[martinald]

Sort of, but not really. A major metro probably has a terabit+ of peak demand these days. It's not going to be viable to have 50+ sats over all metro areas at once (that would probably suggest a spacing of a few km, requiring literally millions of satellites deployed globally).

The math just doesn't add up. It's a similar problem to why 4G/5G isn't a viable replacement for home internet service (yet) in many areas, apart from its much worse as it's easier to add new 5G base stations to densely cover cities than add new satellites.

[Reason077]

> "It's not going to be viable to have 50+ sats over all metro areas at once" ... "requiring literally millions of satellites"

That doesn't sound right. A satellite doesn't have to be directly overhead to be reachable. The coverage map below suggests that each satellite can cover a region 800-1000km in diameter, so with a fully deployed constellation of 12,000 to 42,000 satellites, there should easily be 50+ sats visible from any metro area. Perhaps even more than that.

https://satellitemap.space/indexA.html

[martinald]

I'm surprised each sat has such a large radius (especially when the constellation is fully deployed). This is actually a bigger problem than I thought if that map is correct.

This means satellites are going to cover a very large area. There might be 50 sats to cover the area from Boston down to Washington DC. That's 1tbit/sec of bandwidth to cover 100m potential customers.

Considering beta service afiak is using 600-1200 sats I imagine sat penetration will be significantly less. Considering cell towers between 4G and 5G can offer 20gbps _per tower_ these days I can't see 20gbps working across an entire state. Especially when it has been hyped as better than terrestrial internet. Even with a small number of users it will degrade rapidly at peak times when you get 1-3k users watching netflix.

[dx034]

It's also why Wifi, as amazing as new generations are, can't be the universal solution. Even well built installations in offices will quickly clog up during busy times. Wifi is important for devices where cables don't work, the same as satellite via internet or 5G only makes sense where fibre doesn't work.