6 ms·

Starlink Mini brings space internet to backpackers

54 points by iamphilrae 2y ago

tosh 2y ago
Will be very interesting once they roll them out unbundled and with more than 50gb/month of data. (right now you only get a Starlink Mini if you are an early Starlink customer and it requires an existing residential subscription)
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
“In the US, Starlink Mini is an add-on to Residential plans — at least for now. The Mini kit costs $599 which is $100 more than the standard dish, and will cost an extra $30 per month to add the Mini Roam service to existing $120 Residential plans. That gives Starlink Mini users up to 50GB of mobile data each month, with the option to purchase more for $1 per GB…”
- sigio 2y ago
  Last I checked, starlink was $50/month for the residential plan here in the Netherlands... that's quite a large difference.
  - elmerfud 2y ago
    $120 here in the USA. Which is high for the kind of service it is but if that's your only option then it's within a reasonable range. It's not unusual for us customers to pay a higher premium for the same service that is sold at a lesser costs around the world. This is for a great many things. This can be due to companies actively using their us customers to subsidize their market share and other places but I don't imagine that's what's at play here. It could be that the government in the Netherlands is offering some sort of subsidy that is allowing the price to be less. Also could be that local competition is necessitating a lower price as well in that area.
    - jcims 2y ago
      >Which is high for the kind of service it is but if that's your only option then it's within a reasonable range. Relative to what? It's not marketed at population centers. My 10Mbps DSL was 90/mo, bonded I could get 25M down 1.5 up for $140/mo.
      - elmerfud 2y ago
        It's high in a sense of typical broadband for the speed and latency. In the specific sense of limited option areas or satellite only areas it is a reasonable price for that level of service. I live in the country a good 6 miles from any City and that City is maybe 8000 people. My service is $99 a month for 1 gig fiber. The only other options I would have is some satellite-based internet or a cell based internet.
    - jorvi 2y ago
      It’s just what the market will bear, nothing more nothing less. Often, identical medicine is sold in the US for 5-20x the price that it is sold for in even North-West EU. If US customers as a whole really couldn’t pay this, the price would drop.
      - elmerfud 2y ago
        That's not quite true with medicine. If US customers couldn't pay this, as in the insurance companies and or Medicare, then cost might come down but also research and development would effectively halt or other countries would stop getting lower priced drugs. United States pharmaceutical industries subsidize the world healthcare market for drugs. And you're up there's two things at play the government is subsidizing the cost of drugs but also demanding a lower price. If you're up was the only market or the primary market at the prices they're demanding there would be no more research and development for a great many of the drugs that we have.
        Retric 2y ago
        US drug prices mostly subsidize US drug advertising. The impact of high drug prices on R&D spending after you take this into account is fairly limited.
  - rkangel 2y ago
    I'm guessing that's because there's some actual competition for home internet in the Netherlands. Unlike the US where many customers are served by (at best) one provider, who therefore has no incentive to provide good service or be good value. If Starlink achieves reasonable service, for many customers in the US it can get away with charging a lot.
    - TrueGeek 2y ago
      I moved to the Netherlands last week. I was paying $120 a month for 100 mbps with Spectrum. New customers paid less and got more. I complained and explained that was hardly fair since I had been a customer for 15 years at the same address. They said I was welcome to cancel my service for 3 months and re-activate. I now pay €67.50 for 4gbps up / 4gpbs down. I'm actually getting those speeds and the day I arrived service was already turned on. I just had to ride my bike down to the post office and retrieve my modem.
  - sebzim4500 2y ago
    There's a fixed supply of how much network capacity is available per km^2 and the demand differs globally, so the price does as well.
  - Gys 2y ago
    40 in Portugal. I thought it was the same in all of Europe.
cjk2 2y ago
Regular backpacker here. I don't want or need this. Literally we all use eSIMs and just have downtime occasionally, which is partially the point of it.
- rapsey 2y ago
  This is a very short sided view. Something like this could save a bunch of lives of hikers because it means you are always connected when you need to be in case you get injured or lost.
  - cjk2 2y ago
    That's an unrealistic view. It's unlikely. Firstly because we already have well defined systems for that which are tested in the field and are specifically designed for it and emergency routing (InReach for example). Secondly a lot of places people tend to go backpacking have limited search and rescue capabilities so you're not guaranteed a rescue anyway. Thirdly a lot of places it'll get stolen before it gets used. It's a toy and another damn thing to carry around and a load of marketing around it to sell it as a suitable replacement for proper kit.
    - nunobrito 2y ago
      It isn't designed exclusively for bagpackers. That is only mentioned on the Verge article, while if you look on the starlink page you will find no such reference: https://www.starlink.com/specifications?spec=5 https://www.starlink.com/specifications?spec=5 This is useful for working away from home somewhere on the mountains. Where you have a cabin, have some proper solar panels setup and doesn't make sense (finantially-wise) to keep a starlink installed permanently there. The other option is car-travelling, not everything needs to be solar and using electricity from a gasoline car works great while using little space on the storage. It isn't meant as side partner for your walking hikes.
  - lizknope 2y ago
    Satellite phones have existed for decades. They are expensive and data speeds are slow but if you are talking about for emergency use then a satellite phone is smaller, cheaper, and more practical than Starlink. If you need high speed data in the middle on nowhere then Starlink is great
wslh 2y ago
