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Puff piece. Starlink is fundamentally not about providing broadband to anyone. It’s landgrabbing a finite resource - low-earth orbit space - before it’s worth

by mnd999 5y ago

Puff piece. Starlink is fundamentally not about providing broadband to anyone. It’s landgrabbing a finite resource - low-earth orbit space - before it’s worth is recognised by those who should be regulating it. The broadband itself might be nice or it might be awful. It doesn’t actually matter because that was never the point.

Diederich 5y ago
> Starlink is fundamentally not about providing broadband to anyone. This reply brought to you over a robust, fast, low latency and reliable Starlink connection.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  Wait til you have 1000 neighbors vying for bandwidth.
  - benlivengood 5y ago
    The most pessimistic estimate I've seen paid for by the cable industry is here: https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/10208168836021/FBA_LEO_RDOF_Assessment_Final_Report_20210208.pdf https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/10208168836021/FBA_LEO_RDOF_Ass... Only if each subscriber is using an average of 15-20 Mbps during peak times will about 50% of subscribers see some throttling. Interestingly they only showed a single graph of average bandwidth over time from a cable company to estimate needs for SpaceX. No clue if they actually separated it out by time zone for each coverage area in their actual analysis.
  - Diederich 5y ago
    Starlink isn't about directly competing against high density fiber connected internet. It's about everyone else.
- ctdonath 5y ago
  And cheap. $99/mo for competitive data service literally anywhere is amazingly cheap.
generalizations 5y ago
It's a cynical perspective, but the downvotes are unwarranted. It's worth comparing to McDonalds, where a large proportion of the corporation's worth is in the real estate they hold.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  Okay but it's not as if mcdonald's bought the land under false pretenses and now uses it for any purpose since it's theirs. Claiming that the internet access is just a pretense for "land" grabbing when the company neither owns the space afterwards nor can switch businesses to something more nefarious and lucrative with the existing devices... it makes no sense.
zlynx 5y ago
It is about making money. Starlink is a money generating system that makes use of low cost launch made possible by SpaceX. If it does use up most of the low orbit space it is because SpaceX is the only company that is even capable of launching that many satellites and making money on it. Until there is another challenger there is zero point in complaining, because competition is not even an option. Since it is low orbit it is self limiting problem. Any low orbit satellite has a limited lifetime of a few years without power.
admissionsguy 5y ago
Is it scarce, though? Couldn't you put more constellations at the same orbits +/- a couple of kms? In any case, I would expect the spectrum rights to be much scarcer than the space, and they are well regulated.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  Exactly, spectrum is the scarce resource here, and it already is regulated. There is no need for additional regulation regarding that, and there already is regulation of orbits between FCC and FAA.
jsharf 5y ago
The alternative is waiting literally 10-20 years for anyone else to catch up.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  Or, hey! slow SpaceX down with regulation!1!!
- bcrl 5y ago
  Who is even trying to catch up at this point?
wmf 5y ago
So what is the high-value use of low-earth orbit other than broadband and why doesn't SpaceX do that directly?
ctdonath 5y ago
Right, it's not about taking a major share & expansion of a trillion-dollar industry with payout starting immediately, it's about staking out a thin fraction of (literally) empty space and waiting decades for others to start needing small portions of it. Because $99/month * 12 months * 10 years * 1,000,000,000 customers = $11.88T isn't the point to a man who literally needs a trillion dollars to pull off the grandest mega-project ever.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  It's not clear what you're saying. Are you saying that SpaceX will end up consuming too much of a precious resource? Or something else? Anyways, I don't buy that SpaceX will end up consuming too much of a precious resource. Even if it were so, what would be a fair way to share that resource, and who even with?! There's only one announced competitor to Starlink at this time, and they're not even remotely close to being operational. What makes SpaceX able to put up Starlink at such low cost (compared to its earning potential) is that SpaceX has lowered launch costs for itself (and others) by a lot, and they're working to lower those costs even more. What is "fair" when a company works so hard to lower costs and increase availability? Is it to punish them so others get a chance to compete at higher costs??
  - ctdonath 5y ago
    Sorry about the mess, that comment was dripping with sarcasm. 1. There's a lot of room up there, and actually claiming & using it is a normal process for civilizing frontiers. 1b. Handwaving about "underappreciated precious resources" is a waste of opportunity. I get the sentiment, but belongs in the 3rd part of the aphorism "lead, follow, or get out of the way." 2. Saying "SpaceX isn't in it for the money" is ridiculous, considering they could gross >$10T in the next decade with it, at ridiculously low expenditure. 2b. In that timeframe, other businesses would be just barely starting to seek out a small fraction of that "precious resource".
    - cryptonector 5y ago
      Thank you!
3gg 5y ago
Don't know about your specific claims, but I also had the same reaction. "This is the world SpaceX’s Starlink program, which has set a goal to provide high-speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable." Can we be honest for once and be up-front about a corporation's real goals? As if <insert technology here> was going to do anything about the gaping inequality and other social problems that actually matter to people. That your comment gets down-voted is certainly telling about the audience here.

