Current Events > Won't phone carriers become obsolete

(+) Yeah! (+)

I thought people were talking about the possibility of global high speed internet from satellites. If that were to happen, why would anyone need a phone number? Wouldn't people just use services like discord/telegram/snapchat to message and call each other whenever they want?

I don't know if the global internet is even a realistic possibility though...

hopefully

My phone carrier will never become obsolete because I carry my phone with my pocket and hands.

literally everything will eventually be obsolete

Alright, no, mostly this was Elon Musk pushing this fairly tale. The reality is that any satellite-based delivery system is going to be substaintially less reliable in delivering high data transfer for any type of purpose regardless of how many satellites you stick in the night sky compared to either local wireless towers or landline cables. This technology is mostly limited in usefulness to providing low-throughput service to poor infrastructure regions like central Africa. Furthermore, the expense, risks, and consquences of replacing our entire wireless/internet service with satellites would be dire and reckless.

Let me really clue CE in something here, by the way. If you see Elon Musk claiming just about ANY wiz-bang crazy sci-fi idea as a viable alternative to current methods and talking about investing in it, it is (most likely) a scam. You see, Elon Musk has drummed up most of his capital investment by carefully crafting a persona of a techno-maverick genius, which drives interest in his individual hair-brained schemes on some level, yes, but signficiantly drives investment interest into Tesla, which has been a company fueled by unprecedent levels of third-party capital and invester confidence-per-profitability. When he's pitching stuff like "Satellite Service for All!", or "The Hyperloop!" or "The Vegas Loop!" or "The Cyber Truck!", it's not because they are good for society. It's because they drive the image of Tesla as an innovator and worthy of investment.

Elon Musk has legitimately no fucking idea what he's talking about with almost every single one of his "innovations". They're all fluff and no substance that sells well in corporate media to morons on Facebook.

Is this the thing where Elon Musk wanted to launch thousands of satellites into orbit? Then they would just all collide and take out all existing satellites in the process lol.

lol I can't see that ever happening.

Dakimakura posted...

Is this the thing where Elon Musk wanted to launch thousands of satellites into orbit? Then they would just all collide and take out all existing satellites in the process lol.

He wants there to be internet service on every spot on earth

Pogo_Marimo posted...

Thanks. That's too bad. Worldwide wireless internet would be a good thing

Zikten posted...

He wants there to be internet service on every spot on earth

no, he wants investors to keep showering him in money, he doesn't give a fuck about internet coverage in the serengeti. thats why he keeps coming up with grand plans like these and then lets them die. he did it with solar roofs, he did it with that hyperloop thing, and he'll do it with starlink. he will abandon the project because there's no way to do it with the model proposed without driving his company into huge amounts of debt, you're talking about 42k satellites that have a lifespan of 5 years max after all.

If anything, I see phone carriers replacing a lot of home internet providers with their service since things like 5G are getting faster quicker. Though none of that will happen for as long as their data caps are so limited.

Son Of Spam posted...

If anything, I see phone carriers replacing a lot of home internet providers with their service since things like 5G are getting faster quicker. Though none of that will happen for as long as their data caps are so limited.

Cell phone towers will always need to prioritize voice over data, so I don't think data caps will be going away on cellular.

CableZL posted...

Cell phone towers will always need to prioritize voice over data, so I don't think data caps will be going away on cellular.

i've got tmobile home internet right now, no cap.

monkmith posted...

i've got tmobile home internet right now, no cap.

Oh, interesting. I retract my statement, then.

Geostationary satellite means the signal has to go 22000 miles up and 22000 miles back down.
Gonna be a bit of latency.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Geostationary satellite means the signal has to go 22000 miles up and 22000 miles back down.
Gonna be a bit of latency.

Starlink satellites orbit at a particularly low distance of 340 miles which adds only 3ms to latency.

Paragon21XX posted...

Starlink satellites orbit at a particularly low distance of 340 miles which adds only 3ms to latency.

Those goofy lopsided figure-8 obits like Sirius-XM, huh?

Nothing lasts forever

Paragon21XX posted...

Starlink satellites orbit at a particularly low distance of 340 miles which adds only 3ms to latency.

and to make it work they'd have to launch 42 thousand of them every 5 years...

monkmith posted...

no, he wants investors to keep showering him in money, he doesn't give a fuck about internet coverage in the serengeti. thats why he keeps coming up with grand plans like these and then lets them die. he did it with solar roofs, he did it with that hyperloop thing, and he'll do it with starlink. he will abandon the project because there's no way to do it with the model proposed without driving his company into huge amounts of debt, you're talking about 42k satellites that have a lifespan of 5 years max after all.

Don't forget the technology itself will be shit even if he does assume the debt since by the time it's complete it'll have been made obsolete by something newer and better.