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SpaceX says Starlink internet has ‘extraordinary demand,’
- dencodev 6y agoI'm in a busy city so I don't think I will have a Starlink option, but I'd gladly pay twice as much to fund this than keep paying money to our evil overlord Comcast.
- cheez 6y agoComcast is likely currently working on regulation to block them.
- salimmadjd 6y agoHighly likely. Keep in mind, Comcast owns NBC as well. So probably we’ll get a lot of negative coverage of Elon Musk on NBC and MSNBC in the process. It’s much easier to lobby against a public villain than a public hero. So every tweet by Musk will be amplified out of context. Wouldn’t surprise me even some allegations of foreign impropriety will surface and soon having starlink becomes a national security unless it’s sold to Comcast or it’s offered in a way that won’t compete with Comcast.
- shalmanese 6y agoI know it's very hip and cool to be cynical about journalistic independence these days but newsrooms still take the concept very seriously. There's simply no mechanism by which the CEO of Comcast could simultaneously a) meaningfully affect NBC's coverage of Elon Musk and b) not have it be an open secret and scandal within the industry. I've worked on the product side of legacy media companies before and trust me, given the disorganization I was seeing in the editorial departments at my peer orgs, they couldn't have pulled this off even if they wanted to. NBC's coverage of Elon isn't any more negative than it's sister orgs and the simple, occam's razor explanation is that his ridiculous behavior is absurdly good at generating clicks rather than any organized media endeavor against him.
- salimmadjd 6y agoOn “journalistic independence”, NBC told Ed Schultz not to cover Bernie Sanders and why Schultz and Cenk both left the network [1] Im sure we can agree that ratings are one of the key drivers and pushed by management. Here’s how cable media profited by covering Trump. This Trump coverage resulted in 160% increase in ratings and in return gave Trump $3 billion [2]in free advertising ( I’ve seen $5billion number in total free coverage as well). [1]https://youtu.be/-0w_8spt-6c https://youtu.be/-0w_8spt-6c [2]https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/487472/ https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/487472/
- mlindner 6y ago[citation required] Look it's one thing to hate on big corporations for existing actions, but's entirely something else to invent conspiracy theories. In reality Comcast isn't threatened by Starlink because Starlink market is aimed at less populated areas so Comcast has no need to fight it. It would be completely oversaturated by cities and cities are easy to invest in building network infrastructure. Now, I could imagine other satellite internet companies to fight it, but they're much less powerful.
- Wingman4l7 6y agoComcast has repeatedly lobbied for legislation to prevent the creation of municipal broadband providers; it's not that much of a stretch that they could try to use regulatory capture to attack Starlink as well.
- Robotbeat 6y agoStarlink doesn't have to completely match Comcast one-to-one, they just have to be a credible competitor. That increases the bargaining power of the consumer. Particularly as Starlink grows and as OneWeb and especially Project Kuiper comes online. These low-latency satellite constellations will reduce the local oligopoly/monopoly rents (and thus profitability) of Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, Cox, Frontier, etc... And the money that would've been profit will go to consumers' pockets, even if they don't themselves subscribe.
- jb775 6y agoA new worldwide internet provider being led by a pioneer of innovation is a major threat to comcast. Especially since Musk is known for caring about providing a valuable product at a fair price to the masses (the Model 3). Elon Musk aside, who wouldn't drop comcast/verizon in a second if there were another viable option at a better price?
- skybrian 6y agoThat would be selfish, sort of like buying the hot Christmas toy when you don't even have kids. The amount of available bandwidth at any given time is fixed. If everyone does that then SpaceX would either need to raise prices (so the people with no other option will have to pay more) or implement some other kind of throttling. It's good if Starlink has enough demand to make the service a success, so SpaceX will want to expand it. Beyond that, you're just pricing other people out, until they grow to the point that they can actually serve everyone.
- sushshshsh 6y agoUh what? If he's giving them money, they can just launch more satellites or create higher bandwidth per inch satellites. If it's a political problem blocking the launch of more satellites, well then, solve the political problem of course.
- skybrian 6y agoI am assuming a lot of lag between giving them money and the launch of the satellites. (And other bandwidth improvements needed.) Similarly to how buying the hot Christmas toy doesn't automatically cause the manufacturer to make more in time for Christmas. I suppose owning the launch systems helps, but there is still going to be lag.
