Thread by @swardley

X : Have you ordered Starlink?
Me : Yep. Hopefully here soon.
X : Why not FttH?
Me : Fibre to the home / premise. That would have been great a few years ago but it has taken so long that the future has arrived. Don't see the point now.

X : What about latency? Bandwidth?
Me : I'll comment when I get mine but given I have to channel bond to a server in London for reasons of resilience then it can only get better and as more satellites go up it will only improve. You're talking 20-40 ms and 100Mbs ...

... of course, as compute moves into space then it wins hands down.
X : Compute in space?
Me : Yep. Where do you think it's going? Ditto manufacturing. Oh, wait ... you still think land based DCs are the future? Hmmm.

Oh, I get it, you still think location is important for networks. Whilst copper networks are built of commodity components and people think of networks as a commodity .... any copper network is highly specific to the location. Starlink etc are more industrialised.

because you think location is important, you haven't yet clocked that satellite is the more utility version of network provision (the common meaning) and copper / fibre are liabilities.

Copper / fibre will be dead except for niches, they just haven't realised it yet ...

... but it'll take 15-20 years and then add another 20 years for the laggards. So there is plenty of time to make money etc.

This is why I thought all the UK Telcos would try and stop Starlink, using the Gov investment in "One Web" as the excuse for why we didn't need it. With project Kuiper soon to follow ... they are all dead folk walking. It's just a question of time. Just like IBM et al with cloud.

If right, a future of squeezing costs, squeezing revenue, share buybacks, dividends, consolidation with synergies (i.e. sweat and acquire) beckons for many ... but it'll keep going for a good time, plenty for execs to retire comfortably.

Anyway, given that they didn't seem to try and block it then I'm going to assume that they don't understand the change (i.e. zero situational awaress), they will dismiss it as per IBM et al with cloud circa 2007-2008 and later claim that no-one could see it coming etc.

However, the challenge for Starlink is that Amazon is unlikely to give it a 7 year head start (which is what normally everyone gives Amazon) ... so there'll be some competition and China Gov is obviously making moves quickly ...

... I'm sort of hoping UK Gov investment in One Web was a bit more strategic than someone thinking "We need a GPS, GPS needs satellites, they do satellites" (ps they do the wrong type of satellites for GPS being LEO but exactly the sort of space we want to be in for networks) ...

... fortunately the civil service has a lot of canny folk, so hopefully we have played a blinder here.

i.e. the OneWeb investment is focused on industrialisation of space - with networks etc. That would be sweet -

https://twitter.com/swardley/status/1304336760755957761

X : Compute in space? When do you think that will happen.
Me : It already is. The question you want to know is large scale compute in space?
X : Ok, when?
Me : Good question, at least we're not talking about "if" now.
X : There are a lot of problems to be solved.
Me : always are.

X : I don't see the benefits?
Me : Abundance of energy, cooling, materials, real estate and better network speeds.
X : In space?
Me : Oh yes. Especially as the network moves up there.