>Is Starlink such a big deal that it would materially affect phased array costs?
I guess I think the Starlink terminal is technically one of the coolest and least appreciated aspect of the whole system. Sure it's not a military AESA system but getting that level of phased array into a 100W all weather CPE with a $500 target price they plan to produce tens of millions of is something I don't think has ever been done before, and it definitely could blaze a trail in terms of economies of scale there. SpaceX's rockets and sats seem to get most of the press, and are certainly critical, but the terminal is also a big deal IMO.
I mean, think about it: they've built an end point that will do a point to point link of 500+km to base stations with relative velocities of kilometers per second and can user-imperceptibly swap between multiple ones in real time while maintaining a bandwidth of hundreds of megabits per second. For $500 (granted it's probably costing them at least double/triple that right now, but they aren't making tens of millions yet either). A much more cut down, cheaper version of that could still make a number of terrestrial PtP/PtMP links a great deal easier for random people to take a swing at and get even better results with then now.
Again, I'm certainly no expert at all. But I've kicked the tires on a little of this stuff a bit, recently got my first chance to work with second gen 60 GHz links for example and those feel like a certain amount of work to get just right over multi-km ranges. But if for another $100 suddenly they just handle it themselves as long as they're within 10-20° horizontal/vertical? It'd make some aspects of installs more accessible and cheaper which doesn't seem like a bad thing to look forward to?
OP is of course right that none of this addresses the many other aspects of doing networking.
I guess I think the Starlink terminal is technically one of the coolest and least appreciated aspect of the whole system. Sure it's not a military AESA system but getting that level of phased array into a 100W all weather CPE with a $500 target price they plan to produce tens of millions of is something I don't think has ever been done before, and it definitely could blaze a trail in terms of economies of scale there. SpaceX's rockets and sats seem to get most of the press, and are certainly critical, but the terminal is also a big deal IMO.
I mean, think about it: they've built an end point that will do a point to point link of 500+km to base stations with relative velocities of kilometers per second and can user-imperceptibly swap between multiple ones in real time while maintaining a bandwidth of hundreds of megabits per second. For $500 (granted it's probably costing them at least double/triple that right now, but they aren't making tens of millions yet either). A much more cut down, cheaper version of that could still make a number of terrestrial PtP/PtMP links a great deal easier for random people to take a swing at and get even better results with then now.
Again, I'm certainly no expert at all. But I've kicked the tires on a little of this stuff a bit, recently got my first chance to work with second gen 60 GHz links for example and those feel like a certain amount of work to get just right over multi-km ranges. But if for another $100 suddenly they just handle it themselves as long as they're within 10-20° horizontal/vertical? It'd make some aspects of installs more accessible and cheaper which doesn't seem like a bad thing to look forward to?
OP is of course right that none of this addresses the many other aspects of doing networking.