<story><title>FCC cancels Starlink’s and LTD&apos;s rural development grants</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/08/fcc-rejects-starlinks-886-million-grant-says-spacex-proposal-too-risky/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>colejohnson66</author><text>That, and latency. Or has that improved in the last decade?</text></item><item><author>wmf</author><text>Yes, the density of satellite is far lower than urban cellular which is why no one is pitching satellite for urban customers.</text></item><item><author>H8crilA</author><text>Oh, ok. But 22km is still &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt; more than a typical 4G&amp;#x2F;5G urban cell. It&amp;#x27;s basically the size of a city. Whereas I can spot multiple stations in my city if I go for a 5-10 minute walk.</text></item><item><author>wmf</author><text>All modern satellites use multiple narrow spot beams; in Starlink&amp;#x27;s case each beam is 22 km wide. This allows spectrum to be reused.</text></item><item><author>H8crilA</author><text>Can someone explain how does Starlink go about using the electromagnetic spectrum efficiently? 4G (and 5G even more so) relies on small cells to spatially partition the spectrum, therefore increasing the maximum bandwidth available in the system. Need to serve more users without compromising per-user throughput? Split the cells.&lt;p&gt;Now, the cell of a satellite is enormous, and there&amp;#x27;s no way to reduce the tx power without getting out of range of the surface of the planet altogether. Not to mention that those satellites are pretty damn fast so they stay over any particular user for a very short amount of time.&lt;p&gt;What am I missing? Or is this supposed to be a low throughput system (when added up over all concurrent users)?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>deepdriver</author><text>Starlink latency is somewhere around 50ms on average according to friends, more than adequate for e.g. online multiplayer first-person shooters.</text></comment>
<story><title>FCC cancels Starlink’s and LTD&apos;s rural development grants</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/08/fcc-rejects-starlinks-886-million-grant-says-spacex-proposal-too-risky/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>colejohnson66</author><text>That, and latency. Or has that improved in the last decade?</text></item><item><author>wmf</author><text>Yes, the density of satellite is far lower than urban cellular which is why no one is pitching satellite for urban customers.</text></item><item><author>H8crilA</author><text>Oh, ok. But 22km is still &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt; more than a typical 4G&amp;#x2F;5G urban cell. It&amp;#x27;s basically the size of a city. Whereas I can spot multiple stations in my city if I go for a 5-10 minute walk.</text></item><item><author>wmf</author><text>All modern satellites use multiple narrow spot beams; in Starlink&amp;#x27;s case each beam is 22 km wide. This allows spectrum to be reused.</text></item><item><author>H8crilA</author><text>Can someone explain how does Starlink go about using the electromagnetic spectrum efficiently? 4G (and 5G even more so) relies on small cells to spatially partition the spectrum, therefore increasing the maximum bandwidth available in the system. Need to serve more users without compromising per-user throughput? Split the cells.&lt;p&gt;Now, the cell of a satellite is enormous, and there&amp;#x27;s no way to reduce the tx power without getting out of range of the surface of the planet altogether. Not to mention that those satellites are pretty damn fast so they stay over any particular user for a very short amount of time.&lt;p&gt;What am I missing? Or is this supposed to be a low throughput system (when added up over all concurrent users)?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Dylan16807</author><text>I wouldn&amp;#x27;t care about 40ms of latency for my phone.&lt;p&gt;If by &amp;quot;last decade&amp;quot; you&amp;#x27;re comparing against geostationary, then yes.  The satellites are roughly a hundred times closer.</text></comment>