How that works battery / consumption wise?
- rkangel 2y ago
  Please read the article. This is covered in detail.
  - sorry_i_lisp 2y ago
    That's a real 2022 response. Nowadays "Please let a LLM summarize the article for you, instead of wasting human time!" is the proper etiquette. ;-)
    - wslh 2y ago
      Thank you. I was thinking of feedback from people experienced in some complexities of backpacking / camping. In the past, I helped people traveling to Tibet and close to El Chalten [1] with GPS, batteries, solar cells, and weather schedule and redundancy, since if you don't organize yourself precisely like a "military campaign" something could fail that could be prevented with an engineering process. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Chalt%C3%A9n https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Chalt%C3%A9n
- iamphilrae 2y ago
  As the article says... > That means you can power the Mini dish for two to three hours from something like an Anker Prime 27,650mAh (99.54Wh) power bank, or a little over an hour with smaller 10,000mAh (40Wh) portable batteries you probably already have laying about. It requires a USB-C PD power source with a minimum rating of 100W (20V/5A).
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Are there even any 10Ah batteries that can supply 100W? The ones I’ve seen top out at 30-50W.
alexpc201 2y ago
Becomes abstract. In the short term, you will be able to use your iPhone 17 to utilize Starlink satellites. They have already done tests with the iPhone 15.
- lxgr 2y ago
  That'll probably remain limited to very low bandwidth data for the foreseeable future. Non-directional, small device antennas just don't provide for enough SNR to support more than a handful of devices per cell. Starlink has indeed tested a video call to one phone, but you can probably do about 10-30 of these per cell until you max out the capacity (single-digit Mbit/s for everybody in a 15 mile or so radius). For more, you need active steering and more powerful antenna arrays, which are also larger. Fitting that in a phone will probably take some time, and it might end up being awkward anyway (and slowly cook your hand/ear).
tyronehed 2y ago
[dead]
devit 2y ago
So basically, you can carry: - FlexSolar 40W panel: 1.35kg - Nitecore NB20000 ~75Wh battery: 300g - Starlink Mini: 1.1kg - Smartphone: 250g For 3kg you have something that should give 2-3 hours of Internet usage on an average EU/USA good weather day (assuming 20% solar panel for 10 hours = 80Wh/day, 25-35W power usage of Starlink Mini + smartphone). For each extra 1.65kg you get an additional 2-3 hours, resulting in 7.95kg for 8-12 hours, 11.25kg for 12-16 hours. Not bad, but not good either.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  Somehow I'm left thinking — I go hiking to get away from the internet.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Most trails I like to go on have cell coverage, but I usually don't find it a problem to just put my phone on silent. That option will always be there! I realize that some people don't have that luxury due to work or family obligations, but for these, doesn't affordably connectivity actually open up the possibility of spending extended time outdoors that they just didn't have before?
- e40 2y ago
  Becomes much more interesting for vehicles in remote locations.
- lxgr 2y ago
  Compared to what? Even remotely comparable solutions drawing less power either cost something like $5-10 per megabyte (Inmarsat L-band, i.e. BGAN, Iridium Certus) or require even more power (Inmarsat Ka-band) and still cost something like 50 cent per megabyte! Monthly plans start at several hundred dollars, and terminals start in the low 4 to medium 5 digit ranges. If you can live without Internet when backpacking, enjoy the outdoors! If you need it for whatever reason, this just cut the cost per megabyte by about 95% and the cost for the terminal by 99%. You'll probably also not hate LEO latencies compared to GEO.
whicks 2y ago
As a technologist, this is an incredible development. As a backpacker and avid hiker, no thank you. I go outside to intentionally avoid screens and the internet/connected world. Fortunately I can just not buy this and it won’t have an impact on my life. Another interesting thing I’m curious about is if this would provide any benefits to SAR crews over traditional sat phones. I could potentially see some benefits there, maybe, but I guess time will tell.
- snapplebobapple 2y ago
  My first thought was "by backpacker they must mean the rucksack and machine gun variety protecting ukraine because not many backpackers want technology intruding on their expedition"
- lxgr 2y ago
  > I’m curious about is if this would provide any benefits to SAR crews over traditional sat phones. For their communications, I doubt it, unless they happen to need low-latency video (e.g. for telemedicine for complicated cases). Existing solutions are pretty robust, and for anything you use on the move you probably want an omnidirectional antenna you don't have to rest on some surface in operation. I could imagine this being interesting for drone-based/agumented missing person search, though! > Fortunately I can just not buy this and it won’t have an impact on my life. Thank you for saying this. So many people have a knee-jerk reaction of "this will ruin the outdoors" or "this means I can never disconnect anymore", which both kind of imply a concerning lack of agency. The outdoors are large enough for everybody, and nobody can force you to buy and bring one of these things!
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    It could make it easier to stream music, I’ve come across people who play music on Bluetooth speakers during their hikes. It is really weird behavior that spoils the area around them. Then again, they could just download the music if they are really that devoted to being a nuisance.
    - 2y ago
lxgr 2y ago
Amazing! In some way, this was the obvious next step (Starlink clearly had some capacity headroom for this), but still, this basically blows all existing competitors out of the water. I wonder how much more bandwidth this uses compared to their stationary terminals. There's almost certainly a power/size vs. data rate trade-off here, which can explain why they don't offer it standalone in the US yet (the reasoning probably being that people will use their more efficient larger antenna at home most of the time), but do have standalone plans in areas where they probably have less users overall.
bookofjoe 2y ago
Starlink nano in 2030 iPhone 22?

