How big is the impact of Musk's star chain plan on China's 5G?

What used to be the competition of technological route is being overshadowed by politics in this competition that has not changed in a century.

At a time when Musk's Tesla share price is surpassing all automakers and moving towards the world's largest technology company, his star chain Internet is also getting closer to commercial use.

Star chain Internet is often asked in Chinese Internet forums whether it will replace 5G.

In terms of the speed of construction, the Star chain Internet seems to be making faster progress.

In just one year, SpaceX has launched nearly 600 Starlink satellites, and so far 1584 will be deployed in low-Earth orbit 550km above the earth.

With these 1584 satellites in the sky, the star chain has been able to open some applications, and tests have been opened in some areas. According to the official website of the star chain, the alpha tests of the star chain are only open to rural areas of Washington State. These tests will provide data to SpaceX to evaluate the performance of the platform in the market.

Beta testing will begin later this year, starting in the northern United States and southern Canada, followed by high latitudes.

Many people have talked about the benefits of the space Internet or the Star chain Internet. The biggest advantage is that there is no more dead corner on the earth, no one in no man's land will get lost and isolated, and no one will be lost by plane.

Because of the competition between China and the United States, Star chain Internet has also been seen by netizens as an alternative for the United States to skip 5G network construction.

Below we briefly introduce the principle and construction process of a star chain Internet. Star chain not only competes with 5G, but also the competition for the construction of space Internet has entered a white-hot stage.

The Starlink-- star chain plan was first released by Musk's SpaceX in 2015.

The plan aims to connect all satellites into a "constellation" by building a network of tens of thousands of satellite chains, providing reliable Internet connectivity to every corner of the world.

According to relevant documents, the company also plans to add 30, 000 to the 1584 already launched, eventually bringing the total number of satellites to about 42000.

Let's take a look at the following set of pictures. In order, we can understand the whole process of star chain satellites being launched into space and filling the sky at the same time:

1. 60 satellites are installed into the rocket ↓↓ at one time

2. Launch ↓↓ into space

3. Satellite and rocket separate ↓↓

4. Form a star chain ↓↓ in space

At the beginning of this summer, some people in many parts of the world saw the star chain in space with the naked eye.

Shining so brightly in the night sky has triggered criticism that the star chain has caused light pollution to the human night sky.

It is said that the latest satellite launched since then has added a sunscreen facing the earth's side, and many people imagine that there will be a complete star chain full of the earth in the future.

2021 is the time point for the final completion of the project, when the scope of its services will rapidly expand to close to the world.

In addition, there are two other companies working on similar plans. Bezos, the richest man in the world, set up a commercial space operation company, Blue Origin, as early as 2000, and the blue origin satellite launch plan, Project Kuiper, plans to launch 3236 broadband communications satellites into low-Earth orbit to provide high-speed Internet for remote areas.

According to CNBC, the British government has pledged $500m to revive bankrupt satellite startup OneWeb, determined to surpass Musk's star chain, and like Musk's star chain, OneWeb's goal is to create a satellite network to transmit high-speed, low-latency satellite Internet to all corners of the world.

Satellite rendering of OneWeb

Google's Project Loon Balloon Project

* Zuckerberg's drone Internet program

A few years ago, Zuckerberg of FACEBOOK also tried to build the global Internet through drones, but now there is nothing more.(for details, see "putting satellites and drones and taking stock of Daga's Sky Internet Wisdom Plan")

On the whole, there are three technological routes in building the Sky Internet: drones, balloons and satellites.

This picture shows the extent to which the three models cover the earth. at present, the satellite model is the most likely for commercial application.

In terms of realistic progress, the above companies that compete with Musk can not be compared with Musk's star chain in terms of progress or launch quantity, and it is worth noting that China's current layout in this area is still zero.

Can you replace 5G?

The advantages of 5G are fast network speed and low latency, and the disadvantage is small coverage.

Obviously, according to the satellite plans described by the three companies, the most practical ones are remote areas and cover the whole world.Therefore, the disadvantage of 5G technology is the advantage of star chain technology.

Let's take a look at Internet speed and delay.

According to Musk's original vision, the speed of the star chain can achieve the highest speed of 1Gbps, which is 180 times the current average speed.However, according to the current test situation, there is still a certain gap between ideal and reality.

In March this year, Musk said publicly: "Our goal is that the network latency is less than 20 milliseconds.So that users can use our network to play video games, and the level of playing games will not be affected. "

It seems that this goal is close to being achieved!

According to the test of American netizensAt present, the fastest download speed has reached 60.24Mbps, and the slowest is 35.49Mbps.

Upload speeds range from the lowest 4.58Mbps to 17.70Mbps. The latency ranges from 31 milliseconds to 94 milliseconds, most of the time less than 50 milliseconds.

Star chain satellites are only 550km away from the south, while ordinary satellites are generally as high as 1000 km.

Therefore, it can not reach the ideal speed and latency of 5G, but there is no problem watching 4K videos and playing games at present.

However, the current 5G network speed can not reach the claim. At present, most 5G base stations use nsa non-independent networking, which is modified and upgraded on the original 4G base stations, and the speed and delay are close to the star chain.

Therefore, the current performance of the two belong to the same level.

