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If the constellation costs $10 billion to launch as estimated and has a operating cost of $1 billion/year and a lifetime of 5 years, Spacex will need only $3 bi

If the constellation costs $10 billion to launch as estimated and has a operating cost of $1 billion/year and a lifetime of 5 years, Spacex will need only $3 billion/year to break even. If they sell subscriptions at $50/month they will only need 5 million subscribers to break even. They only have to be better than current offerings in poorly served markets to get that. I think it will be a cash cow.

cptaj 7y ago
I live in Venezuela and our internet service is crumbling and censored (Dont fucking vote for communists or populist socialists) I work online so a stable internet connection is a must. Right now we're surviving with boutique wireless ISPs (not cell, think point to point networks used in rural areas but deployed in the city because you have post-apocalyptic levels of collapse) They buy their uplink from the monopoly government ISP but pay handsomely for priority. I pay $30 a month for a 2mb connection. I would GLADLY pay for Starlink.
- nsajko 7y ago
  Communism and socialism do not have anything to do with censorship. Edit: I was responding to parent's first sentence, "I live in Venezuela and our internet service is crumbling and censored (Dont fucking vote for communists or populist socialists)". That is like living in Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, etc. (look here if you want more examples: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Internet_Censorship_and_Surveillance_World_Map.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Internet_Censorship_... ), and then blaming Capitalism for the censorhip of the Internet.
  - dang 7y ago
    Would you please not take HN threads further into ideological flamewar? It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- idDriven 7y ago
  From what I have read it sounded like the US government has been working to undermine Venezuela economically for some time. Socialism was working too well, it brought huge swathes of the population out of poverty. A working less-capitalist model being dangerous to the global status quo, had to go. I'm sorry and I hope it gets better. Here is one article, as a source, its long though. Source: https://nacla.org/news/2018/05/18/united-states%E2%80%99-hand-undermining-democracy-venezuela https://nacla.org/news/2018/05/18/united-states%E2%80%99-han...
  - idDriven 7y ago
    Im really impressed at the number of downvotes, despite the lack of subsequent replies. Here's another source: "The first UN rapporteur to visit Venezuela for 21 years has told The Independent the US sanctions on the country are illegal and could amount to “crimes against humanity” under international law. Former special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas, who finished his term at the UN in March, has criticized the US for engaging in “economic warfare” against Venezuela which he said is hurting the economy and killing Venezuelans." Per the Indpendent: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-us-sanctions-united-nations-oil-pdvsa-a8748201.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-...
    - martythemaniak 7y ago
      You're probably being downvoted without replies because your post of such low quality, it is not worth replying to. "Socialism was working too well, it brought huge swathes of the population out of poverty. A working less-capitalist model being dangerous to the global status quo, had to go." This is ideological drivel so far removed from reality, it's basically trolling.
      - dang 7y ago
        This comment breaks the site guidelines. You have a long history of doing that. We've warned you more than once. Would you please fix this? I don't want to ban you, but if you don't stop doing this, we're going to be forced to. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on, that would be good.
H8crilA 7y ago
Did you see the part about competition? It can end up like airlines - never ending price war. Surely good for consumers, but a measly, possibly negative, total return on investment for the whole sector.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  SpaceX has a gargantuan advantage when it comes to the cost to get stuff to space, though. And it doesn't seem like anybody will catch up with them any time soon.
  - loceng 7y ago
    And then you'll vote (purchase) based on which government you trust the most for whom the company will be under the umbrella of - US, China, India, etc.
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    Why couldn’t someone just contract SpaceX to launch their own network?
- mrep 7y ago
  Or it could end up like AT&T making $20 billion dollars a year in operating income. The high initial capital costs to launch enough satellites to provide decent coverage should prevent there from being too much competition.
- mr_toad 7y ago
  Who would the competition launch on? The cheapest option is SpaceX. I’m sure they’d love their launch market expanding.
cronix 7y ago
The real money will be made connecting global markets due to the insane low latency. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giQ8xEWjnBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giQ8xEWjnBs
- nugga 7y ago
  I bet plenty of online gamers would like to play globally with good latency instead of being confined to local regions.
- hliyan 7y ago
  Going from 60ms to 40ms for a transatlantic hop isn't quite that significant IMO. An HFT organization will simply co-locate their compute servers in the same continent as the exchange. Actually, they will colocate their servers in the same geographic neighborhood, if not within the very same data center. Source: was HFT systems dev for 10 years.
  - thechao 7y ago
    So, there’s no benefit to 20ms of cross-market arbitrage? You can’t colocate in London and New York.
    - Misdicorl 7y ago
      There's huge advantage and parent is super duper wrong
    - wbl 7y ago
      The competition is point to point microwave links.
      - zone411 7y ago
        Actually, it might be the good old shortwave radio: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/wall-street-tries-shortwave-radio-to-make-highfrequency-trades-across-the-atlantic https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/wall-st...
mgsouth 7y ago
Wellll, that's not actually how it works. Capital expenditures are only a fraction of total expenses, which is only a fraction of annual cash flow. For example, in a previous life I worked at a VoIP company. At that time, our technical infrastructure was largely paid for. We had a couple of million subscribers and were struggling financially. The lion's share of cash flow went to Customer Service, Advertising, and Debt financing and repayment. (Disclaimer--I haven't kept up with the company and have no idea how they're doing now.) It's very difficult for an ISP to make much money at $30/mo per customer, unless you go the Google route and only provide automated customer service. That's why established ISP such as Verizon are losing interest and selling their operations to bottom-feeding companies like CenturyLink. All of the money is in Mobile. I can't see SpaceX itself actually providing the retail experience. It's entirely foreign to how the company functions. I'd see SpaceX either contracting to provide technical services (like Level3), or wholesaling the product to sort-of MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators). If wholesale, it could be a captive sister company (Musk does have the retail experience) (by analogy, like Mobile PCS which is owned by T-Mobile), or to independent operators (analogy being Virgin Mobile). I don't have any deep insight into the market, but some interesting possibilities would be a hungry cell carrier like T-Mobile branching out into ISP service, hoping to provide more attractive land/mobile bundles.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
anticensor 7y ago
Or internet at $0/month and recuperate the expenses from BFR and 3rd party satellite launches.

