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LEO takes center stage for communications at sea (spacenews.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/spaceflight

4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A Starlink antenna costs $250 compared to the $25,000 price of a VSAT terminal a couple of years ago, KVH Industries CEO Brent Bruun said on the panel.

He said vessels can now get up to 200 megabits per second of service for about a dollar a gigabit, versus 20 Mbps on a typical VSAT for $10 per GB.

These orders of magnitude differences across three different metrics enable video calls and many other activities onboard a ship that used to be confined to land, significantly boosting ship operations and crew morale.

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[–] threelonmusketeers 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

a dollar a gigabit

$10 per GB

Doesn't 10$ per GB = 1.25$ per gigabit? Their use of units is a bit inconsistent...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is most likely just an error from a writer that doesn't realize that Gb and GB refer to two different things. Or just a capitalization error.

To be honest the difference existing at all is infuriating.

[–] threelonmusketeers 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

the difference existing at all is infuriating

If you find that infuriating, allow me to introduce you to the difference between gigabytes and gibibytes.

[–] skulbuny 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I've only known the "binary memory" version, eg. 1024 megabytes is 1 gigabyte is 1 gibibyte and little b meaning bits vs bytes (eg 1 bit vs 8 bits)