Starlink Approved in Australia by ACMA

[Arika]

Elon Musk’s Starlink plan approved for Australia

I have been waiting for this news for a long time. As most people probably dont know, Australian internet speeds are terrible and no where near where a first world country should be . The NBN (national broadband network) has been plagued with issues and gone hugely over budget since it was first attempted to be rolled out.

 

This could be the solution

Quote

Elon Musk’s bold plan to send hundreds of satellites into space to deliver internet connections all over the globe has cleared another hurdle after being approved by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

 

The company reckons the ambitious Starlink plan will cost $US10 billion or more to complete.

How they’re managing to deliver internet worldwide for about a fifth of the cost of a national broadband network (NBN) that will only service Australia is anyone’s guess.

If the Starlink plan does go ahead as envisioned, Musk reckons speeds of up to 1Gbps (gigabits per second) could be possible.

To put it in perspective, that’s 10 times the maximum consumer offering of 100Mbps (megabits per second) on the NBN, 20 times the one used by the majority of NBN customers, and 40 times the maximum available to NBN customers already on satellite connections.

The NBN currently uses two geostationary (meaning they orbit at the same rate as the Earth) SkyMuster satellites to deliver internet in places where fixed line connections aren’t viable.

 

 

Quote

Musk has also tweeted to say the base terminal you’d have at your house to receive signals wouldn’t be as complex to install as the satellite dishes the NBN will bolt on the side of your house.

He described it as a flat, circular dish on a stick that would self-adjust to the optimal angle once installed to communicate with satellites.

SpaceX has already begun sending these satellites into space, but requires approval to have those satellites communicate with the base stations on the ground.

But Starlink won’t be without competition if it does end up operating in Australia, as companies Kepler Communications and Swarm Technologies have also been added to the list of foreign entities allowed to use satellites to communicate on frequencies in Australia’s airspace.

The NBN has also indicated it might consider a similar constellation approach when the current satellites are replaced in five years.

 

I really hope this gets rolled out, because it will then put real pressure on ISPs that they have not had any real competition for way too long.

 

A complete refusal from multiple groups in Australia to do anything about the internet infastucture might now start taking note when they start to see people moving away from the ancient ADSL that is seen as "enough" by people who live in big cities with 100mbps speeds, when most of the country is paying big money for 25mbps if they are lucky. all the way down to 5mbps if they're unlucky, but still paying the same amount. and to shit existing satellite internet for those people that just get the middle finger

 

https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/space/elon-musks-starlink-plan-approved-for-australia/news-story/d99545976931ea4bf4a5f394ec6e885d

[GrockleTD]

1 minute ago, VegetableStu said:

man i hope the next big idea plan for spacex is orbital trash cleanup ,_,

yeah, need more space fore starlink

[Arika]

Just now, VegetableStu said:

man i hope the next big idea plan for spacex is orbital trash cleanup ,_,

The SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy Not a Flamethrower

[Spotty]

Quote

How they’re managing to deliver internet worldwide for about a fifth of the cost of a national broadband network (NBN) that will only service Australia is anyone’s guess.

Because Musk doesn't have to buy up all of Telstra's old copper lines.

 

Quote

To put it in perspective, that’s 10 times the maximum consumer offering of 100Mbps (megabits per second) on the NBN

There's residential 250mbps plans (if you're on FTTP). AUD$170/month from my ISP.

 

Just now, VegetableStu said:

man i hope the next big idea plan for spacex is orbital trash cleanup ,_,

You need to create the problem first before you sell the solution.

[TempestCatto]

I would think most of your infrastructure literally just burned up. So this would be an amazing way to get what service was lost back, and then some. At the very least, it will do what Google Fiber did to most isp's in America - force them to lower pricing and up the speeds (hell, my isp in bumfuck PA ended up doing the same thing)

[mr moose]

24 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Because Musk doesn't have to buy up all of Telstra's old copper lines.

 

There's residential 250mbps plans (if you're on FTTP). AUD$170/month from my ISP.

 

You need to create the problem first before you sell the solution.

He also doesn't have to recoup the cost from only Australia.  

[Belgarathian]

1 hour ago, Spotty said:

Because Musk doesn't have to buy up all of Telstra's old copper lines.

 

There's residential 250mbps plans (if you're on FTTP). AUD$170/month from my ISP.

