That makes perfect sense. If the service is not available, it's not available. The reason why doesn't make a difference "how available" it is. Either it is, or it isn't.

Seems a bit like false marketing to say "Starlink is now on all seven continents" when it's more like "Starlink has satellites over seven continents but you can only actually use it on five of them"

Eh, it depends on who "you" are. I'm pretty sure the USAF can use them on all seven continents. Meanwhile I, not having a contract, can't use them on any continent.

Do you mean to say that the USAF can use devices that cause arbitrary interference on frequency bands that the country they're operating in hasn't reserved for such uses, and said countries tolerate that?

Those countries' poor radio engineers...

Uh, yes. The USAF uses electronic warfare systems that don't just accidentally cause such interference, but do so intentionally. Much like every other major military.

Which isn't to say that they would operate those systems (or starlink) in peacetime without the approval of the host country, just that they can use those systems at any time... While I don't know for a fact that SpaceX has left the decision on where to use starlink up to them, I'm pretty sure that would be the case.

I was referring more to countries that host US military bases / allow USAF flyover in peacetime, and which aren't currently considered Starlink-enabled. The Philippines, for example.

> Which isn't to say that they would operate those systems (or starlink) in peacetime without the approval of the host country

To the original point, Starlink wouldn't be claiming that "Starlink is now on all seven continents" unless somebody (e.g. the USAF) was at least conducting connectivity tests in these countries, if not putting Starlink into active use — which would, again, be much to the chagrin of local RF engineers, who had.

>>Starlink wouldn't be claiming that "Starlink is now on all seven continents" unless somebody (e.g. the USAF) was at least conducting connectivity tests in these countries, if not putting Starlink into active use

Elon's history of marketing says otherwise.

I think the radio engineers suffer at the hands of poorly-shielded switch-mode power supplies and inadvertent spark-gap transmitters caused by aging powerline infrastructure more than anything else.

The satellites are already there, like gps satellites are already there. I'm assuming they're transmitting whether or not people on the ground have connection or whether or not the government "approves" it.

MIMO antennas aren't transmitting in your direction unless you get their attention by transmitting in theirs. Also, they might be transmitting by default with barely-enough power, in a narrow band, in frequencies everyone generally agrees to not use for anything important; but once you establish a circuit with them, they could start transmitting in your particular direction with more power, in wider bandwidth, or in more-likely-to-be-reserved frequencies.

You come across quite poorly in this exchange.

Might be so. Guess it seemed obvious to me that we're talking past each other if one is talking about "What's available for consumers today" vs "What the military in the US has access to", but I digress.

If someone can use it on all 7 continents, I'd say that it's available to use on all 7 continents. If you can't use it on all 7, I suggest you keep offering more money until you can.

Well, if you hover over various countries where it’s not yet available, it will tell you when they estimate that it will be available. Nigeria says “Q4 2022”, which is not very far away. In order to be sure of having service available in a month or two, they have surely already built a ground station or two, printed some instruction booklets in Nigerian, hired some Nigerian sales reps, etc.

FYI English is the official language of Nigeria, and the one most people who can afford satellite internet speak day-to-day. No need to translate!

Maybe that's why they're getting it months before anyone else :)

There are something like 10-15 countries in Africa where English is the official language, and there is almost as many English speakers in Africa as in the US in total :)

It's much more likely to do with licensing radio bandwidth.

Yeah, I saw that when you hover, it shows you an estimate of when it'll be available. But saying that it's available in X weeks/months/years in Africa directly conflicts with the tweet saying "Starlink is now on all seven continents" when it's not available in Africa or Asia right now.

I think you're being a little obtuse here. The point of the tweet seems to be that the laser links are up enabling a true global network without the need for nearby ground stations.

They have coverage over all seven continents because of that and I have very little doubt that it's been tested in those continents as well. "Availability" here seems to be a proxy for "is technically solved" vs. "is commercially available".

If you're asking "what's the difference?" Think about the war in Ukraine. Starlink wasn't (and isn't?) commercially available there but was able to be deployed in an emergency.

Ahh yes, the language called Nigerian…

If you mouseover the countries you can see that some of them are "Pending regulatory approval".

> waiting for enough satellites to be in the sky overhead

Seriously, wtf? Look at some orbits. Satellites do not sit stationary over one location, except the ones called "geosynchronous satellites".

https://satellitemap.space/#

Edit: if Starlink is not available in a country it is for one of three reasons:-

- the country is not at the top of Starlink's priority list for connection (commercial reasons)

- the country wants nothing to do with anything based in the USA (politics)

- the country has an obstructive bureaucracy (corruption, stupidity).

> For better or worse, each country’s government has to approve the use of any particular frequency, as well as things like transmission power.

I think it’s for the worse if governments disapprove the use of Starlink. Starlink should at least be allowed to send out an SOS message. It could save a life out on the frontier.