Instead of Starlink, why not MEASAT?
Instead of Starlink, why not MEASAT?
Actually MEASAT got provide internet uplink service too.
Why no love? Anyone here know any story?
(And to be clear, I am not neutral on this comparison. I don't like Elon Musk)
Looking at their website, it seems connectmenow uses conventional geostationary satellites, which suffer greatly from latency (can easily be upwards 2 seconds). Starlink is low earth orbit, which enables them to give you latencies below 100ms.
On top of that, you need a bulky parabolic antenna that you need to point at the sattellites accurately, which can be a pain for installation and delivery. On the other hand, starlink has an antenna you just plug in and point straight up, and it works.
I also happen to hate muskrat, but I have to admit starlink is the superior offering.
I was typing my own comment only to find out I'm just repeating yours point by point. But I'll add some more points.
The reason geostationary satellite transceivers were bulky is because of inverse square law. If you double the distance the signals goes down to 1/4. And since geostationary satellites were many times farther, beefier ground equipment is required. The upside is that it stays on the same spot in the sky so you only have to aim once.
Starlink, being a constellation of satellites, can be anywhere in the sky at a time, so its transceiver is a phased array, meaning it actively aims its signals internally to whichever satellite is passing overhead.
And why distance matters? First is bandwidth. Farther geosat means more signal degradation, meaning bandwidth is limited. Second is latency. It's fine for passive data downlink like watching sat tv, but disastrous for time sensitive internet applications e.g. gaming.
One notable problem with Starlink right now is how all customers in the general area had to share bandwidth. So the more Starlink units in a general area, the worse the throughput. It's like cellular network. The fix to this is more satellites to distribute the load, and Starlink is launching new batches every month or so, but you can only have so much. Also, competition is entering the market...soon...
And just from the perspective of astronomy and astronomers (and scanning stuff for other things), the impact of all those starlink satellites is a net negative to me. Then of course I have to think about it choking the skies, driving out public utility stuff like weather satellites, so in the end have to depend on them....
Yeah, on the tech side seems like Starlink is much better.
In the long term maybe need to see who do their after sales service better.
I really hope MEASAT can win, or at least be a serious contender. Support lokal💪
Hmm, based on this article, it seems like ConnectMe is prepaid model and the prepaid card have to be purchased with agent, with rm1/gb, while Starlink is postpaid with unlimited data at rm220.
So for place like school, it's much easier to provide starlink and let everyone connect to it than to have prepaid card distributed.