cptaj 7y ago

I live in Venezuela and our internet service is crumbling and censored (Dont fucking vote for communists or populist socialists) I work online so a stable internet connection is a must. Right now we're surviving with boutique wireless ISPs (not cell, think point to point networks used in rural areas but deployed in the city because you have post-apocalyptic levels of collapse) They buy their uplink from the monopoly government ISP but pay handsomely for priority. I pay $30 a month for a 2mb connection. I would GLADLY pay for Starlink.

nsajko 7y ago
Communism and socialism do not have anything to do with censorship. Edit: I was responding to parent's first sentence, "I live in Venezuela and our internet service is crumbling and censored (Dont fucking vote for communists or populist socialists)". That is like living in Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, etc. (look here if you want more examples: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Internet_Censorship_and_Surveillance_World_Map.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Internet_Censorship_... ), and then blaming Capitalism for the censorhip of the Internet.
- dang 7y ago
  Would you please not take HN threads further into ideological flamewar? It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
idDriven 7y ago
From what I have read it sounded like the US government has been working to undermine Venezuela economically for some time. Socialism was working too well, it brought huge swathes of the population out of poverty. A working less-capitalist model being dangerous to the global status quo, had to go. I'm sorry and I hope it gets better. Here is one article, as a source, its long though. Source: https://nacla.org/news/2018/05/18/united-states%E2%80%99-hand-undermining-democracy-venezuela https://nacla.org/news/2018/05/18/united-states%E2%80%99-han...
- idDriven 7y ago
  Im really impressed at the number of downvotes, despite the lack of subsequent replies. Here's another source: "The first UN rapporteur to visit Venezuela for 21 years has told The Independent the US sanctions on the country are illegal and could amount to “crimes against humanity” under international law. Former special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas, who finished his term at the UN in March, has criticized the US for engaging in “economic warfare” against Venezuela which he said is hurting the economy and killing Venezuelans." Per the Indpendent: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-us-sanctions-united-nations-oil-pdvsa-a8748201.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-...
  - martythemaniak 7y ago
    You're probably being downvoted without replies because your post of such low quality, it is not worth replying to. "Socialism was working too well, it brought huge swathes of the population out of poverty. A working less-capitalist model being dangerous to the global status quo, had to go." This is ideological drivel so far removed from reality, it's basically trolling.
    - dang 7y ago
      This comment breaks the site guidelines. You have a long history of doing that. We've warned you more than once. Would you please fix this? I don't want to ban you, but if you don't stop doing this, we're going to be forced to. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on, that would be good.

