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by londons_explore
982 days ago
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It is possible with micromirror devices to have a single lens on a satellite to send thousands of beams in different directions. That opens up the idea of N satellites having N^2 bandwidth... Which scales much better than optical fibers, where in general to have double the amount of bandwidth, you have double the cable laying effort. Current starlink satellites do not have this ability - they can connect to max 3 other satellites I believe, which is pretty much the minimum for a fully connected network. |
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Getting double the bandwidth just means laying a slightly thicker cable, and I do mean slightly. Adding a bundle of extra fiber when laying a cable adds maybe a millimeter to the cable width. The cost of the fiber is almost irrelevant to the cost of the other layers and the effort of placing it. Most cables are therefore laid with plenty of extra "dark" fiber for later expansion/redundancy.