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Starlink has little chance of being the cash cow that the muskrats think. Look, it's low latency satellite internet. It's a giant "meh" for anyone not in very r

by gspr 5y ago

Starlink has little chance of being the cash cow that the muskrats think. Look, it's low latency satellite internet. It's a giant "meh" for anyone not in very rural locations. That rural market exists, but is quite small — as you can easily see from the revenue of the 3-4 established providers in the field. Yeah, Starlink will differentiate itself by providing a low latency service, and the market for that might be slightly larger, but it'll never be enough to pay for the launches and equipment and then be the cash cow the muskrats dream about.

MPSimmons 5y ago
> That rural market exists, but is quite small Curious about your estimate on the market size here. How many potential customers are there, worldwide, in your estimation?
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> rural market exists, but is quite small — as you can easily see from the revenue of the 3-4 established providers in the field The existing providers suck. There are plenty of villas, chalets, et cetera in places where Starlink would be the winning offering. These may not represent a large number of people. But they do represent a lot of dollars. This is before tapping the moving target market, e.g. yachts, planes, backpackers, et cetera.
Johnny555 5y ago
I don't live in a rural market, but my existing ISP is so unreliable that I'm on the waitlist for a Starlink terminal to use as a backup when my cable internet goes down.
sargun 5y ago
There have been various analayses of starlink, indicating it’s transatlantic latency would be lower than terrestrial connectivity when the network is in certain conditions (I believe there is some routing algorithm decisions to be made on the optical link between satellites, and this depends on where each one is). The arbitrage opportunity alone is massive, and HFT companies have put a ton of money into it: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/wall-street-tries-shortwave-radio-to-make-highfrequency-trades-across-the-atlantic https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/wall-st...
SergeAx 5y ago
Established providers' price tags are exorbitant (pun intended). Moving the price an order of magnitude lower will reach the audience two-three orders wider (it called demand elasticity).

by gspr 5y ago

MPSimmons 5y ago

> That rural market exists, but is quite small Curious about your estimate on the market size here. How many potential customers are there, worldwide, in your estimation?

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> rural market exists, but is quite small — as you can easily see from the revenue of the 3-4 established providers in the field The existing providers suck. There are plenty of villas, chalets, et cetera in places where Starlink would be the winning offering. These may not represent a large number of people. But they do represent a lot of dollars. This is before tapping the moving target market, e.g. yachts, planes, backpackers, et cetera.

Johnny555 5y ago

I don't live in a rural market, but my existing ISP is so unreliable that I'm on the waitlist for a Starlink terminal to use as a backup when my cable internet goes down.

sargun 5y ago

There have been various analayses of starlink, indicating it’s transatlantic latency would be lower than terrestrial connectivity when the network is in certain conditions (I believe there is some routing algorithm decisions to be made on the optical link between satellites, and this depends on where each one is). The arbitrage opportunity alone is massive, and HFT companies have put a ton of money into it: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/wall-street-tries-shortwave-radio-to-make-highfrequency-trades-across-the-atlantic https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/wall-st...

SergeAx 5y ago

Established providers' price tags are exorbitant (pun intended). Moving the price an order of magnitude lower will reach the audience two-three orders wider (it called demand elasticity).