Don't let the fascists fool you, there are alternatives to Starlink. Eutelsat in France, Telesat in Canada and Inmarsat in the UK, just to name a few examples.

[–] bradd@lemmy.world 13 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

Why is starlink being used, do you know?

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 36 points 7 hours ago

It’s faster, cheaper, and on the tech side more reliable (definitely not politically reliable though).

[–] Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip 15 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Now, I don't know, but I would assume its the latency. Starlink has a (impressively) low ping of < 100ms, while existing alternatives usually have 600ms+. Now, that's only relevant if they are using it for stuff like flying drones.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 10 points 5 hours ago

I think you'd notice half a second even just browsing the Web.

[–] learningduck@programming.dev 17 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

My guess is better coverage and latency with its sheer number of satellites.

They use low earth orbit, which require them to use more satellites, but lowered latency.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 8 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Technically, and this is purely semantics, coverage is the major downside to starlink. They are faster, though.

The coverage of satellites has an exponential factor of the distance of that satellite to earth. If you had the satellite further out then its signal could reach a wider area before being cut off by the curvature of the earth. However, as the distance increases, so does latency.