- sushshshsh 6y agoThat sounds correct from a supply chain and like, physical reality perspective, but hopefully there would be ways to increase the bandwidth density to counteract the launch problem. If there's not, and there's like a year turnaround on launch, then your concern is founded. Perhaps the reader would be better off making a donation or investment into SpaceX instead, such that they receive money to better compete with Comcast in exchange for no obligation of service :)
- foobiekr 6y agoHave they announced any plans at all? Given the capacity of the network, it is more likely that you would be paying 20x-100x as much, per byte, and would get perhaps the same factor, as the denominator, in terms of data cap. Comcast has several times the capacity of the entire Starlink global constellation in each real PoP.
- downrightmike 6y agoI want it.
- thrwaway69 6y agospoiled consumer.
- dkdk8283 6y agoI will support all alternatives to the likes of TWC and Comcast
- jeffnappi 6y agoStarlink will only really be a solution for rural/remote areas. It won't be able to supply high bandwidth at urban densities as I understand it.
- voisin 6y ago> In addition to getting the satellites in orbit, SpaceX will need to build a vast system of ground stations and affordable user terminals if it is going to connect consumers directly to its network. Why are ground stations required? I thought you were connecting from your dish to the satellite and therefore could be anywhere with a view of the sky.
- mechagodzilla 6y agoThe ground stations will have very fast fiber connections to the greater internet for the satellite network. The user terminals will connect to dishes / antenna at peoples houses, like directv
- joeyo 6y agoThe ground stations tie the satellite network into the internet. Once they have the inter-satellite laser links operational, they will be able to get by with many fewer ground stations.
- ourmandave 6y agoMy cable provider is Mediacom and their advertising used to say how much better than Dish they were. But hidden from view behind their main building a bunch of satellite dishes. =)
- LeifCarrotson 6y agoThere are two kinds of ground stations: the one at your home/business (the modem/"pizza-box antenna") and the ground stations that connect the satellites to the trunk lines/backbone.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoEventually you'll want to talk to a computer that isn't directly connected to starlink. The ground stations are necessary to bridge that gap (and run the constellation)
- raducu 6y agoYou typed "the same satellite you are connected on" wrong. Starlink satellites don't talk to one another at this point.
- new_realist 6y agoAs far as Internet numbers go, 700K signing up to receive updates isn't that amazing.
- jlaporte 6y agoSpaceX/Starlink have done effectively no marketing spend to get those leads into their funnel. Subscriber acquisition costs (SAC) for home broadband and TV are very high, and due to churn doesn't necessarily even translate into net subscriber adds. Those numbers are good by any measure. One representative example, Subscriber acquisition costs for Dish network: "DISH TV SAC was $822 during the year ended December 31, 2019 compared to $759 during the same period in 2018, an increase of $63 or 8.3%." [1] "We lost approximately 511,000 net DISH TV subscribers during the year ended December 31, 2019 compared to the loss of approximately 1.125 million net DISH TV subscribers during the same period in 2018. This decrease in net DISH TV subscriber losses primarily resulted from a lower DISH TV churn rate and higher gross new DISH TV subscriber activations." [1] [1] https://www.marketscreener.com/DISH-NETWORK-CORPORATION-4870/news/DISH-NETWORK-MANAGEMENT-S-DISCUSSION-AND-ANALYSIS-OF-FINANCIAL-CONDITION-AND-RESULTS-OF-OPERATIONS-30018399/ https://www.marketscreener.com/DISH-NETWORK-CORPORATION-4870...
- csours 6y agoDoes SAC include new subscriber discounts?
- jlaporte 6y agoYes. From the same Dish Network 10-K: "Subscriber Acquisition and Retention Costs We incur significant upfront costs to acquire subscribers, including advertising, independent third-party retailer incentives, payments made to third-parties, equipment subsidies, installation services, and/or new customer promotions."
- justapassenger 6y agoElon’s Twitter is very much marketing. He not only has over 30M followers, but also each of his statements and companies get disproportional media coverage. Marketing isn’t only buying ads.