54 points by iamphilrae 2y ago

tosh 2y ago

Will be very interesting once they roll them out unbundled and with more than 50gb/month of data. (right now you only get a Starlink Mini if you are an early Starlink customer and it requires an existing residential subscription)

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

“In the US, Starlink Mini is an add-on to Residential plans — at least for now. The Mini kit costs $599 which is $100 more than the standard dish, and will cost an extra $30 per month to add the Mini Roam service to existing $120 Residential plans. That gives Starlink Mini users up to 50GB of mobile data each month, with the option to purchase more for $1 per GB…”

sigio 2y ago
Last I checked, starlink was $50/month for the residential plan here in the Netherlands... that's quite a large difference.
- elmerfud 2y ago
  $120 here in the USA. Which is high for the kind of service it is but if that's your only option then it's within a reasonable range. It's not unusual for us customers to pay a higher premium for the same service that is sold at a lesser costs around the world. This is for a great many things. This can be due to companies actively using their us customers to subsidize their market share and other places but I don't imagine that's what's at play here. It could be that the government in the Netherlands is offering some sort of subsidy that is allowing the price to be less. Also could be that local competition is necessitating a lower price as well in that area.
  - jcims 2y ago
    >Which is high for the kind of service it is but if that's your only option then it's within a reasonable range. Relative to what? It's not marketed at population centers. My 10Mbps DSL was 90/mo, bonded I could get 25M down 1.5 up for $140/mo.
    - elmerfud 2y ago
      It's high in a sense of typical broadband for the speed and latency. In the specific sense of limited option areas or satellite only areas it is a reasonable price for that level of service. I live in the country a good 6 miles from any City and that City is maybe 8000 people. My service is $99 a month for 1 gig fiber. The only other options I would have is some satellite-based internet or a cell based internet.
  - jorvi 2y ago
    It’s just what the market will bear, nothing more nothing less. Often, identical medicine is sold in the US for 5-20x the price that it is sold for in even North-West EU. If US customers as a whole really couldn’t pay this, the price would drop.
    - elmerfud 2y ago
      That's not quite true with medicine. If US customers couldn't pay this, as in the insurance companies and or Medicare, then cost might come down but also research and development would effectively halt or other countries would stop getting lower priced drugs. United States pharmaceutical industries subsidize the world healthcare market for drugs. And you're up there's two things at play the government is subsidizing the cost of drugs but also demanding a lower price. If you're up was the only market or the primary market at the prices they're demanding there would be no more research and development for a great many of the drugs that we have.
      - Retric 2y ago
        US drug prices mostly subsidize US drug advertising. The impact of high drug prices on R&D spending after you take this into account is fairly limited.
- rkangel 2y ago
  I'm guessing that's because there's some actual competition for home internet in the Netherlands. Unlike the US where many customers are served by (at best) one provider, who therefore has no incentive to provide good service or be good value. If Starlink achieves reasonable service, for many customers in the US it can get away with charging a lot.
  - TrueGeek 2y ago
    I moved to the Netherlands last week. I was paying $120 a month for 100 mbps with Spectrum. New customers paid less and got more. I complained and explained that was hardly fair since I had been a customer for 15 years at the same address. They said I was welcome to cancel my service for 3 months and re-activate. I now pay €67.50 for 4gbps up / 4gpbs down. I'm actually getting those speeds and the day I arrived service was already turned on. I just had to ride my bike down to the post office and retrieve my modem.
- sebzim4500 2y ago
  There's a fixed supply of how much network capacity is available per km^2 and the demand differs globally, so the price does as well.
- Gys 2y ago
  40 in Portugal. I thought it was the same in all of Europe.

