7 ms·
Starlink is going to dominate this. Cellular can't economically scale out to meet the vast rural coverage. There are still plenty of towns that don't have basic
by bdamm 6y ago
Starlink is going to dominate this. Cellular can't economically scale out to meet the vast rural coverage. There are still plenty of towns that don't have basic coverage even now, and to think that suddenly they're going to get 5G equipment... seems unlikely. Meanwhile, the Starlink satellites are up and base stations are in testing. Once they approve and start building out their ground stations, it's SpaceX's business to lose.
- rudolph9 6y agoIt's worth explicitly noting that Starlink is applicable to rural areas. As OG noted 5G is applicable to both densely populated and rural areas. Further, it's theoretically possible to combine 5G and satellite internet where Starlink or similar serves as the connection to the internet backbone for a device broadcasting a 5G network. Connectivity isn't an all or nothing game and 5G is protocol that the SpaceX internet service business can leverage.
- mikepurvis 6y agoI feel like the viability of that depends a lot on the price point of the service and the user terminal. If it's cheap enough that everyone might as well just have their own then there's no point doing infrastructure for a terrestrial backhaul.
- graerg 6y ago5g and starlink are almost certainly going to be used in tandem in rural areas.
- woah 6y agoIIRC Starlink can handle about 2gbs per 50 sq miles due to frequency bandwidth limitations. That's a few hundred subscribers. It's not going to make an impact in any but the most rural areas.
- semi-extrinsic 6y agoWow, that sounds like a huge limitation, no? The number of people living in places that sparsely populated must be very limited, how does it make economical sense to launch that huge number of satellites?
- FeepingCreature 6y agoGoogle says there's two million satellite internet users. At $50/mo, if SpaceX can grab all of them, which seems well possible, that's 1.2 billion income a year, even assuming that the improved service doesn't result in anybody else switching from bad rural internet to Starlink. A fifth of the US population lives outside of big cities. That's not a big fraction, but it's a small fraction of a very big number. Being able to capture that market even for a decade would basically bankroll SpaceX's Mars goal by itself. And that's not even looking at other countries.
- tuatoru 6y ago> A fifth of the US population lives outside of big cities And there are people living rurally outside of the USA, too. Starlink could bring rural Asia and Africa into the 21st century with one terminal per village.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> A fifth of the US population lives outside of big cities. That's not a big fraction, but it's a small fraction of a very big number. Being able to capture that market even for a decade would basically bankroll SpaceX's Mars goal by itself. That's about 25 million households, or about $150 billion gross revenue (not profit) over a decade at the price assumptions you give. If SpaceX’s public estimate of total Mars program cost of $10 billion was reasonable, that might plausibly fund the program. But it's highly dubious that that is even on the right order of magnitude.
- FeepingCreature 6y agoEh, don't underestimate the savings from reuse that's actually practical and not cost-plus. I think SpaceX have demonstrated the economic case for their approach with the F9. And once SpaceX demonstrate they can put cargo on Mars, NASA'll have to get in. Plus people may actually pay to migrate. If you think those numbers are unrealistic, look at SpaceX's posted total costs for their rocket development programs. I think the message is more "every space agency has ridiculously overpaid for decades."
- nickysielicki 6y agoStarlink may very well fail entirely.
- hammock 6y agoDoes Starlink work when it's cloudy or rainy? Because satellite TV doesn't.