Black out coming; Elon Musk says Starlink active in all continents even Antarctica
(www.ndtv.com)
❄️ INCLUDING ANTARCTICA ❄️
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The refractive index of light in fiber optics makes it almost 50% slower than in the vacuum. However the round trip distance to the satellite is likely longer, also the number of bits you can pump through the connection is dependent roughly on the log of the signal to noise ratio.
This puts the satellite at somewhat of a disadvantage due to propagation losses through space, in terms of total available bandwidth.
You are right. I'm not saying that that satellite is inherently faster than fiber optic cable. But neither is Starlink in that quote in the top comment. They're getting away with "technically the truth" non-sense that leaves out a crucial detail (what you described). Yes, the information travels faster, but it has to go a longer distance, so that point is moot.
But the top comment was still fundamentally wrong in its call-out, even if they sort of, kind of landed on the right conclusion (Starlink isn't faster than fiber).
Yup. Most people would prefer fiber optics directly to the home over starlink. The maximum available bandwidth is quite a bit larger I believe.
In fact just to get 500 Mbps you'd be paying $500 per month plus a pretty hefty install fee.
Most people can get 1Gbps for less than $200 if they have fiber.
I would.
Vacuum? What vacuum? If you're hinting space, it ain't going to happen. Most all satellites are balloon suspended. The vast majority of internet traffic is across cables.
Vacuum is just terminology for light traveling with a refractive index of 1.0. Air, for example has a refractive index of 1.0003. In a complete vacuum it's 1.0.
Hope that helps.
Interesting. That is beyond my scope of knowledge. I suppose like fiber optic transmission of data. Thanks for the info.