Seems to me like Dish tv has been around forever while spaceX is just now providing internet via satellite, what took so long?
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Satellite internet has been a thing for about as long as satellite TV. It’s primarily been a thing for people in areas not served by cable or ADSL isps, though, because it’s always had astronomical latency. The actual speeds vary, but the latency (ping) has always been high. I don’t know if/ how space x fixed that, but if they did, it would make satellite internet much more mainstream.
There were other companies, Dish and Hughesnet are the two I’ve heard of around here. They are an option, but I’ve not heard anything good about either(unless you’re comparing to Mediacom….)
Nobody pays much attention until a big name get behind a concept, like Elon for example
Satellite TV is a one-way process – the satellite beams data down, your dish catches it, and you play whatever is in that data on your screen.
Satellite Internet requires that you be able to send (quite a bit of) data back up to the satellite.
The same sort of delay happened between broadcast television (in the 1920s) and the corresponding mobile internet (in the 1990s)
Satellite internet, even high speed internet, was a thing at the same time we thought 56k modem was cool. It was expensive, but you could get it. I was offered 100mb for $10,000 at that time, it would demand a 100 ft mast and a big disc, but you could get it!
There are two main differences between Starlink and dish TV. First is that Internet requires a two way communication for every individual connecting to it. A TV signal is one-way and everyone gets the same signal so they only have to send it once. That is much easier than sending different things to 1 million people separately. The second difference is latency, or how long it takes the signal to go the distance between you and the satellite. Starlink is far far closer than TV satellites. At these distances even the speed of light becomes relevant. Additionally, being closer means lower power antenna but also that they need more satellites to be able to see every place at once and more satellites are more expensive than fewer satellites but SpaceX is making spaceflight quite cheap now.
Satellite internet has been available for decades, it just wasn’t desirable.
Bandwidth from satellites is small and the latency is astronomical. 650ms is about the best you can expect from a satellite internet connection which translates to a half second delay in real-time voice, video, or a click in a video game.
So it was only ever practical for extremely remote locations that couldn’t get a physical wire.
Satellite TV has the advantage that’s it’s only 1 way communication and latency on a TV signal isn’t relevant because it isn’t interactive.
Starlink has the advantage that the satellites are much closer to the Earth so the latency is far more tolerable.
It’s down to TV being “broadcast” and internet being “multicast”.
In a broadcast, a satellite is just pumping out a strong signal that anybody with a dish can receive.
But in multicast, the satellite is communicating back and forth individually with all of the different computers connecting to it. A satellite needs a lot more processing power to do that.
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