Fascinating... the US government can't do this:

https://www.spacex.com/webcast

Only 199 more launches to get the full compliment up - a mere 12,000 LEO satellites.

Going to be neat for those without Internet now, but a very bad thing for astral photographers.

Hopefully they will never start colliding with themselves or other LEO objects as the **** will really hit the fan...

Having 4,000 LEO satellites in each of the orbital elevations will be tricky.

Ed

Fascinating... the US government can't do this:

https://www.spacex.com/webcast

The US Government could absolutely do this. There's just no reason for them to. If anything, Uncle Sam is probably the most capable satellite creator in the world. I don't know what US agency would further their mission by launching these satellites. Launching GPS in 1978 was likely a lot more complicated. Same with the various weather or spy satellites.

These internet satellites are much smaller and in a lower orbit.

This has even been done before with the Iridium network (which ended in bankruptcy for the original launch company) beginning in 1997. I hope SpaceX succeeds, I think their approach is better than the Iridium approach and it sounds like they've solved the traditional latency problem with space based internet. That said, there's no reason to think the USG couldn't do this if they had a reason to.

While I remain skeptical, that this is just one of Elon's Pie in the Sky(literally, lol) ideas, if by the slim chance he could actually pull this off, I'd be in, and I'd tell AT&T to shove it!

I do find it interesting.  Last year, I was in Mississippi driving around the countryside looking for historical markers on the MS Blues Marker Trail.  Not once did my XM satellite radio have a hickup and lose service.  Quite frequently, my Sprint cell phone was on roam and several times dropped service all together.  I thought to my self at the time, "Why doesn't XM radio get into the cell phone business?".

I do find it interesting.  Last year, I was in Mississippi driving around the countryside looking for historical markers on the MS Blues Marker Trail.  Not once did my XM satellite radio have a hickup and lose service.  Quite frequently, my Sprint cell phone was on roam and several times dropped service all together.  I thought to my self at the time, "Why doesn't XM radio get into the cell phone business?".

You could get a satellite phone no doubt you’d want to pay for it though $$$$

I do find it interesting.  Last year, I was in Mississippi driving around the countryside looking for historical markers on the MS Blues Marker Trail.  Not once did my XM satellite radio have a hickup and lose service.  Quite frequently, my Sprint cell phone was on roam and several times dropped service all together.  I thought to my self at the time, "Why doesn't XM radio get into the cell phone business?".

You could get a satellite phone no doubt you’d want to pay for it though $$$$

Yeah, but why should the price be so much higher?

Smaller market, higher expenses.

http://www.sattransusa.com/irid-pho-9555.html

Smaller market, higher expenses.

http://www.sattransusa.com/irid-pho-9555.html

I don't buy that theory.  If one could have high speed cell phone access anywhere in the world, Sprint, ATT, etc. would be out of business pretty quickly if someone offered that at similar prices.

I’m not a rocket scientist so take this with a grain of salt.

The iridium network isn’t a very good call experience. It has higher latency than you are used to on a phone. I also don’t think they have the network capacity to replace all of the bandwidth going through a wireless telco.

This is what makes the SpaceX satellites so exciting. They claim to have solved the latency problem and the bandwidth problem. I think a sat phone based on the SpaceX network could be a really interesting offering.

Smaller market, higher expenses.

http://www.sattransusa.com/irid-pho-9555.html

I don't buy that theory.  If one could have high speed cell phone access anywhere in the world, Sprint, ATT, etc. would be out of business pretty quickly if someone offered that at similar prices.

Well yes but don't hold your breath on that one. Current Sat phones cost an average of $1.00 per minute. To build a global cell service that is equal or better than what you have today just doesn't make business sense. First off what is the market potential for this? How many people require global cell coverage? Really how many require national cell coverage? Sure we have dead spots but overall most are on back roads and out of the way places where we don't have a huge population.

I have a cell tower half a mile from my condo and the reception is horrible (2nd floor out of 3). I'm 3 miles from SeaTac, but the trees and added walls/ceilings, etc. cut into the viability of the experience. I was talking to my brother the other day and mid conversation lost contact. Why?

I won't be here to see the outcome; but my grandparents never heard of a cell phone either. When I was a child, we had black and white TV's with 4 channels. If you wanted to talk to someone on the phone, you had to wait your turn.

Who knows?

Could be that the cell tower near you is not your cell provider's.

I was working on-base at the Cape and got to witness this launch from approximately 1.5 miles away.  Spectacular doesn't begin to do justice to what I saw and felt.