by mnd999 5y ago

Diederich 5y ago

> Starlink is fundamentally not about providing broadband to anyone. This reply brought to you over a robust, fast, low latency and reliable Starlink connection.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
Wait til you have 1000 neighbors vying for bandwidth.
- benlivengood 5y ago
  The most pessimistic estimate I've seen paid for by the cable industry is here: https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/10208168836021/FBA_LEO_RDOF_Assessment_Final_Report_20210208.pdf https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/10208168836021/FBA_LEO_RDOF_Ass... Only if each subscriber is using an average of 15-20 Mbps during peak times will about 50% of subscribers see some throttling. Interestingly they only showed a single graph of average bandwidth over time from a cable company to estimate needs for SpaceX. No clue if they actually separated it out by time zone for each coverage area in their actual analysis.
- Diederich 5y ago
  Starlink isn't about directly competing against high density fiber connected internet. It's about everyone else.
ctdonath 5y ago
And cheap. $99/mo for competitive data service literally anywhere is amazingly cheap.

generalizations 5y ago

It's a cynical perspective, but the downvotes are unwarranted. It's worth comparing to McDonalds, where a large proportion of the corporation's worth is in the real estate they hold.

lucb1e 5y ago
Okay but it's not as if mcdonald's bought the land under false pretenses and now uses it for any purpose since it's theirs. Claiming that the internet access is just a pretense for "land" grabbing when the company neither owns the space afterwards nor can switch businesses to something more nefarious and lucrative with the existing devices... it makes no sense.

zlynx 5y ago

It is about making money. Starlink is a money generating system that makes use of low cost launch made possible by SpaceX. If it does use up most of the low orbit space it is because SpaceX is the only company that is even capable of launching that many satellites and making money on it. Until there is another challenger there is zero point in complaining, because competition is not even an option. Since it is low orbit it is self limiting problem. Any low orbit satellite has a limited lifetime of a few years without power.

admissionsguy 5y ago

Is it scarce, though? Couldn't you put more constellations at the same orbits +/- a couple of kms? In any case, I would expect the spectrum rights to be much scarcer than the space, and they are well regulated.

cryptonector 5y ago
Exactly, spectrum is the scarce resource here, and it already is regulated. There is no need for additional regulation regarding that, and there already is regulation of orbits between FCC and FAA.

jsharf 5y ago

The alternative is waiting literally 10-20 years for anyone else to catch up.

cryptonector 5y ago
Or, hey! slow SpaceX down with regulation!1!!
bcrl 5y ago
Who is even trying to catch up at this point?

wmf 5y ago

So what is the high-value use of low-earth orbit other than broadband and why doesn't SpaceX do that directly?

ctdonath 5y ago

Right, it's not about taking a major share & expansion of a trillion-dollar industry with payout starting immediately, it's about staking out a thin fraction of (literally) empty space and waiting decades for others to start needing small portions of it. Because $99/month * 12 months * 10 years * 1,000,000,000 customers = $11.88T isn't the point to a man who literally needs a trillion dollars to pull off the grandest mega-project ever.

cryptonector 5y ago
It's not clear what you're saying. Are you saying that SpaceX will end up consuming too much of a precious resource? Or something else? Anyways, I don't buy that SpaceX will end up consuming too much of a precious resource. Even if it were so, what would be a fair way to share that resource, and who even with?! There's only one announced competitor to Starlink at this time, and they're not even remotely close to being operational. What makes SpaceX able to put up Starlink at such low cost (compared to its earning potential) is that SpaceX has lowered launch costs for itself (and others) by a lot, and they're working to lower those costs even more. What is "fair" when a company works so hard to lower costs and increase availability? Is it to punish them so others get a chance to compete at higher costs??
- ctdonath 5y ago
  Sorry about the mess, that comment was dripping with sarcasm. 1. There's a lot of room up there, and actually claiming & using it is a normal process for civilizing frontiers. 1b. Handwaving about "underappreciated precious resources" is a waste of opportunity. I get the sentiment, but belongs in the 3rd part of the aphorism "lead, follow, or get out of the way." 2. Saying "SpaceX isn't in it for the money" is ridiculous, considering they could gross >$10T in the next decade with it, at ridiculously low expenditure. 2b. In that timeframe, other businesses would be just barely starting to seek out a small fraction of that "precious resource".
  - cryptonector 5y ago
    Thank you!

3gg 5y ago

Don't know about your specific claims, but I also had the same reaction. "This is the world SpaceX’s Starlink program, which has set a goal to provide high-speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable." Can we be honest for once and be up-front about a corporation's real goals? As if <insert technology here> was going to do anything about the gaping inequality and other social problems that actually matter to people. That your comment gets down-voted is certainly telling about the audience here.