A very important thing about this is going to be 911 (and other emergency number) calling. Since 911 calling bypasses network locks, we'll have a world where everyone outdoors can reach help.
There’s a popular tendency to overvalue connectivity in the backcountry and undervalue the ability to avoid unnecessary risk and self-rescue. Connectivity can actually cause some people to take risks where they otherwise wouldn’t, thinking a helicopter will drop out of the sky 30 minutes after dialing 911. Many stories about rescues in the White Mountains of NH, for example, begin with a call for help with known coordinates (either by cell or PLB). The trouble comes in rallying resources from Fish & Game, State Police, volunteer groups, etc. then getting into the woods to carry out the rescue. We’re talking many hours for this. Then there’s the issue of actually reaching those coordinates and hoping they are accurate—there’s been teams bounced around multiple points through grueling terrain while they, themselves, are putting their lives at risk.
Provided, of course, that you have the special app which costs $5.99/month* and has full access to your phone storage, camera, microphone, GPS location, WiFi SSID, OAuth tokens, and copyright ownership of your childs baby pictures.
It's interesting to see all the criticism of things like this on a place like hacker news.
Starlink has repeatedly been pooh-poohed. It's impossible, it'll never work, no one will want to use it.
If you have ever travelled internationally the potential game changing nature of Starlink would be immediately apparent.
This is a test. If nothing else, spacex is known to iterate. Starlink satellites have intentionally low lifetimes in space, they are all going to be replaced relatively soon with later generations.
Yes, Biden and the FCC successfully fought Starlink, they got the awards for rural connectivity revoked, and the appeal of the revocation also kept the award revoked because starlink supposedly couldn't provide rural connectivity. So at least on paper starlink has "failed" to meet the needs of rural folks.
The FCC "concluded that Starlink had not shown that it was reasonably capable of fulfilling Rural Digital Opportunity Fund requirements to deploy a network of the scope, scale, and size required to serve the 642,925 model locations in 35 states for which it was the winning bidder."
You'd sort of expect hacker news folks to be interested in the science of potential benefits of this sort of thing (even if they doubt it'll ever happen). T-Mobile is betting pretty clearly that starlink WILL be able to deliver messaging via a space based backhaul.
And rumor has it that starlink is bringing in some real money even if the govt has determined its not technically feasible so there is some market validation of their ideas.
They didn't get the FCC money because they couldn't get a consistent 100Mbps down 20Mbps up, not because anyone claimed it didn't provide access.
Those numbers are the current FCC definition of "broadband" and I think it's fair to use the broadband standard as the main threshold for that money. And the latency requirement is a generous 100ms, no shenanigans there. Maybe partial funding would be good for connections that can at least meet 25/3, but we shouldn't consider 25/3 to be good enough.
Having used Starlink a couple of times recently while travelling (think rural accommodations and the like such as rural areas of New Zealand and the Samoa islands) I've not been impressed with it. In every single case my 4G phone had better service from the local cellco (even where it was 1, bar of service) than Starlink. Don't get me wrong, Starlink is great when it is the only option. But I keep seeing it deployed in places there are other better options in including fibre, xDSL, 4G/5G, etc. It seems the hype for Starlink is very real, and lay people are sucked into thinking it's the best thing since sliced bread when it's not the only option (and actually not the best option). A great example is my current holiday accommodation is literally within 5G coverage and probably can easily get xDSL (if not fiber optic) but no, they go with Starlink... So damn shifty I gave up after a few days and now use a local LTE 4G provider instead at my own cost.
I've traveled internationally extensively. These days my phone just works. I have not traveled to Africa or South America though, so maybe we're just doing different traveling. I mention this because you say it should be obvious if you've ever traveled.
I remember when they announced Starlink (and 3 or 4 competitors started angling at the space too) that I made a rough prediction that its never going to become a global internet, its a niche product for rural users that will immediately hit a ground station in the same country.
Despite consistent, vocal, misunderstanding from rusted on musk stans, this continues to be the truth.
In fact Starlink continues to obey every Carrier and Satellite related law in every country that it does business. Musk spends significant time shitting on the australian government, but he absolutely pays for his spectrum and he absolutely submits all requested information to the australian government.
Starlink's ground stations basically operate like a traditional ISP, just worse. To the point where to really get any traction its more or less a Vocus operation in Australia these days.
>Yes, Biden and the FCC successfully fought Starlink, they got the awards for rural connectivity revoked, and the appeal of the revocation also kept the award revoked because starlink supposedly couldn't provide rural connectivity. So at least on paper starlink has "failed" to meet the needs of rural folks.
This doesnt surprise me in the least. Where my customers use starlink in an area with any kind of population its a race to the exit. Where it is doing amazing is on remote cattle stations with near to no density. I have seen what passes for Rural in the USA and its positively urban by Australian standards. Where WISPs are professionalising they arent really becoming threatened by Starlink (where they suck they are getting creamed by them however)
>T-Mobile is betting pretty clearly that starlink WILL be able to deliver messaging via a space based backhaul.
