Jump to content

Starlink


Recommended Posts

Anyone have any plans to put Starlink on there boat? It should really start to hurt offerings from Iridium like the Go.

Also would almost seem pointless to have a Sat TV dome at $5,000 when you can just stream everything over Starlink (although not subscription fee for Freeview).

 

 

Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, bigal.nz said:

Anyone have any plans to put Starlink on there boat? It should really start to hurt offerings from Iridium like the Go.

Also would almost seem pointless to have a Sat TV dome at $5,000 when you can just stream everything over Starlink (although not subscription fee for Freeview).

Definitely if and when it's viable and cost effective.  But that if is a pretty big if, and the when could be a long time :-) and cost-effective is very subjective.

Some thoughts/ramblings...

They are years and years and years away from having a full link up for remote places.  Just because you can see a cluster from the middle of the pacific doesn't mean it can see an uplink station or even another station to bounce through.  There will not be any ground link lasers in the south pacific cause - you know - there is no ground.

The Antenna's will need to be quite sophisticated and thus expensive to be able to track to the satellites from a boat that's rocking back and forth at an anchorage, let alone in an ocean swell.  It will take quite a bit of power, complex computery wizardry stuff with maybe one of those gyro thingos to keep the transceiver on point.  Antennas will probably end up costing as much and being as large as the current iSailor/inmarsat/viasat dishes.

The current billing model is that you are "locked" to a "cell" - a geographical area - admittedly a pretty big geographical area in relation to the North Island, but not in relation to the south pacific - so if you want to be able to move between cells, I expect the price to shoot up.

If you are actually moving you use more radio spectrum than if you are stationary, so this costs more from a spectrum licensing perspective and drives the cost up.

I don't see it being a $99/month solution for the boat and I don't see the equipment being as cheap as the antenna you'd install on a fixed residential location.

All that said I have signed up for the Beta :-)  they say late 2021 for Auckland ... exciting times ahead!

Link to post
Share on other sites

Interesting. Your probably right - right now you couldn't sail to Fiji and have coverage - but its coming.

I understand the antenna's are phased array and Musk has said he will be offering a service for boats - so it may not need new hardware for a boat - just a software upgrade. I don't really know what all this phased array means, but apparently you don't need a complicated gyro stabilized antenna - it just needs to be vaguely point in the right direction.

Re boats - I think it needs about 8-9A @ 12V.

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...