- trashcan 6y agoI would love to have this as a backup internet option. I live in a town that has Google Fiber (literally 50 feet away from me), but I don't have access. I'm oncall and cannot be without internet at almost any time, and my internet goes down much more than I'm comfortable with. I hope Starlink is an option soon!
- mycall 6y agoCan you not use mobile hotspot/tether internet as a backup option?
- trashcan 6y agoThat is what I currently do. I use >~1TB a month in bandwidth though, so it isn't practical to tether everything so I end up only tethering my laptop and even that is still pretty expensive on Google Fi ($10/gb until I am throttled). Fortunately my internet has only had problems maybe 4 or 5 times in the last year. It just feels irresponsible of me to rely on data that eventually gets throttled to be almost unusable when I need it for my job. Maybe I will get a backup AT&T internet connection and expense it at some point :(.
- csours 6y agoI'm curious about how bad jitter has to be to have an effect. Does it cause problems at +/-10ms? As I understand it, the link will change from satellite to satellite as they fly overhead
- CydeWeys 6y agoAn effect on what?
- csours 6y agoGaming, voip
- BenjiWiebe 6y agoWith voip at least, you can use a jitter buffer to get decreased jitter at the cost of increased latency. If latency is good to start with, that's definitely an option.
- CydeWeys 6y agoI'm just not seeing how a hundredth of a second of latency variance would have a noticeable effect at all on either of those. Latency variances of much more than that are already common (and dealt with).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dumbfoundded 6y agoI have a house on a farm. I only have relatively high speed internet (25mb/s) b/c someone set up a line of sight system pointing at a mountain as a co-op. My neighbors' house about half a kilometer away is blocked by a hill so they can't use it. When it's cloudy, I have to use my phone as a mobile hotspot. Coming from San Francisco, I didn't realize how many people face this reality of poor connectivity. I don't care much about who is doing this as much as I care that someone is doing it at all. Most people don't realize how much of an internet access disparity exists. Especially as more education moves towards digital, internet access is a fundamental utility.
- tyingq 6y agoI was, long ago, a microwave radio tech. It's cool to me that line of sight issues still create issues. For the most part, my old line of work is dead because tech marches on. My immediate reaction is that your neighbor should be able to use a troposcatter shot[1] to fix his issues, but I suppose the provider has bigger fish to fry. I'm a bit sad about it, because tech advances have technically made this sort of thing dead easy. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropospheric_scatter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropospheric_scatter
- teej 6y agoIt's alive and well in San Francisco! Monkeybrains is an independent ISP that does internet via wireless microwave in SF and Oakland.
- tyingq 6y agoWell, "dead" meaning broad use. I'm aware it's niche used here and there. Any troposcatter shots? Or is that dead from a price/performance point vs satellite or other?
- bane 6y agoMy parents still live in the house I grew up in. It's about 30 miles from the nearest big city, a top-10 U.S. city. - They had dial-up until the early 2000s. - Then they had that terrible asymmetric satellite service where the upstream service was also dial-up. That lasted a couple of years. - Then they got some kind of two-way sat service. Still terrible latency, but tolerable for the time. - Finally, sometime in the early 2010s cable television service made its way to their neighborhood. Television, not internet. - About 2015 they were finally able to get cable internet, which they have today. It's an amazing 5mb/sec up/down. When I go there I just tether to my phone because its faster. They never got DSL. I bet they'll never get fiber. Starlink could be a serious improvement to them even at 2x the price they pay now.
- chaostheory 6y agoI know Wyoming law enforcement rely on apps that can function in a disconnected environment since I heard network coverage through out many parts of the state is really poor. This would also help a lot of park rangers.
- onetimemanytime 6y ago5 million times, say, $50 means $250 Million a month or 3 billion a year. Not sure if they can get people to switch from optic cable to satellite and while the world is large, very few outside rich countries can afford to pay $50 a month. Nice side business
- noahtallen 6y ago> Not sure if they can get people to switch from optic cable to satellite I think the market for this often would not even have a cable option. They’re stuck on old DSL at like 6mbps down or less for $90/mo with bundled landline, or if they’re lucky, the cable company ran a line by their house. If starlink was offering just 20mbps down for $50, everyone I know in the country would switch immediately. I definitely don’t think starlink will compete with city fiber or cable connections. Heck, mine is $30 for 250mbps down. No way satellite is going to compete with that. In the city, and even small countryside cities, this isn’t a big deal, but rural communities don’t have choice or speed, at least in the US! That’s not a big market on a small scale, but added up across the US, it would be a lot of people.
