Elon Musk’s Starlink: game-changer for China’s Great Firewall and hedge funds

[sammyboyfor]

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opini...wall-and-hedge

Now, while your average internet browser might not be too worried about a millisecond here or there, there is one group of people to whom every millisecond counts: high-frequency hedge-fund traders.

Sending a data packet from London to the New York Stock Exchange currently takes about 77 milliseconds under the sea. Because data sent via laser through the vacuum of space is about a third faster than through optical fibre and 75 per cent faster than cable, the theoretical latency for Starlink drops to about 43 milliseconds. That would make an enormous difference to arbitrage and high-frequency traders using superfast computers. And the longer the distance, the greater the time advantage. Put simply, traders who did not convert to Starlink would swiftly find themselves unable to compete.

The impact of Starlink is potentially staggering:

• High-frequency traders and arbitragers will struggle to make money as Musk will have got there first, taken everything and left nothing for anyone else. So they will have to pay up and buy his super-low-latency service or risk going out of business. And he hates short-sellers.

• It potentially marks the end of internet censorship – or at least makes it very difficult. Starlink’s “pizza box” terminals access the free global internet from anywhere, making it incredibly difficult for governments to block off the bits they don’t want citizens to see. The signals would bypass China’s Great Firewall, for instance, and it would no longer be possible for governments to implement internet shutdowns, as India often does on the grounds of public order.

How can any government stop it? They may ban the sale of the antennas, but with a 3D printer and some ingenuity people would soon be able to make them. Jamming signals or shooting down thousands of small satellites will be tricky, the only option would be to ask Elon personally to turn it off.

• It is potentially very disruptive for telecoms companies delivering internet by cable, building new cable-connected cellular networks in the developing world and those companies gouging us for in-flight internet access.

The world of satellite broadband is heating up, and high-speed “space internet” is increasingly looking like the future.

[sammyboyfor]

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