 

You need to create the problem first before you sell the solution.

I still have no idea how AU fucked up the NBN so bad. I mean we (NZ) copied you, finished it first, and delivered faster broadband for less. Go figure.

[Semper]

I've seen some comments from you, and other Aussies, about the horrid state of your "broadband" connections.
I've never really known (or, for that matter, really considered "why?"). It's made me realize that I don't know much about Aus. The extent of my knowledge really doesn't extend much beyond my 8 days at Roberston Barracks, and what amounted to maybe a few hours in Darwin. It seemed to me like a nice place, everyone was friendly, it seemed clean, relatively safe, and generally, just like something I would find here stateside, albeit with a different accent. I have heard different from others who were there for months at a time though, so I don't know what's gone on there.

Outside of Darwin, or any of your major cities, I'm assuming you have suburbs similar to cities and states in the U.S., but what does it look like beyond that? What is remote when it comes to settlements or homesteads for you guys? Are these some of the issues that have plagued the deployment of true broadband, or has it been an issue of corruption/mismanagement? Some form of both?

[TrigrH]

48 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

I still have no idea how AU fucked up the NBN so bad.

They outsourced it to a bunch of idiots who said they would do it cheaper. Went soo far over budget it wasn't funny and then we had to stop running fibre to the homes cos we ran out of money.

Quote

I mean we (NZ) copied you, finished it first, and delivered faster broadband for less. Go figure.

Population density and area is what makes roads power and internet soo much more expensive to rollout. Everyone lives on the edge of a giant fucking island.

[mr moose]

29 minutes ago, Semper said:

I've seen some comments from you, and other Aussies, about the horrid state of your "broadband" connections.
I've never really known (or, for that matter, really considered "why?"). It's made me realize that I don't know much about Aus. The extent of my knowledge really doesn't extend much beyond my 8 days at Roberston Barracks, and what amounted to maybe a few hours in Darwin. It seemed to me like a nice place, everyone was friendly, it seemed clean, relatively safe, and generally, just like something I would find here stateside, albeit with a different accent. I have heard different from others who were there for months at a time though, so I don't know what's gone on there.

Outside of Darwin, or any of your major cities, I'm assuming you have suburbs similar to cities and states in the U.S., but what does it look like beyond that? What is remote when it comes to settlements or homesteads for you guys? Are these some of the issues that have plagued the deployment of true broadband, or has it been an issue of corruption/mismanagement? Some form of both?

Our population is somewhat mostly in the suburbs of the 3 major eastern cities Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane).     The problem with the internet is that they are trying to upgrade an 80 year old system for an entire country.  The math just doesn't work, it was never going to work from the onset.   Yes there are people with really shit speeds and big issues, but the reality is they are not the majority. This is the current speed rating for the NBN according to the ACCC (Independent).

 

 

Keep in mind that Just because some people are getting 50-55% of their plan speed doesn't mean they are getting shit speed, they might be on a 100Mb plan in an areas only capable of 50Mb/s.

 

Overall the combined figures from the the ACCC and the NBN itself paint an better than average picture for the state of the network,  especially given how much it is costing compared to what they can charge for tit.

[mr moose]

10 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

They outsourced it to a bunch of idiots who said they would do it cheaper. Went soo far over budget it wasn't funny and then we had to stop running fibre to the homes cos we ran out of money.

Population density and area is what makes roads power and internet soo much more expensive to rollout. Everyone lives on the edge of a giant fucking island.

It started of with a bunch of idiots who thought it could be done cheaper.   The whole thing was a vote grab.  Don't be fooled into thinking there was any way the NBN was going to work within it's budget.

[justpoet]

Having relatives in Aus…the internet SUCKS there.  They get far better internet on their phones, and it is still bad, and super limited for not just bandwidth but usage unless they pay obscene overages.  (mid east coast, not major city areas)  Anything that helps them is very welcome.

 

[mr moose]

@TrigrH don't get me wrong, I am grateful we have it, there are plenty of benefits and the reality is more Aussies are experiencing faster internet now for cheaper than they were before.  But there is a very real reason private business never took cable or fast internet beyond the inner suburbs of our largest cities.

[Master Disaster]

Satellite broadband is very fast but it has a pretty major issue, latency is horrible, like really really bad. 100ms between the client and the ISPs DNS is not uncommon which makes gaming next to impossible. It makes sense considering the data is travelling all the way to space then back again twice.

