often pay for entirely out of their pocket. Your entire first contract term is usually just paying back the installation costs alone...
For some perspective, at a previous building we tried to bring fiber across the street into our office. The installation costs were too expensive to make the math work - so the ISP offered to split the installation costs 50/50 instead. Our half was over $94,000. This involved directional boring and the works, to go ~200ft to the right-of-way vault and into our MPOE.
One can only imagine the expense of running fiber (or any type of cable) out to the boonies. It's totally feasible - but the costs make it not palatable in reality.
Running a fibre is about the same cost as running a power cable.
There is a lot of infrastructure where the cost to replace is an order of magnitude higher than the inflation adjusted original cost.
No free lunch, as they say.
Source : https://internet.buildns.ca
> having extremely low customer density
I think you need to define “extremely low” because 700gbps is plenty for several thousand people. And the question was specifically about everyone in rural areas switching.
If you go by rural being <1000 people per square mile and a cell covering roughly 97 square miles (assuming the larger 15 mile hex diameter), that lands at 7.2 mbps per person if there are 1000 people in every square mile all trying to use it at the same time.
That sounds fine considering standard consumer usage patterns mean you’ll get 10x that as an individual even in peak times. That’s also assuming maximum density for what’s considered rural.
Which is ridiculously poor.
This would simply create a digital divide further increasing inequality in rural areas.
Not sure what you mean? The more remote you get the better your bandwidth gets because you are sharing it with fewer people. This is the opposite of most ISPs which tend to ignore rural areas.
At a typical residential contention of 50:1 that's 350mbit
At a really good residential rate of 10:1 that's still 70mbit
My personal experience, as someone who has lived in, and worked from, rural areas with limited bandwidth, is that latency (for SSH connections) is the only thing that matters for learning and productivity.
But OP clearly knows better, because if we just gave everyone gigabit fiber, the access to UHD Pornhub, Netflix, Amazon Video, etc, will instantly correct the "digital divide". And OP has a point. I know someone who started designing > 500k qubit quantum computers with > 5s coherence after spending two weeks straight watching all seasons of My 600Lb Life.
He kept mumbling something about "It's not in the box, it's in the band"
There's very good reasons starlink has such low limits on terminals per cell.
Readers, I would take posts from this user with a large grain of salt.
The bandwidth is not split between upload and download, it’s very explicitly optimized for download capacity which is what most people are interested in. If you want to upload much beyond 15mbps, Starlink is going to suck for you regardless of congestion.
>There's very good reasons starlink has such low limits on terminals per cell.
High density areas are broken into smaller cells to help with this. don’t forget that the limit doesn’t apply to roaming users either.
Sure, 7mbps may not be good enough to supply the demands of your multi-screen 4k UHD loli goon cave, but it's more than enough to send a < 1kB message to your family that you're safe in a disaster area.
Try to get some perspective.
That’s HD video. The alternative for these people is even slower DSL or heavily throttled LTE tethering if they are lucky enough to have cell coverage. You’re living in a privileged bubble.
Starlink could pretty easily serve everyone whose only current option is 4G/5G/DSL/Satellite.
Basically everywhere where there is no Fiber or Cable. That's still a decent chunk of the population.
What does "hate on the promo" mean?
* perhaps equipment charge after 30 days, or a half off on the equipment after 30 days. Those would very feel reasonable.
Units being donated meets the first criteria, though that still relies on a donation. The logistics of returning the equipment is then also complicated too..
I'm curious how do you know this exactly, and how many is many?
Every couple of months the geny gets sparked up and everything tested. For a very small investment it's very comforting to know we've always got power/internet, regardless of what happens.
Because I've thought about solving a similar scenario but just assumed solar/batteries would be the play here.
Currently, the absolute cheapest I can find lithium batteries (I am planning a solar+grid load-balancing setup) is about $160CAD/kwh. To prepare for the worst case (i.e. minimal solar generation during and following the storm - say, middle of winter/happens to be cloudy/panels are damaged/etc) I’d need to spend over $30,000 in batteries alone to have the same capacity as $120 of gas. Not to mention the sheer amount of space that would take. And the cost of solar panels (10kW actual generation capacity, minimum, to keep essentials running), at roughly $1/W in Canada, adds another $10,000 to that estimate. And that’s not including the cost of installation, which based on what I’ve heard, probably adds another $10-20k.