However, the official test data of SpaceX show that the downlink speed of the star chain can reach 1440Mbps, and 610Mbps has been detected on the flying Cmurl 12 transport plane, so the current incomplete number of satellites in the star chain is also a major factor affecting the speed. It is worth noting that the downlink peak speed is: 1540Mbps.

Therefore, the ideal network speed of both in the future is also at the same level.

Cost and tariff

We can do a simple calculation. According to public data, the 16-year FASTER submarine cable has a length of 11000 km, a bandwidth of 60 T, a cost of US $300 million, an expected life of 25 years, and only four entrances and exits. At present, the total length of the global submarine optical cable is 900000 kilometers, and it can be estimated that the construction cost is about US $30 billion / 25 years, while the number of entrances and exits is about three digits or at most four digits.

As long as Starlink can reduce the networking cost to about $6 billion / 5 years (satellite life is 5 years) after mass production of satellites, even if personal access is not considered at all, large-scale ground stations that only support four digits on the ground can reach a speed of dozens of terabytes and can begin to compete with submarine optical cables. At present, the cost of this batch of experimental stars is already lower than the launch cost. Calculated at 130 million US dollars for 60 packets, 6 billion US dollars is enough to hit 2800, which is still far away from the 12000 completed networking, but it is very close.

According to Morgan Stanley's estimates, assuming that each chain satellite costs US $1 million and each launch cost US $50 million (a total of US $110 million per batch deployment), and all 42000 satellites are deployed, SpaceX will need to invest about US $84 billion.

SpaceX has its own internal accounts: both Musk and Gwen Schottwell have revealed this year that each chain satellite costs much less than $500000 to build. If it is estimated at US $250000 per unit and US $15 million per launch (in the case of reusing first-stage rockets and reusing fairing, the total cost of each batch deployment is US $30 million), the total deployment of 42000 units will only require an investment of about US $23 billion.

Therefore, the cost of Tesla to complete all the plans is not as high as a submarine fiber optic cable, and the base station is directly omitted.

At present, according to Musk's idea, Star chain will provide services to 3% of users in remote areas of the United States in the future, with an estimated fee of $80 per month, and the current broadband plan for commercial users in the United States is about $1000 to $3000 per year. 10-100000 per year for aircraft cruise ships and large users.In other words, the star chain tariff is lower than the current Internet tariff in the United States.

But for the cheap 5G tariff in China, the price of $80 is still a bit too high.

How to use it?

Foreign media reported that at present, Star chain's alpha tests are only open to rural areas of Washington State, and these tests will provide SpaceX with data to evaluate the performance of the platform in the market.

Beta testing will begin later this year, starting in the northern United States and southern Canada, and then at high latitudes, and people who want to participate in the test will need to meet these requirements:

1. The northern region has a wide view of the sky.

2. The latitude of the area is in the range of 44-52 degrees.

3. Be willing and able to complete a number of investigations on the service within 2 months, and agree to receive and install the equipment correctly.

All testers participating in alpha and beta will receive the service free of charge, but will have to pay $1 to test Starlink's billing system.

According to the terms of service, Beta testers are required to spend an average of 30 minutes to 1 hour a day testing Starlink services and provide feedback on a regular basis.

SpaceX will provide feedback through surveys, phone calls, emails and other means. Not participating in the feedback may result in the termination of your test, and you must return to your star chain suite. In addition, Beta testers will not be allowed to publicly share any information about their use of the service.

In terms of equipment, star chain kit refers to the composition of star chain dish antenna, Wi-Fi router, power supply and system bracket.

This antenna is probably equivalent to the previous satellite pot, but there are policy restrictions on installing such satellite receivers for individual consumers in China.

Therefore, compared with 5G, the biggest pain point of Star chain project is whether the device can be miniaturized and lack of portability.

However, for commercial use, it will not have an impact, and if the star chain is used as a receiving base station, the convenience is the same as that of 5G.

To sum up, the star chain plan is comparable to 5G in terms of network speed, delay and tariff, and the most critical coverage and global distribution are difficult to reach by 5G technology.AcceptEquipment, so it is not suitable for miniaturized devices anytime, anywhere.

There is a big threshold at the civilian level.

Musk has never said that star chains replace traditional communications such as 5G, and star chains have never regarded residents living in dense downtown areas as potential customers, so star chains and 5G, 6G, 7G are more complementary.

At present, Star chain companies have also responded at the technical level that star chains may cause too much space junk and affect space flight.

For example, it uses the input of the U.S. Department of Defense debris tracking system to maneuver independently, which can avoid collisions with space debris and other spacecraft, which greatly reduces human error and provides a more reliable way to avoid collisions. When the life of the satellite ends, the satellite will derail within a few months using its airborne propulsion system.

In rare cases, propulsion systems will not work and satellites will burn in the Earth's atmosphere within 1-5 years, which is much lower than hundreds or thousands of years at high elevations.

As Star Chain is about to enter formal commercial operation, this Internet event will undoubtedly create a world where information flows more freely.

But whether it can really create a unified and unrestricted Internet infrastructure for countries and groups, rich and poor, as planned, will surely encounter various problems in the future.

But even so, its commercial prospects can allow Musk to make huge profits for aircraft, ships, scientific research expeditions, and island borders.