T-Mobile probably has to meet Starlink at every base station in the country they are working on.
>And rumor has it that starlink is bringing in some real money even if the govt has determined its not technically feasible so there is some market validation of their ideas.
This doesnt surprise me. I have evaluated several alternative satellite internet providers, and starlink is extremely cheap in comparison. Lack of layer 2 services is a dealbreaker for some companies however, which is why I was still seeing 15k pa 20M sat services as of 2024. Theres some interesting things happening in MEO. Ironically, if Starlink ever hits multigig, we will probably see MEO services hit widespread availability of roughly 200M and the corresponding cost saving might throw starlink under the bus.
>space based backhaul.
This remains the untested claim. Much like Tesla cars becoming commonplace, Spaceship going to Mars, hyperloops etc, the actual stated goal of the company is what lies unachieved.
My rough calculations were that space based backhaul is prohibitively expensive, and doesnt benefit well from scale out of small satellites. Its all about routing density. He has a line of larger sats going up, but even then I just dont see it. Every increase in routing capacity is going to come with increases in heat and failure. The starlink constellation is good at dropping the link at the nearest ground station, its very unlikely to ever become good at sending your data to a ground station on another continent.
Regular price for the non-TMobile customers is $20/mo.
From the linked page:
How much will it cost?
The beta is free for all. When T-Mobile Starlink launches in July, it will be included FREE on our best plan – Go5G Next – and available on other plans for $15/month.
Until March 1st, T-Mobile beta testers not on Go5G Next can secure an Early Adopter Discount of $5 off per month, reducing the monthly cost to just $10/month.
Verizon, AT&T and other customers can get T-Mobile Starlink without switching to T-Mobile for $20/month after the beta ends in July.
With T-Mobile's history of recurring data breaches one needs to wonder whether they have an internal plan to sell all their user data periodically and then claim that they were pwned by some new vulnerability.
I'm sure I wouldn't touch any service that associated with or shared data with them. Y'all do your own thing though.
Hand over control of nearly all my communication methods to someone as trustworthy as Musk, who has shown a willingness to ban/blacklist people from other services based on his personal feelings and ego, among his other less savory behaviors? Nah, no thanks.
Good thing we live in a capitalistic society where this is an n+1 option rather than a socialist society where it is decreed that everyone must use starlink.
Ha, have you seen YouTube censorship of anything worthy of importance?
That's just part of life. I much prefer a well known public personality with lots of problems; than an opaque council of censors at Google or Facebook.
There's nothing he's done regarding Starlink in Ukraine that's of note besides denying a Ukrainian government request to enable to Starlink service in Crimea. That is literally it.
I don't get why people get so bent out of shape on this specific issue.
Like I'm a supporter of Ukraine so I'd love if Musk were more on their side but it's not a crime to not pick a side.
T-Mobile silently drops every text from my personal numbers, thanks to The Campaign Registry, a T-Mobile led org. This is a wide reaching issue; the article does a disservice by not addressing it.
Because if T-Mobile is gatekeeping this text-over-sat route, it'll be another network that silently drops our texts.
How is your personal issue on an unrelated topic relevant to the article? I understand you're having personal difficulties but I've never even heard of this issue and more sounds like a simple mistake that can be addressed by talking to T-Mobile.
[+] [-] trothamel|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] teeray|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|1 year ago|reply
Get a 406 MHz beacon [1]. They’re more effective in more conditions, unambiguous and easier to hone in on than phoned-in coördinates.
[1] https://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/emergency-406-beacons/
[+] [-] dlcarrier|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] zelon88|1 year ago|reply
Coming soon*
[+] [-] Projectiboga|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] HWR_14|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bookofjoe|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] glzone1|1 year ago|reply
Starlink has repeatedly been pooh-poohed. It's impossible, it'll never work, no one will want to use it.
If you have ever travelled internationally the potential game changing nature of Starlink would be immediately apparent.
This is a test. If nothing else, spacex is known to iterate. Starlink satellites have intentionally low lifetimes in space, they are all going to be replaced relatively soon with later generations.
Yes, Biden and the FCC successfully fought Starlink, they got the awards for rural connectivity revoked, and the appeal of the revocation also kept the award revoked because starlink supposedly couldn't provide rural connectivity. So at least on paper starlink has "failed" to meet the needs of rural folks.
The FCC "concluded that Starlink had not shown that it was reasonably capable of fulfilling Rural Digital Opportunity Fund requirements to deploy a network of the scope, scale, and size required to serve the 642,925 model locations in 35 states for which it was the winning bidder."
You'd sort of expect hacker news folks to be interested in the science of potential benefits of this sort of thing (even if they doubt it'll ever happen). T-Mobile is betting pretty clearly that starlink WILL be able to deliver messaging via a space based backhaul.