While there are some interesting advances being made, I do not believe that battery capacity costs will decrease by 3-4 orders of magnitude “within the next few years,” unless you anticipate gasoline/diesel/etc prices to go parabolic. It’s very obvious why people would much rather have a generator and some Jerry cans for a few hundred bucks than a solar + battery setup that costs more than their car.
The overall point though, is that solar and/or batteries are not a viable alternative for emergency backup power, nor will they be "within the next few years." Within the next few decades, maybe.
Fair call for lithium chemistries, which will probably drop closer to one order of magnitude within 2-3 years (if the trend from the last year-to-date holds). But if we're talking about sodium ion, I wouldn't be surprised if that did drop by a couple of orders of magnitude, which is already sitting about ~140USD/kwh for consumer packs (but before shipping from China). It has a weird discharge voltage curve and needs a more capable inverter to handle it though, but at the prices I'm seeing, overcapacity is plenty affordable.
Or if you're looking now at sodium ion. It's only just hitting the consumer market, but it's already cheap enough for energy storage at the scale GP is talking about. Might take a few years for cell quality, inverter, and charging technology to improve, but by 2030 it will be so dirt cheap to the point that it would be economically sensible for any household.
I'm assuming OP isn't actually serving out of home (starlink won't help with it's CG-Nat), so it's not like they're running 5kW of servers. 10kWh a day seems perfectly reasonable amount to keep going.
Given just running a generator it going to eat 20 litres a day on lowest load, over 3 weeks that's 400 litres you'd need to store.
With a battery setup even if you had to charge from a generator you'd be able to run it more efficiently for a shorter period.
So having spend 10 minutes I reckon the answer is "yes, OP should certainly get a solar/battery system set up"
I had a 10,000 gal tank put in for agricultural diesel, and that cost about $5,000.
Do you live on the moon?
Earlier this year I installed a 7.8kW system in Canada for $13k CAD all in, inc the inverter and labor. (Then I got a $5k subsidy to bring it to $8k out of pocket.)
It’s cheaper now, panel prices fall every month.
There are high permitting costs, high cost hardware requirements, and high cost of labor.
The state requires a 4 years of training to become a solar installer, so there is little competition.
Also, with every new house required by law to have solar, installers know they have a captive market and are milking it for all it is worth.
I dont think we have yet seen the cost impact of the new Tariffs on Chinese solar panels and batteries, so it will keep going up.
I'm always amazed at how for regular life things it seems you guys has less "freedom" than we do.
It's my house, so I got up on the roof and installed the panels myself (with a friend). I did pay for a licensed electrician to wire the inverter into the main house breaker and double check everything, and he did get a permit for that work (which was $150, IIRC). Then I emailed the electric company, three days later they came out and installed a bi-directional meter for $32 and I'm good to go.
Though that said, Mt. Taranaki is meant to do the big boom soonish. That'll be interesting.
We basically punted on the 10th amendment with things like the FCC and DOE (education, not energy).
Electromagnetic waves transit state lines pretty much constantly. Even though I'm in Texas I'll get radio waves from Oklahoma, Louisiana, and even Illinois from time to time.
> Talking at a distance has nothing inherently to do with commerce.
Talking at a distance does affect commerce when that talking at a distance interferes with other people trying to talk and conduct interstate commerce. Guess I'll have to state it again, electromagnetic waves transit state lines pretty much constantly.
And it would absolutely affect interstate commerce if every state decided on different frequencies for commercial FM radio, different frequencies for cell phones, different frequencies for TV signals, different encodings for those things, etc. imagine needing to buy a different radio for NY as TX or IL or CA. Or if you needed different cell phones as you traveled state lines.
> We basically punted on the 10th amendment with things like the FCC and DOE
People being illiterate definitely affects interstate commerce. People not being able to count definitely affects interstate commerce.