cjk2 2y ago

Regular backpacker here. I don't want or need this. Literally we all use eSIMs and just have downtime occasionally, which is partially the point of it.

rapsey 2y ago
This is a very short sided view. Something like this could save a bunch of lives of hikers because it means you are always connected when you need to be in case you get injured or lost.
- cjk2 2y ago
  That's an unrealistic view. It's unlikely. Firstly because we already have well defined systems for that which are tested in the field and are specifically designed for it and emergency routing (InReach for example). Secondly a lot of places people tend to go backpacking have limited search and rescue capabilities so you're not guaranteed a rescue anyway. Thirdly a lot of places it'll get stolen before it gets used. It's a toy and another damn thing to carry around and a load of marketing around it to sell it as a suitable replacement for proper kit.
  - nunobrito 2y ago
    It isn't designed exclusively for bagpackers. That is only mentioned on the Verge article, while if you look on the starlink page you will find no such reference: https://www.starlink.com/specifications?spec=5 https://www.starlink.com/specifications?spec=5 This is useful for working away from home somewhere on the mountains. Where you have a cabin, have some proper solar panels setup and doesn't make sense (finantially-wise) to keep a starlink installed permanently there. The other option is car-travelling, not everything needs to be solar and using electricity from a gasoline car works great while using little space on the storage. It isn't meant as side partner for your walking hikes.
- lizknope 2y ago
  Satellite phones have existed for decades. They are expensive and data speeds are slow but if you are talking about for emergency use then a satellite phone is smaller, cheaper, and more practical than Starlink. If you need high speed data in the middle on nowhere then Starlink is great

wslh 2y ago

How that works battery / consumption wise?

rkangel 2y ago
Please read the article. This is covered in detail.
- sorry_i_lisp 2y ago
  That's a real 2022 response. Nowadays "Please let a LLM summarize the article for you, instead of wasting human time!" is the proper etiquette. ;-)
  - wslh 2y ago
    Thank you. I was thinking of feedback from people experienced in some complexities of backpacking / camping. In the past, I helped people traveling to Tibet and close to El Chalten [1] with GPS, batteries, solar cells, and weather schedule and redundancy, since if you don't organize yourself precisely like a "military campaign" something could fail that could be prevented with an engineering process. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Chalt%C3%A9n https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Chalt%C3%A9n
iamphilrae 2y ago
As the article says... > That means you can power the Mini dish for two to three hours from something like an Anker Prime 27,650mAh (99.54Wh) power bank, or a little over an hour with smaller 10,000mAh (40Wh) portable batteries you probably already have laying about. It requires a USB-C PD power source with a minimum rating of 100W (20V/5A).
- lxgr 2y ago
  Are there even any 10Ah batteries that can supply 100W? The ones I’ve seen top out at 30-50W.

alexpc201 2y ago

Becomes abstract. In the short term, you will be able to use your iPhone 17 to utilize Starlink satellites. They have already done tests with the iPhone 15.

