[buboard]

compared to geostationary sats, starlinks are 1/30 of the distance, and thus 1/30 of the latency

[CrazyStat]

They didn't lower it from geostationary, so this is--while correct--irrelevant.

[ceejayoz]

It makes a difference there, sure, but SpaceX lowered orbits from 1,150 to 550km. Half the latency, but only by about as much as traffic between LA to SF incurs.

[SamReidHughes]

I was a bit wrong in my initial estimate. More satellites can't improve latency by much once they get dense enough, and it looks like Starlink has enough such that the altitude would be on the same scale as distance. Still doesn't matter for the typical home user. Like, I get 21 ms ping to servers in my local city.

[nordsieck]

> Still doesn't matter for the typical home user.

One very important market they're going after is global arbitrageurs.

[sneak]

The funny part is that by providing low latency service to them, they are (hopefully) going to be able to fund SpaceX longer to build rockets to get human colonies off-planet.

It’s almost like a Gibson or Stephenson novel.

[calabin]

Do you have any evidence of this? I work in algorithmic trading/finance and I'm relatively certain that this isn't true.

[nordsieck]

> Do you have any evidence of this?

My only evidence is a very basic evaluation of their publicly stated capabilities.

> I work in algorithmic trading/finance and I'm relatively certain that this isn't true.

It sounds like you have a much better informed opinion than I do.

With my limited knowledge, I see no reason why SpaceX wouldn't aggressively go after that market, but like I said, my knowledge is limited.

[DuskStar]

> Still doesn't matter for the typical home user.

550km vs 1,150km might not matter, but it matters a ton vs 40,000km. Even without the bandwidth limits, I wouldn't be able to use geostationary internet for my normal usage.

[CrazyStat]

Starlink has been LEO since it was first announced, so how bad geostationary internet may be is not relevant to the discussion about why SpaceX lowered the altitude.

[buboard]

right i didn’t know that