[mr moose]

4 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Satellite broadband is very fast but it has a pretty major issue, latency is horrible, like really really bad. 100ms between the client and the ISPs DNS is not uncommon which makes gaming next to impossible. It makes sense considering the data is travelling all the way to space then back again twice.

 

Still good for nearly everything else in remote Australia,  all those places it is just infeasible to get decent internet to by any other means.

[schwellmo92]

The only issue with Starlink is it wont be excellent for gaming, you're looking at an additional 30ms~ of latency using Starlink over a wired connection. The NBN isn't as bad a solution as most make out, they just fucked up with their extremely aggressive ROI time frame. The prices of NBN connections should be much lower.

[schwellmo92]

49 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Satellite broadband is very fast but it has a pretty major issue, latency is horrible, like really really bad. 100ms between the client and the ISPs DNS is not uncommon which makes gaming next to impossible. It makes sense considering the data is travelling all the way to space then back again twice.

It depends what you refer to as satellite broadband, traditional satellite broadband is actually 500ms~ latency. The Starlink satellite's operate significantly lower and would at about 30ms~.

[Master Disaster]

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

 

Still good for nearly everything else in remote Australia,  all those places it is just infeasible to get decent internet to by any other means.

Oh absolutely yes, Australia is big ass country, a cable network just isn't feasible.

 

2 hours ago, schwellmo92 said:

It depends what you refer to as satellite broadband, traditional satellite broadband is actually 500ms~ latency. The Starlink satellite's operate significantly lower and would at about 30ms~.

My first job out of school was a weekend job (I was at college during the week) working in a local computer shop and the owner was the type of person who just had to have everything, you know the type, I remember him spending thousands upgrading 10 PCs with GeForce 2 Ultras because of Hardware T&L so his Operation Flashpoint Clan could all play on max settings.

 

Anyway he purchased satellite broadband for the shop and it was ultra fast for the time (I remember pulling 100mbps down wasn't uncommon and this would have been some time between 1999 and 2002) but it destroyed his clan because the latency meant they couldn't play. The ping they had was multiple times worse than others who were playing on dial up.

 

IIRC it was Microwave broadband he had but I could be totally wrong, it was a loooooong time ago now.

[desertcomputer]

19 hours ago, Belgarathian said:

I still have no idea how AU fucked up the NBN so bad. I mean we (NZ) copied you, finished it first, and delivered faster broadband for less. Go figure.

Government changed. They figure it would be better to spend money on second class system that will need to upgrade down the line again.

 

14 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Oh absolutely yes, Australia is big ass country, a cable network just isn't feasible.

It big, but not whole of Australia was going to be covered by FTTP anyways. Majority of population is in ubran areas which was quite feasible .... instead we get FTTN and buying(spend more money) existing shitty telstra copper. Pretty much paying more money to one to a isp which has highest costing plans and highest peering bandwidth cost. I mean telstra spends alot of keep government to their pockets so is not wonder why.

[Donut417]

7 hours ago, Spotty said:

You need to create the problem first before you sell the solution.

The problem already exists. We have a wave of garbage that orbits the planet. Sometimes we get lucky and some burns up in the atmosphere. Who knows how many dead satellites we have in orbit. 

[Bombastinator]

Iirc the big problem with satellite broadband has always been upload.  It can download like crazy but upload is hard.  Is this a solved problem?

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

Iirc the big problem with satellite broadband has always been upload.  It can download like crazy but upload is hard.  Is this a solved problem?

Don’t forget the high latency as well. 

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

The problem already exists. We have a wave of garbage that orbits the planet. Sometimes we get lucky and some burns up in the atmosphere. Who knows how many dead satellites we have in orbit. 

Several groups.  It’s really hard to put things into orbit.   Sure it’s been done a lot, and for a long time, and some stuff has drifted and some stuff was done secretly, and most of the stuff up there no longer works, but it’s still not exactly a landfill.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Donut417 said:

Don’t forget the high latency as well. 

Different issue.  It’s already been stated here that latency is already a solved problem.

[Donut417]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

Different issue.  It’s already been stated here that latency is already a solved problem.

I won’t believe it till I see it. Just because they claim they solved it doesn’t mean it will work in the real world. Wireless standards tend to not live up to expectations.