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Do they have enough cash to pay for this service and to keep this a viable business proposition? I'm still hoping this will be a great alternative to locations

Do they have enough cash to pay for this service and to keep this a viable business proposition? I'm still hoping this will be a great alternative to locations that are more densely packed, but only have 1 option for broadband. Need to keep the Comcasts and Verizons of the world in check.

walrus01 6y ago
Many do, yes. In the north american market there's the "consumer grade" VSAT category for stuff like viasat/hughesnet/wildblue/xplornet highly oversubscribed small ku/ka-band VSAT terminals, with monthly costs under $200/mo. In the developing nation market, go to a remote part of some place in Nepal that has no fiber or terrestrial microwave links back to the big cities. Find an "internet cafe", what you're likely to see on the roof is something like this, a cheap 1.2 meter VSAT on the roof with a 4W BUC: https://www.satsig.net/vsat-equipment/andrew-123-antenna-mount.jpg https://www.satsig.net/vsat-equipment/andrew-123-antenna-mou... In a highly contended, highly oversubscribed TDMA network in some ISP's small piece of one transponder, linked back to an earth station elsewhere. For 200, 300, 400 bucks a month. What's going to change is the quality of service and speeds that somebody in $small_nepalese_city is going to get for their 250 dollars a month.
kube-system 6y ago
I am sure there are a ton of people on this forum that work remotely, and would love to live in a rural area, but don’t make the move because of the lack of reliable connectivity.
- walrus01 6y ago
  You'd be surprised where in the USA has at least one viable last mile terrestrial WISP. I can think of a few parts of Idaho where you would think nothing exists, but you can get 25 Mbps x 10 Mbps service from a competently run small ISP, by point to multipoint 5150-5850 MHz band equipment. But there are also vast areas of Idaho too sparsely populated to support any WISP at all, where you'll see cheap consumer grade VSAT stuck to the sides of peoples' houses. https://www.google.com/search?q=wildblue+dish&client=ubuntu&hs=TmL&channel=fs&sxsrf=ALeKk00FMjb3249lKs6R-6SeG1Y3n48zZA:1601475618428&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiH6ujKiZHsAhXYup4KHWwvCSwQ_AUoAnoECHUQBA&biw=1565&bih=956 https://www.google.com/search?q=wildblue+dish&client=ubuntu&...
  - LinuxBender 6y ago
    I have been having challenges with this. I want to move to Wyoming and get a decent amount of land, but I also want gigabit internet. What I just described appears to be a unicorn. I've already had ISPs laugh at me. Realtors and their websites are no help in this area.
    - walrus01 6y ago
      I have a great deal of sympathy with this. There's so many beautiful low cost of living/low cost of real estate locations in the US and Canadian west, but the best locations are also places where you're looking at no Internet, off-grid solar/wind power, etc. Depending on where you are looking, and what your budget is, and your level of motivation you might look into seeing how difficult it would be to build your own point to point link back to a place where you can get 'real' internet. I also want symmetric gigabit but in a very rural location I might be totally satisfied with 40 Mbps down x 15 Mbps up, if it was sufficiently reliable and good quality (overall uptime in a year, latency, jitter, etc). There is a great deal that can be done with sets of equipment like a 90cm high performance dual polarity shielded dish (ALG or Jirous or similar), ubnt AF5XHD radios, etc. Perhaps for less than $10k all-in you might be able to build your own link to reach the nearest WISP or terrestrial connectivity. Entirely depending on how remote you are and terrain.
      - LinuxBender 6y ago
        I've thought about this as well. It would cost more, but I could get a really small house at the edge of a city, set up a Ubiquity tower, maybe licensed, and have my own radio link. I managed these links in the military and bad weather aside, they were decent. I too would be ok with 40/15 myself, but family members need more. I might catch some flak for putting up a small tower. I would like to avoid the commercial wireless solutions so that I could have more control over jitter/latency.
