If that location had internet already it was presumably acting as a base station.

Starlink needs somewhere to send packets to eventually, ideally without wasting bandwidth and latency by bouncing off ground relays, so it makes sense that they would setup a ground station at the closest place with intact high-speed internet during disaster recovery efforts.

The starlink earth stations in WA are in Redmond, North Bend and Brewster. With another one under construction near Prosser. In the photo that's not a starlink 'trunk' link/earth station antenna, which is much larger. That's an end point CPE.

the beta-test starlink earth stations look like this: https://imgur.com/a/mg3cq9R#RssFOnG

The one in Boca Chica, TX is the same radomes, unknown exact dish/electronics configuration inside, mounted on steel pedestals on concrete foundations. But otherwise the same.

While it does appear to be closer to the consumer antenna than the normal base stations, it's just a radio, there is no reason it couldn't be used as a base station, and unlike the regular base stations it is designed for quick and easy setup so it potentially makes sense to use it as one during a disaster. This explanation definitely makes a hell of a lot more sense than it being a stunt.

More base stations and particularly base stations close to the disaster increase the portion of time that any given satellite has a link to both the end user and a base station. Particularly during this early stage when they have a limited number of pre existing base stations and limited satellite coverage that is very important for connectivity.

The advantage of the ground station being closely located to users is very very small (assuming options are in view and not at the extreme limits). There's not really any latency to avoid, the traffic is going up and down and through a ground station either which way. The current ground stations probably have better (as in lower latency) connectivity than a telco's local exchange anyway.

Considering the high complexity of field-deploying a ground station during an emergency when several nearby ground stations are available, it's difficult to imagine why they would ever do this. Licensing for ground stations is more complex which generally prevents installing one on short notice, and because the "teleport" link requires higher total bandwidth than the consumer links it typically uses larger antennas, higher power levels, and often even a completely different band and encoding both for higher throughput and to simplify managing interference with the consumer-facing antennas.

That said, my assumption would be that Starlink offered to provide redundancy for the WiFi at this site, so while the Starlink service in the photo is not necessarily in use it does serve a function by providing some reassurance in case the telco experiences infrastructure problems subsequent to the fire (not unlikely because fire recovery involves heavy equipment, tends to destabilize hillsides, etc).

The advantage isn't latency but connectivity. Connectivity requires both user and base station to connect to the same satellite, and that happens more often the closer they are to each other.

This becomes less of a problem as you gain more satellites, but right now with the limited rollout I'm pretty sure it is significant.

Base stations that have identical radios to user antennas (which have a general fcc license) probably don't require further licensing. They would be limited bandwidth but that's a lot better than nothing, especially during a disaster.

Documents from Starlink suggest the usable footprint of the satellites is a bit over 500km wide, so roughly the size of Washington. Further, Starlink only reported positive results from inter-satellite relay testing very recently ("first successful test" about four weeks ago).

Combining these, and considering that they are operating multiple ground stations within Washington, I don't think inter-satellite relay is a factor at all right now.

That's... an assumption that went into the logic in the comment replying to and the logic in it's grandparent.

I think you meant to contradict me, so I think my comment is being misunderstood, which might explain the downvotes too... I just can't figure out how your are misreading it.

So because someone else was also offering a solution, Starlink is the stunt? Is literally everything in life a stunt if someone has done it before you?

They literally set it up at the one place in town that already had working Internet access and power. On top of the generator of the entity already providing such. Yes, that's a stunt.

Do you think there was only one? They definitely made it sound as though they had more than one in this CNBC article - https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/washington-emergency-respond...

I don't doubt they're using it, just that one particular photo was possibly the worst possible choice for PR. Take a photo of one out in a field being powered from portable equipment with a Honda 2000 inverter-generator or something.

The location of Malden works for them because with the current bent pipe satellite architecture, and starlink earth stations in Redmond, North Bend and Brewster, the beta-test CPEs are simultaneously in view of satellites that can also see the earth stations. Activating a temporary CPE in Malden is no different than the same equipment that's been in field beta test with spacex's redmond based employees around WA state for several months now.

And it's at a sufficiently high latitude that the partially-complete satellite network density, at any given point in time, is denser above Malden than above a place several degrees latitude further south.

>Is literally everything in life a stunt if someone has done it before you?

it's a stunt when it's done to trigger the photo-op, rather than the other way around.

Let me guess: you own Tesla stock

Tesla != Starlink/SpaceX

Maybe the outbound fiber link for Ziply CO is damaged by the wildfire? It's probably on poles instead of buried due to cost reason. If that's the case, then the CO would route all traffic thru Starlink.

You can't just take a legacy telco CO full of things like Cisco 15454s with OC-12/OC-48 SDH/SONET interface cards, linked to the nearest major city by SDH/TDM circuits, and pipe it through a gigabit ethernet link into a power over ethernet powered (microwave, millimeter wave or satellte) thing on the roof.

If you look around in a place like that you'll see fun things like 1RU rackmount DS3-to-DS1 mux devices connected to legacy TDM transport gear, for SS7/PSTN links, 911 and such.