Satellite Internet: Fiber vs. Satellites

Описание: Elon talks about the differences about terrestrial-based fiber optic cables and satellite networks for internet connectivity.

Full video:    • Elon Musk's plans for an Internet Satellit...  

Elon: "As you guys may know, the speed of light in vacuum is 40 to 50 percent faster than in fiber. So you can actually do long-distance communication faster if you routed through vacuum than if you routed through fiber.

You can also go through far fewer hops. Let's say you want to communicate from Seattle to South Africa, if you look at the actual path that it takes, it's extremely convoluted: it will follow the outline of the continent, it will go through 200 routers and repeaters and the latency is extremely bad. Whereas if you did it with a satellite network you can actually do it in two or three hops."