Yay, more space junk, and knowing Google they would abandon the whole thing a couple years in when it gets boring and leave them to rot.
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They split off from Google.
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They are not using satellites, they shine a lazer from one fixed tower to another, with range about 20 km.
Ah, see that’s where not reading is a problem. Just saw star link competitor and remembered something a recently about China looking to launch a similar system.
Odd they would phrase it as a ‘starlink competitor’ then though rather than ‘a new ISP bid’. Wireless systems with directional antenna relays are not really new, not sure if any use laser particularly but the concept is essentially the same.
Still raking in the upvotes though! Reading is for suckers!
That sounds similar to WiMax.
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At sufficiently low orbits, the satellites would simply deorbit themselves.
Wasn’t starlink damaging the ozone layer as well?
When they say “burn up on reentry” they don’t mean disintegrate, they mean burn. It’s exactly like throwing thousands of home entertainment systems in a fire except that the pollution is in the upper atmosphere where normal pollution doesn’t reach.
Perfectly Safe© until proven* otherwise!
- every polluter ever
*Hope you have good lawyers and deep pockets
Yeah, more thinking the wasted time, resources, and emissions involved in building, launching, managing, and then whenever makes it down.
Take all that and make something useful instead, whatever happened to Google fiber being built out all over? More reliable, faster, doesn’t involve sending piles of redundant satellites into space…
Supposedly traditional ISP’s have tons and tons of lawyers and filed every single step of the way to stop Google from intruding on their local monopolies.
I think the existing telecoms tied them up in mountains of legal bullshit.
Completely destroying space and satellite communication might actually be for the best… maybe.
Not if you’re in a place that relies on satellite infrastructure, such as places conventional telephony doesn’t work in.
I guess that’s better but honestly not by much.
See that guy between Bezos and Musk at the Trump inauguration? That’s Sundar Pichai, Alphabet/Google CEO.
It’s zero better. Every one and every thing that bends the knee to fascism is fascist, and should be treated the same.
If I were forced to pick between the two I’d take the guy who is only a white supremacist when it’s profitable over the guy who is a white supremacist every waking moment.
Call it 1% better, if that.
Still a ratfucker, but … not as high a priority target as the one activly throwing out nazi salutes.
I’m not an apologist for any US company, particularly Google. But they are not the same as Musk. They didn’t campaign for this. Yes, they’ve “bent the knee” if you will, donated, and attended the innaguration. Can you imagine the alternative? The threats they got? Suddenly all these top tech companies donated exactly 1 million and their CEOs showed up there. Pretty sure they were told this was the bare minimum donation and that if they didn’t show up, you know…
Plus, they are not throwing nazi salutes, promoting nazis online and offline, or actively dismantling the US democracy. If anything, them not standing out and keeping as low a profile as possible is a good thing because they still hold significant power (for now) and the alternative is the US admin criminalizing them.
Zuck looks like he’s glitching and needs a hard reset
That’s his natural state.
It’s worse. Right now, people see the fascism in front of their eyes. They can choose to wake up or remain delusional. Before, it was masked and the average Joe wouldn’t know better.
The picture of a dystopian future where feudal oligarchs are shooting down each others low orbit internet satellites in the furious competition for best coverage popped into my head.
Who are we casting as the satellite retrieval specialist with a penchant for bonsai trees living in an off grid log cabin?
Not familiar with the current crop of actors, but Honestly I’d love william shatner and nicolas cage be in this one. Cage getting to go full tilt as the CEO who’s put offensive lasers on his satilites marketing them as an anti kessler syndrome measure but really jsut wanting to fry competitors.
Shatner even has the bonus of having a REALLY nice ranch they could use for location shots of shatner’s home as he’s talked into helping train the group of loonies that are going up there.
Google/Alphabet keeping up the tradition of terrible product names I see
Im very much open to replacing my Starlink - but this isn’t it. Land based lasers are just going to be attached to things called cell towers - and if I have one of those nearby… then I’d use cellular.
It’s still longer distance than cellular and it can get even better. Cell towers will always win.
The tech sounds useful to bridge cell towers in rural areas among each other to skip satellites and laying cables.
Back when I was still in university, dormatories’ internet was established using a similar tech to the main campus. It was great, except on snowy days. Then there was just no internet at all.
How do you keep birds from landing on it and shitting up the lens and blocking the laser?
It’s the law of outdoor infrastructure. If it’s outside, and it’s high up, it will get shat upon.
Yea no. This company might even sincerely want to do its own constillation yet I doubt that. This is just to give the optics of ‘see! Musk isn’t a monopoly!’ along with ‘see! we’re not trump’s puppets! We’re fighting against President Musk!’
Same as their halfhearted attempts at laying fiber.
google laid fiber to make the others panic and impliment fiber
Whatever happened to Google Fiber (or whatever it was called)?
It still exists and is very reliable locally, but that’s different than this. Fiber is laid underground and can’t reach every corner where satellite coverage can.
ok cool, whos gonna buy that? Europe wants to be independent from US big tech, elon got the US gov by the balls and china surely has their own thing.
It’s different tech that doesn’t suffer from starlink’s latency issues.
