zlacker

>>alden5+(OP)
So that is "432 Mbit/s per laser, and 9000 lasers total". I don't know you guys but I find that statement much more relatable than "42 PB/day". Interestingly, they also say each laser "can sustain a 100Gbps connection per link" (although another part of the article even claims 200 Gbit/s). That means each laser is grossly underused on average, at 0.432% of its maximum capacity. Which makes sense since 100 Gbit/s is probably achievable in ideal situations (eg. 2 satellites very close to each other), so these laser links are used in bursts and the link stays established only for a few tens of seconds or minutes, until the satellites move away and no longer are within line of sight of each other.

And with 2.3M customers, that's an average 1.7 Mbit/s per customer, or 550 GB per customer per month, which is kinda high. The average American internet user probably consumes less than 100 GB/month. (HN readers are probably outliers; I consume about 1 TB/month).

>>mrb+b46
I think the average Instagram or TikTok user must be using more than 100GB/month. And if you count YouTube and Netflix, it's probably more than that.

>>yosito+986
Is resolution going to peak? Like speeding on a highway are there diminishing returns? On the other hand, bandwidth availability seems to also drive demand...

>>calvin+k86
Two things:

Resolution is always determined by angular resolution at viewing distance, even for analog TVs(they were smaller and further away), and also,

Videos on Internet is always heavily compressed - the "resolution" is just the output size passed to the decoder and inverse of minimal pattern size recorded within, technically not related to data size. Raw video is h * v * bpp and have always been like low to dozen Gbps.

Just my bets, the bandiwth may peak or see a plateau, but resolution could continue to grow as needed for e.g. digital signage video walls that wraps around buildings.