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There was a paper published in June in the peer-reviewed Geophysical Research Letters titled Potential Ozone Depletion from Satellite Demise During Atmospheric Reentry in the Era of Mega-Constellations. As can be deduced by the lengthy title, scientists have uncovered a new risk coming from the reentry of low-orbit satellites through the atmosphere. more
After facing several regulatory obstacles, Elon Musk's Starlink is on the brink of entering the Indian market, a move that could reshape the country's digital landscape. more
On March 2, Russia covered the US flag on the Roscosmos Space Agency rocket that was scheduled to launch 36 OneWeb broadband satellites on March 5. The Russians made two obviously untenable demands -- that OneWeb guarantee that the satellites would not be used for military purposes and the United Kingdom government remove its investment in the company. OneWeb declined, and the satellites were removed from the rocket. more
SpaceX successfully launched 21 satellites, including the first six Starlink satellites equipped with "Direct to Cell" capabilities. These advanced satellites aim to offer seamless global access to texting, calling, and browsing for mobile network operators worldwide, eliminating dead zones with a space-based cellphone tower. more
The first announcement came from OneWeb. The company successfully launched 36 new satellites with rockets supplied by NewSpace India Limited. This new rocket company was formed in 2019 and is a public-sector undertaking sponsored by the Indian Government and an arm of the India Space Research Organization. This launch is a reminder that many parts of the world are now interested in the space business. more
I'm such an industry nerd that I sometimes read customer reviews of large ISPs just to see how the public perceives them. Most ISPs have more negative reviews than positive ones, and that's to be expected since people are more likely to complain when things go wrong than give praise when things are working as promised. more
SpaceX, the leading provider of commercial launches in the United States, is subject to FAA regulations and must provide safety data prior to any attempt at launch. Last year, SpaceX performed a record 61 launches, with 34 of them primarily for the Starlink program. more
T-Mobile and Starlink made a joint announcement recently about an arrangement where Starlink will enable voice and texting capabilities to T-Mobile cellphones by the end of 2023. This is a service that would work with existing cell phones and would supposedly kick in when a phone can't find a signal from a cell tower. Starlink said the technology would be enabled by new satellites that have significantly larger antennae than the current satellites in the constellation. more
Starlink has quietly updated its business broadband offerings. The original plan for businesses was $500 per month with a two-terabyte data cap. If a customer exceeded the data cap, the speed reduced to 1 Mbps for the remainder of the month unless a customer bought additional broadband at $1 per gigabyte. Starlink business comes with a premium antenna from HP at a one-time cost of $2,500. more
SpaceX has roughly 90,000 Starlink beta test customers in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand and now they have one in South America -- in Sotomó, an isolated town at 41.6° South in Chile's Lake Region. Chile's second terminal will be online at a school in Caleta Sierra in a few days and other pilot locations will follow. Twenty families live in Sotomó and it is only accessible by private boats or subsidized services that navigate the Reloncaví Estuary on which it is located. more
SpaceX first departed from its uniform Starlink pricing policy when it offered a reduced price for throttled service in France two years ago. Since then, many new, higher-capacity satellites have been launched, enabling SpaceX to reduce prices in low and middle-income countries like Kenya. Kenya had 405 geostationary satellite internet subscribers when Starlink became available in July 2023. more
I recently used Starlink on a cruise along the coast of Northwest Africa, and I'll summarize my experience below, but first let me explain why I put some in the title of this post. I posted the following request on the Reddit Cruise group: "What has been your experience of Starlink Internet service on Seabourn or other cruise lines? How was latency? Do video chats work smoothly? Games? etc." more
When Russia invaded Ukraine, SpaceX had around 2,000 satellites in orbit. It was clear from the first day of the war that a low-Earth orbit (LEO) constellation of around 2,000 satellites would be a valuable military and civilian asset. The first truckload of Starlink terminals arrived in Ukraine on February 28, 2022, four days after the invasion. By March 19, there were 5,000 terminals in Ukraine and 150,000 active daily users by May 2nd.China and Taiwan have both seen the strategic value of 2,000 Starlink satellites. more
A big piece of what the FCC does is to weigh competing claims to use spectrum. It seems like there have been non-stop industry fights over the last decade on who gets to use various bands of spectrum. One of the latest fights, which is the continuation of a battle going on since 2018, is for the use of the 12 GHz spectrum. The big wrestling match is between Starlink's desire to use the spectrum to communicate with its low-orbit satellites and cellular carriers and WISPs... more
Ookla recently published a blog that looks at the speed performance of satellite broadband, focusing mostly on Starlink. I haven't looked at this broadband sector for a while and thought it was time for an update. Starlink has had a busy year. At the end of November, the company had 5,500 satellites in orbit, up from over 3,200 at the end of 2022. The first constellation is still slated to reach almost 12,000 satellites, and the company has tentative permission from the FCC to extend to 42,000. more
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