lxgr 2y ago
That'll probably remain limited to very low bandwidth data for the foreseeable future. Non-directional, small device antennas just don't provide for enough SNR to support more than a handful of devices per cell. Starlink has indeed tested a video call to one phone, but you can probably do about 10-30 of these per cell until you max out the capacity (single-digit Mbit/s for everybody in a 15 mile or so radius). For more, you need active steering and more powerful antenna arrays, which are also larger. Fitting that in a phone will probably take some time, and it might end up being awkward anyway (and slowly cook your hand/ear).

tyronehed 2y ago

[dead]

devit 2y ago

So basically, you can carry: - FlexSolar 40W panel: 1.35kg - Nitecore NB20000 ~75Wh battery: 300g - Starlink Mini: 1.1kg - Smartphone: 250g For 3kg you have something that should give 2-3 hours of Internet usage on an average EU/USA good weather day (assuming 20% solar panel for 10 hours = 80Wh/day, 25-35W power usage of Starlink Mini + smartphone). For each extra 1.65kg you get an additional 2-3 hours, resulting in 7.95kg for 8-12 hours, 11.25kg for 12-16 hours. Not bad, but not good either.

JKCalhoun 2y ago
Somehow I'm left thinking — I go hiking to get away from the internet.
- lxgr 2y ago
  Most trails I like to go on have cell coverage, but I usually don't find it a problem to just put my phone on silent. That option will always be there! I realize that some people don't have that luxury due to work or family obligations, but for these, doesn't affordably connectivity actually open up the possibility of spending extended time outdoors that they just didn't have before?
e40 2y ago
Becomes much more interesting for vehicles in remote locations.
lxgr 2y ago
Compared to what? Even remotely comparable solutions drawing less power either cost something like $5-10 per megabyte (Inmarsat L-band, i.e. BGAN, Iridium Certus) or require even more power (Inmarsat Ka-band) and still cost something like 50 cent per megabyte! Monthly plans start at several hundred dollars, and terminals start in the low 4 to medium 5 digit ranges. If you can live without Internet when backpacking, enjoy the outdoors! If you need it for whatever reason, this just cut the cost per megabyte by about 95% and the cost for the terminal by 99%. You'll probably also not hate LEO latencies compared to GEO.

whicks 2y ago

As a technologist, this is an incredible development. As a backpacker and avid hiker, no thank you. I go outside to intentionally avoid screens and the internet/connected world. Fortunately I can just not buy this and it won’t have an impact on my life. Another interesting thing I’m curious about is if this would provide any benefits to SAR crews over traditional sat phones. I could potentially see some benefits there, maybe, but I guess time will tell.

snapplebobapple 2y ago
My first thought was "by backpacker they must mean the rucksack and machine gun variety protecting ukraine because not many backpackers want technology intruding on their expedition"
lxgr 2y ago
> I’m curious about is if this would provide any benefits to SAR crews over traditional sat phones. For their communications, I doubt it, unless they happen to need low-latency video (e.g. for telemedicine for complicated cases). Existing solutions are pretty robust, and for anything you use on the move you probably want an omnidirectional antenna you don't have to rest on some surface in operation. I could imagine this being interesting for drone-based/agumented missing person search, though! > Fortunately I can just not buy this and it won’t have an impact on my life. Thank you for saying this. So many people have a knee-jerk reaction of "this will ruin the outdoors" or "this means I can never disconnect anymore", which both kind of imply a concerning lack of agency. The outdoors are large enough for everybody, and nobody can force you to buy and bring one of these things!
- bee_rider 2y ago
  It could make it easier to stream music, I’ve come across people who play music on Bluetooth speakers during their hikes. It is really weird behavior that spoils the area around them. Then again, they could just download the music if they are really that devoted to being a nuisance.
  - 2y ago

lxgr 2y ago

Amazing! In some way, this was the obvious next step (Starlink clearly had some capacity headroom for this), but still, this basically blows all existing competitors out of the water. I wonder how much more bandwidth this uses compared to their stationary terminals. There's almost certainly a power/size vs. data rate trade-off here, which can explain why they don't offer it standalone in the US yet (the reasoning probably being that people will use their more efficient larger antenna at home most of the time), but do have standalone plans in areas where they probably have less users overall.

bookofjoe 2y ago

Starlink nano in 2030 iPhone 22?