Originally Posted by
pax britanica
Outside of GPS satellites dont carry much data . partially because they cannot handle much nor high speeds , but partly beause theyare easy to intercept or interfer with. Fibre optic cables deal with high speed and securty but although they are not as easy to find as is often suggested cutign them close to major global nodes would be very serious. So toa degree both are needed. But then again the likes of Starlink and other similar systems need cable links between key ground stations for resilience and back up. So relying too heavilty on remorete control of actions isnt quite as good an iidea as it seems since there are always vulnerabilities in networks coverign any distance. So, piloted aircraft, crewed ships and platoons of squaddies cannot be made reduntant or replaced over night . Once they got the go -or run message leave it up to them as they can't be jammed
Starlink seems to be the exception, it provides between 150MBps and 500MBps to consumers, with a latency of around 20ms. That knocks my fibre optic internet connectivity into a cocked hat. In fact it makes FTTP look distinctly sluggish, and as of now FTTP isn't that widely available in rural areas (and we are in a rural area). We have FTTC and it maxes out at around 15MB/s on a good day, can drop down below 10MB/s at times, because of the length of the copper loop. As soon as Starlink is available here I am very definitely going to sign up, as at the very least it's likely to give us an order of magnitude better performance over the pretty crappy landline/fibre connection we have now.
Ukraine has shown that Starlink is exceptionally difficult to jam, too. Russia has been trying without any success. Probably due to the high speed of the SVs, plus the clever technology in the beam steered arrays in the ground stations.