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Re:Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliabl... by londons_explore on Monday April 03, 2023 @12:11PM (#35426341)
Remember that if they are starting to get near capacity limits, they always have the option to make the antennas on the satellite larger, making the beams narrower, and reduce those 300 sq km cells down to say 30 sq km.

In the current era of phased array antenna prices falling sharply, and assuming they're willing to go for a folding antenna, I think they could probably easily get a 10x antenna area boost without much extra cost.

Re:Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliabl... by mlyle on Tuesday April 04, 2023 @01:14AM (#35435375)
If you have 10x the antenna area, you need 10x the antenna elements with appropriate phasing... else you suffer from the thinned array curse and lose lots of power in side lobes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinned-array_curse