Wireless

Affordable Starlink Prices Coming to Low and Middle-Income Countries

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.

Wireless Technology and Vehicle Safety

Five years ago, any discussion of 5G included a vision that we'd end up with smart cars that were all connected with a ubiquitous 5G network that was going to be built everywhere. We're still waiting to see a real 5G network anywhere instead of the 4G LTE networks that are still being touted by every cellular company as 5G. The idea of a ubiquitous network capable of supporting smart cars died, but there is still an effort underway to use wireless technology to make car travel safer.

Will Starlink Harm the Ozone Layer?

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.

Is 5G Faster than 4G?

Ookla recently tackled this question in one of its research articles. Ookla compared the time it takes to load pages for Facebook, Google, and YouTube on cellphones using 4G LTE networks versus 5G networks. Ookla thinks that page load speed is a great way to measure cellphone experience. The time needed to load a web page is directly impacted by latency, which measures the lag between the time a phone requests a website and that website responds.

The Role of Chronic Radio Interoperability Impediments in the Butler, PA Assassination Attempt

There are many inconvenient truths about radio spectrum sharing and transceiver interoperability that require full ventilation and resolution. Spectrum users want exclusive access and - news flash - they do not like to share! Campaign events, like the Trump Bulter, PA rally, require short notice, forced cooperation between and among federal, state, and local law enforcement officers, as well as a variety of other government agencies.

Broadband Anywhere: The New Trend Bringing Connectivity to Campers and Remote Locations

A new broadband trend has quietly entered the market. Both Starlink and T-Mobile are advertising broadband that can be used practically anywhere and are aiming new products at campers, hikers, and others that go to remote locations. According to T-Mobile, this is a huge market, with 15 million households taking RV trips yearly and 59 million people camping.

Geely Geespace Update - Global Centimeter-Level Positioning Services

Chinese automobile conglomerate Geely has made significant strides since I last wrote about their Geesat LEO constellation for mobile vehicle connectivity. They launched the first nine satellites in June 2022 and a second batch of eleven satellites in February 2024. The mass of the first nine satellites was 100 kg, and the mass of the second eleven was 130 kg, so they are not identical.

Loving and Hating Starlink

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.

Two New Chinese Internet Service Constellations and Their Market

China’s plans for low-Earth orbit Internet service constellations began with two projects, Hongyun (156 satellites) and Hongyan (864 satellites). These were eventually sidelined for Guowang, an ambitious, 12,992 satellite constellation that is expected to begin launching satellites this year. But, that is old news. China’s five-year plan designates satellite Internet as a strategic emerging industry and two new constellations have emerged, G60 (12,000 satellites) and Honghu–3 (10,000 satellites).

Satellites Directly to Cellphones

AT&T and satellite company AST SpaceMobile announced a partnership to provide satellite cellular service directly from satellites to cellphones. This will provide a service that is much needed for the billions of remote users who are not in the range of a cell tower. This is an emerging industry that is still being referred to by different acronyms.

Solar Storms Threaten Broadband and Power Grids: Understanding the Impacts and Preparations

Many readers will have seen recent news that the aurora borealis, or northern lights, were visible deep into the South for several days. This phenomenon is caused by a geomagnetic storm that is caused by strong solar flares. Solar flares can cause problems on Earth by emitting clouds of magnetized particles and hot plasma.

A Transport Protocol’s Perspective on Optimizing Starlink Performance

Digital communications systems always represent a collection of design trade-offs. Maximizing one characteristic of a system may impair others, and various communications services may choose to optimize different performance parameters based on the intersection of these design decisions with the physical characteristics of the communications medium.

Starlink Service Is Great on (Some) Cruise Ships

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."

The Rise of WiFi Sensing and Its Implications for Home Security and Surveillance

It's incredibly hard to keep things private in the new digital age. There are far too many stories circulating about people who talked to a friend on the phone or texted about something and almost instantly got hit with ads for the subject of the conversation. And that happens without malware - no telling what information you're giving out if your devices have been infected with malicious software that is spying on you.

Another G Generation: The Promise of 5.5G

I've read several articles coming out of the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain, and one of the common threads is that there was a lot of talk about 5.5G (or 5G Advanced) - the next iteration of 5G. My first question on reading about this was to ask what new features are being discussed that were not part of the original announced promises of 5G. I went back and read a few of my blogs and other articles that were written when 5G was first announced.