zlacker

But how do they beam copies of the space to space links down for wiretapping, as Iridium does?

>>Animat+(OP)
At the ground stations

>>supert+FF
GS is layer 2. It's done at the POP's like every other company

>>supert+FF
Starlink is rolling out "direct to cell" connections, where the satellites connect directly to GSM cell phones. Is any ground station involved in a cell to cell call?

>>Animat+uS
You could imagine a situation where they can do that.

But practically what happens is the phone connects to a sat, the sat connects to a local ground station, then across conventional fiber to another ground station, up to a sat and then down to the other phones.

The are likely doing that because regulation and so on. But the do what you suggest.

>>panick+jn1
That wastes half the bandwidth of the system. Will Musk put up with that?