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Ok, I think a few points of clarification are needed since this article's choice of quotes and framing is strange. 1) The title implies outside funding is need

Ok, I think a few points of clarification are needed since this article's choice of quotes and framing is strange. 1) The title implies outside funding is needed, but this isn't true. SpaceX estimates it will require $5-10B of internal funding to reach its targets. This should surprise no one considering the scope of what they are building. 2) "Starlink would need a few million subscribers paying about $99 a month each to recoup a $5 billion investment in a year’s time, said analyst Tim Farrar, president of TMF Associates." Except that there's no explanation of why they need to recoup investment costs in a single year. You don't build a factory and then expect the capital expenditure to be recouped in the first year of ops, so why would a satellite network be different... 3) “It is not implausible to get this number (a few million) to make the system not to go bankrupt. But this is not enough to justify the valuation of SpaceX,” except that SpaceX isn't a satellite internet company, it's a space launch company that is also building a satellite internet network. Its valuation is based on being far and away the launch leader on every metric that matters.

jlmorton 5y ago
Yeah, I don't see any issue with Starlink getting subscribers. HughesNet has 1.3 million subscribers in the US and Canada alone. ViaSat has 600,000. There are 10x that on slow rural DSL. And that's just North America. Demand is not going to be the problem for Starlink. If they can roll-out a service just a bit more reliable than their current beta, and they can increase their network capacity fast enough, they will have tens of millions of subscribers in a few years.
- xkjkls 5y ago
  HughesNet only has a billion in revenue though. With a $30 billion + investment in the network, Starlink needs to have far far more subscribes than that to be able to recoup the costs.
  - wmf 5y ago
    Fortunately Starlink is global so the addressable market is more like 100M customers.
    - xkjkls 5y ago
      100 million customers with money? Once you start saying that the customer base is rural Africa or something like that, you need to massively lower your ASP expectations.
      - wmf 5y ago
        The global middle class is over 1B people; if 10% of them are rural that's over 100M.
        xkjkls 5y ago
        That group is defined as people who make $10-20 a day. Starlink isn't selling at $100 to people who only make $4,000 a year
        hackeraccount 5y ago
        Arguably both the amount they make and the number of people is increasing. Plus Internet access may be a push for people to stay or move to a more rural location.
BitwiseFool 5y ago
I would gladly pay more for Starlink JUST to spite Comcast.
- echelon 5y ago
  Starlink isn't a replacement for Comcast if you care about latency, but it is for rural dialup and satellite Internet. And probably a whole host of new usages, such as sensors deployed to the field, etc. edit: Okay, so folks don't like my fairly honest take on Starlink? It's a great service that's going to make a ton of money. But it doesn't replace all classes of Internet use. That's unrealistic.
  - post_break 5y ago
    It can absolutely replace comcast. I dont understand why you'd think otherwise?
    - wmf 5y ago
      Starlink can replace Comcast... for a few customers. Starlink will become congested if too many people switch.
    - tzs 5y ago
      (Bandwidth of an individual satellite) x (the number of satellites they will have when they get the full constellation up) puts a cap on how many customers Starlink can handle and still deliver the specified performance. That cap is way lower than the number of Comcast subscribers.
      - omgwtfbyobbq 5y ago
        I think that depends on how oversubscribed Comcast is. My local cable co only allows 1TB/month of data because of how oversubscribed they are. Even with that limit, speeds still drops a ton during peak use.
        5y ago
mkr-hn 5y ago
I wonder if it has something to do with the life span of the satellites. Most big investments like this last decades, while the satellites are looking at 5 years. It's the downside for the upsides of low latency and not making a mess in space. They'll need a steady stream of launches to keep the network viable, and they'll need to do that until they have enough subscribers to cover the costs.

jlmorton 5y ago

Yeah, I don't see any issue with Starlink getting subscribers. HughesNet has 1.3 million subscribers in the US and Canada alone. ViaSat has 600,000. There are 10x that on slow rural DSL. And that's just North America. Demand is not going to be the problem for Starlink. If they can roll-out a service just a bit more reliable than their current beta, and they can increase their network capacity fast enough, they will have tens of millions of subscribers in a few years.

xkjkls 5y ago
HughesNet only has a billion in revenue though. With a $30 billion + investment in the network, Starlink needs to have far far more subscribes than that to be able to recoup the costs.
- wmf 5y ago
  Fortunately Starlink is global so the addressable market is more like 100M customers.
  - xkjkls 5y ago
    100 million customers with money? Once you start saying that the customer base is rural Africa or something like that, you need to massively lower your ASP expectations.
    - wmf 5y ago
      The global middle class is over 1B people; if 10% of them are rural that's over 100M.
      - xkjkls 5y ago
        That group is defined as people who make $10-20 a day. Starlink isn't selling at $100 to people who only make $4,000 a year
        hackeraccount 5y ago
        Arguably both the amount they make and the number of people is increasing. Plus Internet access may be a push for people to stay or move to a more rural location.

BitwiseFool 5y ago

I would gladly pay more for Starlink JUST to spite Comcast.

echelon 5y ago
Starlink isn't a replacement for Comcast if you care about latency, but it is for rural dialup and satellite Internet. And probably a whole host of new usages, such as sensors deployed to the field, etc. edit: Okay, so folks don't like my fairly honest take on Starlink? It's a great service that's going to make a ton of money. But it doesn't replace all classes of Internet use. That's unrealistic.
- post_break 5y ago
  It can absolutely replace comcast. I dont understand why you'd think otherwise?
  - wmf 5y ago
    Starlink can replace Comcast... for a few customers. Starlink will become congested if too many people switch.
  - tzs 5y ago
    (Bandwidth of an individual satellite) x (the number of satellites they will have when they get the full constellation up) puts a cap on how many customers Starlink can handle and still deliver the specified performance. That cap is way lower than the number of Comcast subscribers.
    - omgwtfbyobbq 5y ago
      I think that depends on how oversubscribed Comcast is. My local cable co only allows 1TB/month of data because of how oversubscribed they are. Even with that limit, speeds still drops a ton during peak use.
      - 5y ago

mkr-hn 5y ago

I wonder if it has something to do with the life span of the satellites. Most big investments like this last decades, while the satellites are looking at 5 years. It's the downside for the upsides of low latency and not making a mess in space. They'll need a steady stream of launches to keep the network viable, and they'll need to do that until they have enough subscribers to cover the costs.