Fetuses that get aborted might have grown up to be residents of another state who would've bought products there.
Marijuana sold to medical patients in one state may end up in another, reducing alcohol sales.
Socialized medicine programs offered by state governments might lessen the profits of insurance and pharmaceutical firms that are headquartered out of state.
California's labeling laws result in labels that end up on products sold in other states increasing the costs of those products.
State level environmental regulations may impact publicly traded companies and thus the stock market generally, and thereby people in other states. (This one could be used to justify basically anything)
A higher minimum wage in one state may attract workers from out of state.
Educating children about sex might reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies and thus accelerate demographic collapse, harming the economy more generally.
A gay pride parade might result in social media posts shown in other states with ads next to it.
The passage or enforcement of any law might result in news stories in other states on for profit media outlets. Similarly the lack of such a law may result less work for journalists as they can't write about a law that doesn't exist.
What was even the point of the 10th amendment if it was intended to be interpreted as it is today? It seems to do nothing.
There's quite the few young hams going for cheap-ass equipment from Amazon. Not everyone can afford an ICOM station from the get-go, you start with small cheap stuff and work your way up.
It’s true that there’s no [practical] enforcement of it, in much the same way there’s no enforcement of the OTH Radars from various militaries that take out large chunks of the HF amateur bands every now and then.
So no, high-entropy random noise of substantial length wouldn't be allowed because the meaning of the message would be unclear and unknowable.
You also can't broadcast one-way messages per 97.113(b), and you're probably not having a two-way conversation with somebody via high-entrypy random noise. So there's also that.
Let's have Princeton PEAR sponsor it. Call it NCC20 for NotChaCha20.
The bandwidth allocated to amateur radio is incredibly valuable. (All of the spectrum allocated to ham radio would probably be worth literally billions if the FCC were allowed to auction it off to the private sector.)
The only thing preventing folks from attempting to use up all that spectrum for commercial purposes is the lack of encryption, which allows the ham radio community to self-police. If the traffic is encrypted, you no longer have any way to distinguish legitimate amateur traffic from commercial interests.
The flip side of this is that the government really doesn't want amateur radio being used to set up otherwise legal transmitters that could potentially be numbers stations for foreign spies. So they consider this one a national security issue and kinda do pay attention to it.
If you want to encrypt, use WiFi mesh networks if you're okay with the range limitations. If you really need ultra-long-range communication, your options are either (a) no encryption so the government+community knows what you're doing, or (b) you pay for a private service, who then inherits the legal obligation to monitor what you're doing with it.
They tried not servicing Crimea due to an unwillingness to get involved in the war, and the DoD quickly made them toe the geopolitical line. (They are also a huge customer of a military-only service called Starshield, also run by SpaceX/Starlink, which either runs separately on the same Starlink satellites, or is dedicated Starshield satellites with very similar technology.) This is the same USG that issues the launch licenses for the entire rest of the business via the FAA, so, like Apple/China, they have little option if they don’t want to be dead in the water.
If the USG wants your dish off, it will be off. No license revocation is required, just a phone call.
I am confused, it's illegal for Starlink to prove access to Russia and Russian occupied areas like Crimea because of US sanctions. So essentially the opposite of what you're claiming.
It was off, per sanctions (and other reasons) as you note.
SpaceX was opposed to turning it back on, presumably wishing to stay out of the geopolitical calculus of the war. They do have a rather lot to lose if war extends to space.
The DoD overruled them, either via requirements for Starshield, or by just laying down the law. Starlink (or perhaps Starshield, same difference) works (for Ukrainian operations) in Crimea now, last I heard.
> wanted to use Starlink as c&c for drone strikes in occupied Crimea
They sent a last second request after realizing Starlink wasn't on in Crimea. Essentially asking SpaceX to violate US law and sanctions.
> SpaceX was opposed to turning it back on
You cannot turn something back on if it was never on in the first place. I see this phrasing everywhere, it's so strange. I guess people say it because it makes it sound like Musk turned off Starlink in order to scupper the Ukrainian attack on the Russian Navy, which is not true. And others keep repeating it because they don't know better.