- 7952 6y agoBut you don't have to sell it at $50 everywhere. The marginal cost of an additional subscriber is very low, particularly when the inter satellite link is enabled. If people can only afford $10 per month that is better than having no revenue at all in a particular area.
- RobLach 6y agoI'd wait till I see the price.
- justinclift 6y agoWonder if it'd work for off shore sailing craft? eg ships, yachts, and that kind of thing Guessing the in-built motors the user terminals come with for correcting orientation wouldn't know how to cope with waves. So maybe need some kind of gimbal thing for added stabilisation?
- kalleboo 6y agoStarlink has talked about supplying cruise ships and airplanes, not sure about smaller maritime craft
- nickik 6y agoIt can adjust itself in principle and orient itself. But maybe the motion of the boat might be to much.
- orost 6y agoIsn't it a phased-array antenna? It can adjust itself at the speed of electronics, without moving parts, so that should not be an issue in any reasonable scenario if the software supports it. A larger problem for use on sea might be that first generation Starlink sats do not have satellite-to-satellite links, so the boat and a ground station would have to be within range of the same satellite.
- nickik 6y agoYou still have to orient the whole antenna into the direction of the right part of the sky. From then the phase antenna will be able to track the individual satellites.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoWould gyroscopic mount help, or is it too hard/expensive to make such a system to cope with waves at sea?
- 6y ago
- Rakshith 6y agoconsidering comcast owns the democrats, they will likely push their agendas if biden wins and gets these guys.
- TomMarius 6y agoOnce it's up in space it doesn't seem impossible to move the Starlink HQ outside the USA.
- m0zg 6y agoI'm going to buy a summer house in the boonies when this becomes available (and reliable). This will finally make it possible for me to truly "work from anywhere", including the middle of nowhere, which is where I'd like to be in this day and age.
- foobiekr 6y agoI will confess that I don't get it and I would appreciate thoughts on why this is a good idea instead of a FOMO kind of thing (and especially AWS Kuiper), The total switching capacity of the entire __planned__ constellation is around that in a _single_ large switch chassis or internet core router and the individual satellites have the capacity of a beefy enterprise Wifi6 access point; however the geographic area each will service is enormous. What I can't figure out is: what is the market? The market for an Iridium-style remote access is demonstrated to be tiny, there just is not the bandwidth or capacity to target "unserved" areas for ordinary internet. So what's left that's big? Industrial IoT? Military? Even industrial placements (Rio Tinto, etc. mining concerns) will prefer to set up dedicated links and regional wireless to this solution, so IIOT use case is really a pre-development stage market, which is again small. I even went looking for what the business press said (example: [1]). Reading this almost makes me think the author is in on a sort of dark joke; especially the “Fortunately, companies have new options for generating revenue from connectivity” section appears to be written by someone with a very dark sense of humor who is straight up trolling the reader. [1] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/aerospace-and-defense/our-insights/large-leo-satellite-constellations-will-it-be-different-this-time https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/aerospace-and-defense/ou... edit: added "planned" to distinguish the long term from the immediate term [the first batch Starlink satellites didn't even do any in-space switching at all]..
- jeffnappi 6y agoCan you point me to your source on the planned constellation total switching bandwidth? I haven't read about that anywhere. I have read that they don't expect to be able to provide high levels of service in dense urban areas. Which does make me question the business model... I think you nailed it that the military and government will be a big customer. Iridium has ~1300ms+ latency and very low data rates, very high costs and the government is their largest customer from what I understand. Airlines are another likely market that would be a significant amount of business (post-covid19). If Starlink can compete against Iridium and the other existing satellite providers on price, they could at a minimum take most of that business.
- 6y ago
- 0xdeadb00f 6y agoHaving a single company, SpaceX mind you, in charge of something like this seems dangerous to me.
- tuatoru 6y agoThere's nothing stopping others from doing the same thing, and indeed others are planning to. SpaceX is leading the pack, but eventually there will be competition.