  - sds357 6y ago
    This is true, I used a wisp for 10 years in Montana. However in my valley there are many residents who don't have the required line of sight to the wisp providers tower/equipment for service due to trees or hills blocking. Their only current solution is 4g or satellite.
sumtechguy 6y ago
I think he will leverage his other companies to use this thing. Starlink on a tesla truck/car/whatever or bundled with solar. That is an interesting use case. Also there was at one time many trucks rolling around the US with a satellite receiver/transmitter on them. They were bound to the US and setting up stations in other countries was a huge deal. But this changes that market radically. You will start to see a mix of cell and satellite again. If the costs are within the same range. For what the cell companies want for their data plans in some IoT cases I can see why he may have said 'I will just build my own'. Use the system to bring down cost per rocket also is a good use case. I think he is burning money on a few different things here. Rural ISP is not the only one. But it is brought up a lot.
shadowgovt 6y ago
That depends on a lot of business factors. At the moment, Starlink is a bit of a loss-leader for SpaceX. They're putting up the satellites to justify the cost of continuing development on Falcon-9, because they've saturated the market for satellite customers. It's entirely possible that the program continues on that vein and is eventually subsidized by an expanding satellite launch market as companies realize there are things they could do with satellites that they previously couldn't afford, now can. There is, of course, market risk---both the one you've identified and the entirely mundane "SpaceX goes under and the satellite fleet goes defunct" risk.
- walrus01 6y ago
  > "SpaceX goes under and the satellite fleet goes defunct" risk. extremely unlikely considering the value of the assets already deployed in space. One scenario is a debtor-in-possession arrangement via bankruptcy court. Another thing that could happen is something like what happened to the first Iridium corporation's bankruptcy, where a group of investors formed a "new" Iridium corporation and stepped in, via the bankruptcy court, to take it over. Google "iridium bankruptcy" for more details. Also this book: https://www.amazon.com/Eccentric-Orbits-Iridium-John-Bloom/dp/0802126782 https://www.amazon.com/Eccentric-Orbits-Iridium-John-Bloom/d...
  - matmatmatmat 6y ago
    "... value of the assets already deployed in space..." But, what is that value? Of the ~ 800 SL satellites launched so far, about 5% have already deorbited. Of the remainder, all but 2 don't have inter-satellite links. The others will deorbit in 5 years. LEOs, in general, require tremendous amounts of money just to maintain an existing constellation size. At steady state, SpaceX would have to launch something like 60 satellites per week just to maintain their constellation. I can't remember the numbers now, but I think that meant costs in the $10's of millions / week just in maintenance once you account for construction and launch costs.
    - walrus01 6y ago
      That is a very good point and I think something that would make things much more difficult in the event of spacex/starlink failure and acquisition. Their entire architecture is predicated upon producing their own satellites in bulk, cheaply, launching replacement regularly using re-used falon9 first stages at a (relatively) low $/kg launch cost. As a vertically integrated single company. If you had to break that up in a scenario where spacex no longer existed and there were no more re-used first stages, it could cost considerably more. And also cost considerably more if a third party had to be paid to manufacture and QC the satellites.
derekp7 6y ago
I actually see a market for 5G towers to use Starlink as an uplink. Imagine a pre-packaged solution that gives a 5G provider a solar-powered all-in-one box that can be placed at any high point, without the need to run power or data lines to it.

