4 ms·

I'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 Com

I'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 ago
Comcast is likely currently working on regulation to block them.
- salimmadjd 6y ago
  Highly 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 ago
    I 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 ago
      On “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 ago
    Comcast 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 ago
    Starlink 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 ago
    A 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 ago
That 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 ago
  Uh 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 ago
    I 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 ago
      That 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 ago
Have 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.

I'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 ago

Comcast is likely currently working on regulation to block them.

salimmadjd 6y ago
Highly 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    On “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 ago
  Comcast 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 ago
  Starlink 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 ago
  A 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 ago

That 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 ago
Uh 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    That 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 ago

Have 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.