H8crilA 7y ago

Did you see the part about competition? It can end up like airlines - never ending price war. Surely good for consumers, but a measly, possibly negative, total return on investment for the whole sector.

toasterlovin 7y ago
SpaceX has a gargantuan advantage when it comes to the cost to get stuff to space, though. And it doesn't seem like anybody will catch up with them any time soon.
- loceng 7y ago
  And then you'll vote (purchase) based on which government you trust the most for whom the company will be under the umbrella of - US, China, India, etc.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  Why couldn’t someone just contract SpaceX to launch their own network?
mrep 7y ago
Or it could end up like AT&T making $20 billion dollars a year in operating income. The high initial capital costs to launch enough satellites to provide decent coverage should prevent there from being too much competition.
mr_toad 7y ago
Who would the competition launch on? The cheapest option is SpaceX. I’m sure they’d love their launch market expanding.

cronix 7y ago

The real money will be made connecting global markets due to the insane low latency. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giQ8xEWjnBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giQ8xEWjnBs

nugga 7y ago
I bet plenty of online gamers would like to play globally with good latency instead of being confined to local regions.
hliyan 7y ago
Going from 60ms to 40ms for a transatlantic hop isn't quite that significant IMO. An HFT organization will simply co-locate their compute servers in the same continent as the exchange. Actually, they will colocate their servers in the same geographic neighborhood, if not within the very same data center. Source: was HFT systems dev for 10 years.
- thechao 7y ago
  So, there’s no benefit to 20ms of cross-market arbitrage? You can’t colocate in London and New York.
  - Misdicorl 7y ago
    There's huge advantage and parent is super duper wrong
  - wbl 7y ago
    The competition is point to point microwave links.
    - zone411 7y ago
      Actually, it might be the good old shortwave radio: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/wall-street-tries-shortwave-radio-to-make-highfrequency-trades-across-the-atlantic https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/wall-st...

mgsouth 7y ago

Wellll, that's not actually how it works. Capital expenditures are only a fraction of total expenses, which is only a fraction of annual cash flow. For example, in a previous life I worked at a VoIP company. At that time, our technical infrastructure was largely paid for. We had a couple of million subscribers and were struggling financially. The lion's share of cash flow went to Customer Service, Advertising, and Debt financing and repayment. (Disclaimer--I haven't kept up with the company and have no idea how they're doing now.) It's very difficult for an ISP to make much money at $30/mo per customer, unless you go the Google route and only provide automated customer service. That's why established ISP such as Verizon are losing interest and selling their operations to bottom-feeding companies like CenturyLink. All of the money is in Mobile. I can't see SpaceX itself actually providing the retail experience. It's entirely foreign to how the company functions. I'd see SpaceX either contracting to provide technical services (like Level3), or wholesaling the product to sort-of MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators). If wholesale, it could be a captive sister company (Musk does have the retail experience) (by analogy, like Mobile PCS which is owned by T-Mobile), or to independent operators (analogy being Virgin Mobile). I don't have any deep insight into the market, but some interesting possibilities would be a hungry cell carrier like T-Mobile branching out into ISP service, hoping to provide more attractive land/mobile bundles.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

anticensor 7y ago

Or internet at $0/month and recuperate the expenses from BFR and 3rd party satellite launches.