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103

Starlink: How Elon Musk's satellite company is reshaping geopolitics and wielding global influence (www.dw.com)

submitted 1 week ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Designed to bring internet access to remote regions, Elon Musk's Starlink has become vital in crisis regions and war zones. But Ukraine also shows the risks of depending on the service.

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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 16 points 1 week ago

A private citizen involving themselves in War, manipulating it for their own personal benefit, cannot continue. Private citizens who use their fortunes for that should have their fortunes confiscated, and go to prison.

If we don't take action to strongly regulate these massive personal fortumes, they will become a massive national security threat to every sovereign nation on Earth. This is proof that it is already happening. What happens when these Sociopathic Oligarchs become TRILLIONAIRES, which is only matter of time? Then they'll be able to afford actual Armies. It will be a lot harder to stop them at that point, especially when they form alliances.

[–] peopleproblems@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So I've been diving into this a bit. It's true that the product sold is Elon Musk's. Its also true that it wasn't Elon Musk that shut it off. The Trump regime did - that was how Musk sold the product to the U.S. Government specifically with this capability.

It allows BOTH to deflect blame and blame the other. This is mutually beneficial. The regime gets to say "yeah Starlink is no longer providing intelligence" and Musk gets to say "My product works as intended."

[–] Taldan@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I have a bit of special knowledge into Starlink, but I haven't dug deep into this story

Starshield is the military version of Starlink that Ukraine was using. This is what was shut off allegedly at the request of the White House

When it was shut off, they were dropped to Starlink with a 100mph/160kph speed limit, which I find interesting. 100mph is actually the speed limit for regular Starlink plans. You have to pay a ton extra to bypass that speed limit

Then there is a second one, I forget where it's at, maybe 350mph, which is again 10x as expensive. I think in the range of $10,000/month for internet service without a speed limit. It's only intended for use by private jets, and even then many are balking at the cost

On a technical level, there is nothing different about these plans. It's an arbitrary restriction to squeeze out more money. I find it interesting the speed limit was applied. Last I heard Ukraine was being squeezed for a ton of money for those terminals. Thousands a month, each

All this rambling to say: Someone chose to let Ukraine use Starlink with a speed limit, to minimize the impact while still sending a message

[–] cheeseburger@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It took a minute to wrap my head around the fact you really do mean a speed limit in mph/kph applied to a wireless service client... it makes no sense to me. The signals operate at the speed of light, so that versus the speed of a private jet or a car on the freeway makes no practical difference.

Like you say it's an arbitrary restriction, but I guess that's the true innovation, ugh. I look forward to my local Big Giant Telco stealing this idea to charge even more for cell phone data...

[–] Quantum_P@lemmy.radio 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

My assumption would be that it relates to the doppeler shifts of the signals so maybe they have to use more bandwidth on the satellites to account for this? I am also wondering if it has to hand off more often because of the speed between satellites? I am sure someone who is a bit more familiar with orbital mechanics could do some napkin math to see what the relative speeds look like. Even then, doesn't mean its not a cash grab.