Hey Syed,
We all know the State of the Union. What is the State of the Othernet?
Nothing negative, sir. It’s amazing you’re still up and running. We appreciate that. Experimentation and improving is still alive here. It’s in all of us. Could you tell the congregation of your plans for the future. Of course Earth’s better future is the first equation to be solved.
Don
I second the motion. 
Ken
I am a bit curious as well. We are starting to see Starlink start to take shape with possible
public beta testing later on this year.
What’s interesting about Starlink, Mike, is the monthly cost. So far no final figures are available, but Musk has ruled out free service.
So that begs the big question of affordability in many areas of the world again giving Othernet a big boost. Ken
Have Musk fund us as a backup system!
Here’s an interesting twist on that idea. Perhaps Starlink could lease down link capacity to Othernet on its tens of thousand of LEOs. Then, presuming the current Dreamcatchers could tune to their frequencies, billions of people could receive one-way information content thru Othernet. These people would be the ones not able to afford the $100 (or so) Starlink monthly fees.
I don’t think this would be a money loser to Elon Musk since these billions of people would never become his subscribers. Ken
Do you think the Starlink frequencies are in the Ku band?
I just googled it:
Per the FCC approval for the Starlink space stations, “SpaceX proposes to operate in the 10.7-12.7 GHz, 13.85-14.5 GHz, 17.8-18.6 GHz, 18.8-19.3 GHz, 27.5-29.1 GHz, and 29.5-30 GHz bands.”
Starlink is using Ku and Ka bands. Yes, there is overlap with the frequency we are currently leasing, but they must protect (not interfere) the incumbent geostationary operators. So we are safe from interference.
@donde Yes, it’s amusing that everything is still alive and kicking! There should be some big improvements at the end of this summer. More information in August. Right now I am focusing on a quite a few inquiries related to school closings.
Musk/SpaceX are not interested in leasing capacity. Yes, I’ve asked in the past. They (will) run an end-to-end, vertically-integrated service. I would be happy to lease capacity from them, but they have huge capital expenses which they need to recoup. A few tens of thousands from Othernet will certainly not move the needle for them.
I wonder if Starlink will also provide cellular style access augmenting terrestrial 5G (New Radio)
frequencies. See the frequencies n257 to n261 at 5G NR frequency bands - Wikipedia
Then some cell phones might directly connect to the satellite (similar to iridium ??? but on Ka/Ku)
I would like to think Elon has higher ideals in mind than just making money, but am not counting on it. 
Partnering with Othernet to reach the under served (and poor) populations of the world with a one-way information service could be a feather in his cap. Ken
Could it be Elon knows nothing about the Othernet and its humanitarian goals? And the struggles we are enduring. Maybe good writers out there could compose an email to Mr. Musk. Am I too neive?
The satellites probably offline when the sine wave shaped orbits are near the equatorial part of their orbits.
I wish for a cheap LEO uplink service with a GEO downlink and robust privacy protections on the level of TOR. Can it be free too, and why not offer free trips to orbit and back?
[quote=“biketool, post:13, topic:6983”]
The satellites probably offline when
[/quote] …
This going to a be real juggling trick. The LEO’s (starlink birds) are required to shutdown transmissions when they cross the signal-path of any FSS (fixed geostationary satellite) to prevent signal interference. At least that the US FCC license requirement… I see lot’s of lawyers getting well paid as this is started up.
I would love to hear othernet broadcast from the LEO’s. The signal strength would probably be strong enough for an omini-directional receive antenna. what dream that would be…
Normally a LEO is hearable for only 15 minutes or less. I guess another would be right behind it.
Not to difficult, a dish only focuses a pretty tight area, othernet is one of the few services blasting a super narrow signal at higher power vs spread across the whole of the transponder allocation where we can just point our LNB.
@donde, even the amateur satellites are in-theory usable with the rubber antenna on an HT, that said I have never even attempted it considering the short pass time and the effort of going out on time to meet my bird on a convenient pass.
Wow, they are going to use the 4mm band in addition to Ku and Ka bands, that will make for some very small antennas in theory though the pics are of the phased array pizza box antennas.
Ham Radio operators do this all the time with handheld radios and beam antennas also handheld. Check out AMSAT. 70 cm up, 2 meters down or other way around. I’ve had fun doing it myself. The ISS has always one ham aboard. It’s pass is much less than 15 minutes for a given location. Total pass time around around our Earth is 92 minutes orbiting a different slice each time. And you can naked eye see the beautiful darn thing at 250 miles, picking the right day and time. W6RWN
I was in school, no $$$ but had an old Alinco DJ-580t which is a true dual band dual tuner radio and worked ISS, ao-27, and ao-50 (FM birds) with a duplexed 3 element 2m and 5 or 6 element on 440. I made a hobo special of the Arrow, cross polarized j-pole antennas of recycled earth ground wire and cut fence wire reflectors and parasites. I think I was usually putting about 3w out of the HT. I was never brave enough to try working with just the crappy rubber duck antenna I had for that HT which was not great for anything beyond hitting the repeater and considering all of the other planning and stuff to take advantage of a good high pass.
Well at least you fulfilled one requirement of a true ham. You learned to scrounge for parts to build stuff. A kid’s budget was very limited then.