And rumor has it that starlink is bringing in some real money even if the govt has determined its not technically feasible so there is some market validation of their ideas.
[+] [-] WarOnPrivacy|1 year ago|reply
Of the issues I've heard tied to Starlink, none are these three.
[+] [-] Dylan16807|1 year ago|reply
Those numbers are the current FCC definition of "broadband" and I think it's fair to use the broadband standard as the main threshold for that money. And the latency requirement is a generous 100ms, no shenanigans there. Maybe partial funding would be good for connections that can at least meet 25/3, but we shouldn't consider 25/3 to be good enough.
[+] [-] kiwijamo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] digitallis42|1 year ago|reply
My provider is Google Fi.
[+] [-] protocolture|1 year ago|reply
Despite consistent, vocal, misunderstanding from rusted on musk stans, this continues to be the truth.
In fact Starlink continues to obey every Carrier and Satellite related law in every country that it does business. Musk spends significant time shitting on the australian government, but he absolutely pays for his spectrum and he absolutely submits all requested information to the australian government.
Starlink's ground stations basically operate like a traditional ISP, just worse. To the point where to really get any traction its more or less a Vocus operation in Australia these days.
>Yes, Biden and the FCC successfully fought Starlink, they got the awards for rural connectivity revoked, and the appeal of the revocation also kept the award revoked because starlink supposedly couldn't provide rural connectivity. So at least on paper starlink has "failed" to meet the needs of rural folks.
This doesnt surprise me in the least. Where my customers use starlink in an area with any kind of population its a race to the exit. Where it is doing amazing is on remote cattle stations with near to no density. I have seen what passes for Rural in the USA and its positively urban by Australian standards. Where WISPs are professionalising they arent really becoming threatened by Starlink (where they suck they are getting creamed by them however)
>T-Mobile is betting pretty clearly that starlink WILL be able to deliver messaging via a space based backhaul.
T-Mobile probably has to meet Starlink at every base station in the country they are working on.
>And rumor has it that starlink is bringing in some real money even if the govt has determined its not technically feasible so there is some market validation of their ideas.
This doesnt surprise me. I have evaluated several alternative satellite internet providers, and starlink is extremely cheap in comparison. Lack of layer 2 services is a dealbreaker for some companies however, which is why I was still seeing 15k pa 20M sat services as of 2024. Theres some interesting things happening in MEO. Ironically, if Starlink ever hits multigig, we will probably see MEO services hit widespread availability of roughly 200M and the corresponding cost saving might throw starlink under the bus.
>space based backhaul.
This remains the untested claim. Much like Tesla cars becoming commonplace, Spaceship going to Mars, hyperloops etc, the actual stated goal of the company is what lies unachieved.
My rough calculations were that space based backhaul is prohibitively expensive, and doesnt benefit well from scale out of small satellites. Its all about routing density. He has a line of larger sats going up, but even then I just dont see it. Every increase in routing capacity is going to come with increases in heat and failure. The starlink constellation is good at dropping the link at the nearest ground station, its very unlikely to ever become good at sending your data to a ground station on another continent.
[+] [-] OutOfHere|1 year ago|reply
https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/satellite-phone-service#si...
[+] [-] gurjeet|1 year ago|reply
From the linked page:
How much will it cost?
The beta is free for all. When T-Mobile Starlink launches in July, it will be included FREE on our best plan – Go5G Next – and available on other plans for $15/month.
Until March 1st, T-Mobile beta testers not on Go5G Next can secure an Early Adopter Discount of $5 off per month, reducing the monthly cost to just $10/month.
Verizon, AT&T and other customers can get T-Mobile Starlink without switching to T-Mobile for $20/month after the beta ends in July.
[+] [-] doodlebugging|1 year ago|reply
I'm sure I wouldn't touch any service that associated with or shared data with them. Y'all do your own thing though.
[+] [-] yndoendo|1 year ago|reply
Pre-paid with false information. Cell phone company has a data breach and they data siphon has a number tied to Bob Smith born in 1924.
[+] [-] WarOnPrivacy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] EgregiousCube|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] zelon88|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] therealpygon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] aeternum|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gjsman-1000|1 year ago|reply
That's just part of life. I much prefer a well known public personality with lots of problems; than an opaque council of censors at Google or Facebook.
[+] [-] smrtinsert|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] int_19h|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] DHPersonal|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] drawkward|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gruez|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mlindner|1 year ago|reply
I don't get why people get so bent out of shape on this specific issue.
Like I'm a supporter of Ukraine so I'd love if Musk were more on their side but it's not a crime to not pick a side.
[+] [-] bitfilped|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] DrewRWx|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] WarOnPrivacy|1 year ago|reply
Because if T-Mobile is gatekeeping this text-over-sat route, it'll be another network that silently drops our texts.
Any evidence to the contrary would be welcome.
[+] [-] mlindner|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Dylan16807|1 year ago|reply