TheLoneTomatoe t1_iubke56 wrote on October 30, 2022 at 1:50 AM

Reply to comment by wbruce098 in Amazon may have to turn to SpaceX for help launching its Starlink rival service by Soupjoe5

Do you know how many customers a single starlink/kuiper satellite support compared to 1 5g tower?

wbruce098 t1_iublqj7 wrote on October 30, 2022 at 2:02 AM

A hell of a lot more. By my estimates you get at least 50 of those 5G towers per satellite. But the satellites also have greater latency (about 500ms to LEO, IIRC, due to limits on the speed of light) and lower total bandwidth (around 1gbps compared to 8gbps with the towers). Those numbers are subjective of course so it depends but I just can’t see Starlink outperforming terrestrial internet where such internet is available.

Adeldor t1_iubphbm wrote on October 30, 2022 at 2:34 AM

> But the satellites also have greater latency (about 500ms to LEO, IIRC, due to limits on the speed of light)

LEO (Starlink) latencies are more like 50 ms. Geostationary satellites are the ones feeling the light-speed-limit with 500 ms ping times.

Interestingly, over long distances, Starlink is potentially faster than fiber, as the speed of light through a vacuum is near c, but through fiber is 0.7c at best.

wbruce098 t1_iucohoz wrote on October 30, 2022 at 9:32 AM

Oh thanks for that latency correction! That makes a huge difference.

TheLoneTomatoe t1_iubmahx wrote on October 30, 2022 at 2:06 AM

What's your estimate on the towers?

I know the exact numbers for the satellites, but know less about the towers.

wbruce098 t1_iuco9oy wrote on October 30, 2022 at 9:29 AM

Yeah so that’s a bit of a complex thing. I know satellites can technically reach anyone in their footprint, with a few exceptions (like those near the edge). But the towers can provide incredibly fast connection if you’re close by, but that drops off rapidly. I live about 170-200 meters from one of those little 5G internet antennas (the lamp post sized ones, not the giant cell towers), and can barely receive it’s signal, partly because of blocked line of sight (a row of brick townhomes; they’re probably limited in how high they can raise them due to skyline interruption or whatever). Just rough guesstimating based on some really crappy math, there’s probably something in the vicinity of 400-500 townhomes in range of that thing, just not me! The internet tells me they have a range of 300-450 meters but that probably is under ideal conditions: say, a taller tower in a less densely populated area.

That’s still probably more than enough customers to justify the relatively low cost of putting hundreds or even thousands of these things up in dense urban neighborhoods, compared to say, running cables and junction boxes and such.

The taller cellular service towers would have a greater range but maybe not massively so because as I understand it, the ultra wideband 5G doesn’t have quite the range of lower frequencies used on 4G (or lower band 5G) so your top 5G speeds are really gonna depend a lot more on how close you are to that tower, how densely they’re packed in, and a lot more on the kind of obstructions that are in the LOS than lower frequency wireless products.

What’s that number for Starlink? At least, how many people could a single satellite cover with solid ultrasuperludicrous-HD Rings of Power streaming worthy speeds at once? I’m sure it varies a bit because the satellites are constantly moving but what’s the rough stats?