walrus01 6y ago

Many do, yes. In the north american market there's the "consumer grade" VSAT category for stuff like viasat/hughesnet/wildblue/xplornet highly oversubscribed small ku/ka-band VSAT terminals, with monthly costs under $200/mo. In the developing nation market, go to a remote part of some place in Nepal that has no fiber or terrestrial microwave links back to the big cities. Find an "internet cafe", what you're likely to see on the roof is something like this, a cheap 1.2 meter VSAT on the roof with a 4W BUC: https://www.satsig.net/vsat-equipment/andrew-123-antenna-mount.jpg https://www.satsig.net/vsat-equipment/andrew-123-antenna-mou... In a highly contended, highly oversubscribed TDMA network in some ISP's small piece of one transponder, linked back to an earth station elsewhere. For 200, 300, 400 bucks a month. What's going to change is the quality of service and speeds that somebody in $small_nepalese_city is going to get for their 250 dollars a month.

kube-system 6y ago

I am sure there are a ton of people on this forum that work remotely, and would love to live in a rural area, but don’t make the move because of the lack of reliable connectivity.

walrus01 6y ago
You'd be surprised where in the USA has at least one viable last mile terrestrial WISP. I can think of a few parts of Idaho where you would think nothing exists, but you can get 25 Mbps x 10 Mbps service from a competently run small ISP, by point to multipoint 5150-5850 MHz band equipment. But there are also vast areas of Idaho too sparsely populated to support any WISP at all, where you'll see cheap consumer grade VSAT stuck to the sides of peoples' houses. https://www.google.com/search?q=wildblue+dish&client=ubuntu&hs=TmL&channel=fs&sxsrf=ALeKk00FMjb3249lKs6R-6SeG1Y3n48zZA:1601475618428&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiH6ujKiZHsAhXYup4KHWwvCSwQ_AUoAnoECHUQBA&biw=1565&bih=956 https://www.google.com/search?q=wildblue+dish&client=ubuntu&...
- LinuxBender 6y ago
  I have been having challenges with this. I want to move to Wyoming and get a decent amount of land, but I also want gigabit internet. What I just described appears to be a unicorn. I've already had ISPs laugh at me. Realtors and their websites are no help in this area.
  - walrus01 6y ago
    I have a great deal of sympathy with this. There's so many beautiful low cost of living/low cost of real estate locations in the US and Canadian west, but the best locations are also places where you're looking at no Internet, off-grid solar/wind power, etc. Depending on where you are looking, and what your budget is, and your level of motivation you might look into seeing how difficult it would be to build your own point to point link back to a place where you can get 'real' internet. I also want symmetric gigabit but in a very rural location I might be totally satisfied with 40 Mbps down x 15 Mbps up, if it was sufficiently reliable and good quality (overall uptime in a year, latency, jitter, etc). There is a great deal that can be done with sets of equipment like a 90cm high performance dual polarity shielded dish (ALG or Jirous or similar), ubnt AF5XHD radios, etc. Perhaps for less than $10k all-in you might be able to build your own link to reach the nearest WISP or terrestrial connectivity. Entirely depending on how remote you are and terrain.
    - LinuxBender 6y ago
      I've thought about this as well. It would cost more, but I could get a really small house at the edge of a city, set up a Ubiquity tower, maybe licensed, and have my own radio link. I managed these links in the military and bad weather aside, they were decent. I too would be ok with 40/15 myself, but family members need more. I might catch some flak for putting up a small tower. I would like to avoid the commercial wireless solutions so that I could have more control over jitter/latency.
- sds357 6y ago
  This is true, I used a wisp for 10 years in Montana. However in my valley there are many residents who don't have the required line of sight to the wisp providers tower/equipment for service due to trees or hills blocking. Their only current solution is 4g or satellite.

sumtechguy 6y ago

I think he will leverage his other companies to use this thing. Starlink on a tesla truck/car/whatever or bundled with solar. That is an interesting use case. Also there was at one time many trucks rolling around the US with a satellite receiver/transmitter on them. They were bound to the US and setting up stations in other countries was a huge deal. But this changes that market radically. You will start to see a mix of cell and satellite again. If the costs are within the same range. For what the cell companies want for their data plans in some IoT cases I can see why he may have said 'I will just build my own'. Use the system to bring down cost per rocket also is a good use case. I think he is burning money on a few different things here. Rural ISP is not the only one. But it is brought up a lot.

shadowgovt 6y ago

That depends on a lot of business factors. At the moment, Starlink is a bit of a loss-leader for SpaceX. They're putting up the satellites to justify the cost of continuing development on Falcon-9, because they've saturated the market for satellite customers. It's entirely possible that the program continues on that vein and is eventually subsidized by an expanding satellite launch market as companies realize there are things they could do with satellites that they previously couldn't afford, now can. There is, of course, market risk---both the one you've identified and the entirely mundane "SpaceX goes under and the satellite fleet goes defunct" risk.

walrus01 6y ago
> "SpaceX goes under and the satellite fleet goes defunct" risk. extremely unlikely considering the value of the assets already deployed in space. One scenario is a debtor-in-possession arrangement via bankruptcy court. Another thing that could happen is something like what happened to the first Iridium corporation's bankruptcy, where a group of investors formed a "new" Iridium corporation and stepped in, via the bankruptcy court, to take it over. Google "iridium bankruptcy" for more details. Also this book: https://www.amazon.com/Eccentric-Orbits-Iridium-John-Bloom/dp/0802126782 https://www.amazon.com/Eccentric-Orbits-Iridium-John-Bloom/d...
- matmatmatmat 6y ago
  "... value of the assets already deployed in space..." But, what is that value? Of the ~ 800 SL satellites launched so far, about 5% have already deorbited. Of the remainder, all but 2 don't have inter-satellite links. The others will deorbit in 5 years. LEOs, in general, require tremendous amounts of money just to maintain an existing constellation size. At steady state, SpaceX would have to launch something like 60 satellites per week just to maintain their constellation. I can't remember the numbers now, but I think that meant costs in the $10's of millions / week just in maintenance once you account for construction and launch costs.
  - walrus01 6y ago
    That is a very good point and I think something that would make things much more difficult in the event of spacex/starlink failure and acquisition. Their entire architecture is predicated upon producing their own satellites in bulk, cheaply, launching replacement regularly using re-used falon9 first stages at a (relatively) low $/kg launch cost. As a vertically integrated single company. If you had to break that up in a scenario where spacex no longer existed and there were no more re-used first stages, it could cost considerably more. And also cost considerably more if a third party had to be paid to manufacture and QC the satellites.

derekp7 6y ago

I actually see a market for 5G towers to use Starlink as an uplink. Imagine a pre-packaged solution that gives a 5G provider a solar-powered all-in-one box that can be placed at any high point, without the need to run power or data lines to it.