> The DoD overruled them, either via requirements for Starshield, or by just laying down the law
The law is that SpaceX cannot violate US sanctions. If the US Gov later exempted SpaceX from sanctions and then instructed them to turn on Starlink in Crimea, how is that "laying down the law"? The initial request didn't come from the US gov, it came from Ukraine.
https://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-upholds-decision-to-revoke-ama...
Starlink's character qualification is whether you pay their bill.
This means that Starlink is the one that needs to stay in the good graces of the government, and inherits the obligation to monitor the activities of their users.
I guarantee you if you're using Starlink to commit crimes, they're going to drop you as a customer.
When you've been hit like this, you aren't going to use your power for this. You have bigger issues. You have to dry out your house, demolition, etc. And that's when you get power. You might not get it for weeks. And honestly, once power reaches residences, power to other services has usually been restored already.
Either this is well-meaning but ill-executed. Or meant to be seen as well-meaning, but with the realization that is almost purely gestural.
One of the most interesting ones is Shawn Hendrix on X: https://x.com/TheShawnHendrix
While I'm sure having internet isn't their focus, a starlink draws a trivial amount of power especially relative to a dehumidifier/fans/etc and you can only work for so many hours a day. Being able to sit around at the end of the day and watch some youtube and being able to communicate with friends and family would be the difference between an awful situation and completely untenable one, personally.
Purely gestural? Can you be any more thoughtless?
Sure you are. If you're, say, running off a gasoline generator, unplug A from it, plug Starlink in, make phone call, unplug Starlink, plug A back in.
BTW, nearly everyone in my neighborhood has a generator because the power company fails whenever there's a storm.
It’s about cleaning up and assessing damage.
These people will need communication, but this is like too little. They will be dealing with this for years.
Two issues though: stores need internet to allow credit cards. The cash only economy in place is painful. Second, lot of folks in Appalachia are poor. I'm told via family in the area that some people wanted to stock up before the storm, but the end of month paycheck was not soon enough.
And at the time the decision was made its internet speeds were declining.
They were denied because they had not yet provided coverage in the area (years before they were required to, under the contract).
As FCC's Commissioner Brendan Carr wrote:
“Instead of applying the traditional FCC standard to the record evidence, which would have compelled the agency to confirm Starlink’s $885 million award, the FCC denied it on the grounds that Starlink is not providing high-speed Internet service to all of those locations today.”
“What? FCC law does not require Starlink to provide high-speed Internet service to even a single location today. As noted above, the first FCC milestone does not kick in until the end of 2025. Indeed, the FCC did not require—and has never required—any other award winner to show that it met its service obligation years ahead of time.”
These extra terminals are available because the FCC revoked their participation. If they had not, right now those terminals would be in the Midwest or other areas far from Helene.
This kinda feels like musk offering to help the Thai kids trapped in a cave. The "pedo" guy pointed out the offer of help was useless. If you have internet access to set up payment, then you have internet access... Am I missing something? That and a lot of folks in Appalachia didn't have money to buy supplies, let alone a starlink sub.
I do applaud any help going to the area nonetheless. I hope I'm missing some big pieces, and am started to feel this is a distraction.
You can get a full refund on the hardware if you use it for under 30 days
I can't believe people complain about charity when so many other companies do nothing. Same with Mr.Beast's charity acts. There's something wrong with people who do nothing and hate on other people doing charity.
It is possible that people are interpreting this 30 day promotional period as “Starlink offers hurricane survivors $120/mo internet access starting November 2nd”, which would not be factually inaccurate assuming today as the start date of the promotion. $120/mo is roughly double the average broadband cost in e.g. the Asheville area.
However, I do think Musk genuinely likes to help people^ (e.g. Puerto Rico and Ukraine), but also I feel his response to the (valid) rejection of his help by the divers in Thailand was ungracious and maybe a little telling. Hopefully he’s grown since then
^ also it’s good PR
Not an elon fan, but the current admin / gov in charge is run by halfwits.
