D.C. Memo: SpaceX Test Drives Potent V3 Sats Targeting Urban America – Time for ISPs to Panic?
SpaceX is counting on greater data density and upgraded phased-array antennas 'to more efficiently serve customers simultaneously in both densely and sparsely populated regions'
Today’s Headlines
■ Charter Hits Pause on Stock Buybacks – for a Quarter
■ Taiwan Opens Market to Foreign LEOs Despite Musk-China Ties
■ Virgin Media O2 Demands End to Britain’s Innovation-Killing Net Neutrality Rules
■ Vermont Governor’s Exec Order to Steer Ad Money to State-Based Broadcasters
■ Colorado Broadband Office Seeks Comment on Draft Middle Mile Plan
■ Comcast Backs Microsoft on Open Weights AI Models
■ Kalshi Demands Netflix Take Down Trailer over Nevada Bet Slip Image
■ Bipartisan House-Senate Bill Would Help K-12 Schools Defend against Cyberattacks
■ Ookla Looks at Geography and Cloud Responsiveness
■ Becky Rudd Named CFO of Matanuska Telecom Association in Palmer, Alaska
LEO: SpaceX made history on July 24. The massive Starship rocket deployed in a test Starlink’s next gen V3 satellites for the first time not long after leaving the Starbase, Texas, launchpad. The V3 sats are intended to be a more powerful rival to terrestrial ISP giants like Comcast, Charter, AT&T, and Verizon. V3s will support 1 Tbps of downlink and 160 Gbps of uplink capacity. “That’s an ~10x improvement in downlink capacity and an ~22x increase in uplink capacity from the Starlink V2 satellite,” SpaceX claimed on its website. (Starship successfully deployed 20 V3s before they re-entered the atmosphere and burned up as planned.) SpaceX is counting on greater data density and upgraded phased-array antennas “to more efficiently serve customers simultaneously in both densely and sparsely populated regions and adapt beam data density in real-time to match the data needs of customers.” (More after paywall)
