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>Nobody else wants to build a competitor to Starlink by paying SpaceX I'm not sure what you mean here. Outside of, say, military usage, every single telecom c

>Nobody else wants to build a competitor to Starlink by paying SpaceX I'm not sure what you mean here. Outside of, say, military usage, every single telecom company is a competitor to Starlink. Internet is internet. This commercial product is turning out to be what the "naysayers" thought it would be; brilliant if you're in a place with terrible internet, but noncompetitive in any kind of urban environment. Again, imho, the huge thing here is the ability to get a quick internet set up anywhere in the world that can't easily be taken down (...military).

spywaregorilla 5y ago
If you want to build a competitor to Starlink that does the same thing and is ideal for terrible internet areas, you need to put up satellites, and SpaceX is the only company that you can pay to do so economically.
skissane 5y ago
> I'm not sure what you mean here. Outside of, say, military usage, every single telecom company is a competitor to Starlink. Internet is internet. With regard to satellite Internet mega-constellations, it is true thus far. The two other major constellations (OneWeb and Kuiper) have avoided SpaceX as a launch provider, choosing competitors instead – OneWeb has gone with Arianespace Soyuz and Virgin; Kuiper has chosen ULA (and is assumably going to choose Blue Origin too once they are ready). SpaceX has said they are happy to launch competitor constellations, but it makes sense that its competitors aren't happy to fund their competition. It is very unlikely that Arianespace or ULA can actually beat SpaceX on price, so avoiding funding your competition is the only logical explanation for OneWeb and Kuiper's decisions. SpaceX is launching other satellite telecommunications systems, that obviously also compete with Starlink to some extent, but less head-on. For example, they are contracted to launch one of the ViaSat-3 satellites. ViaSat-3 is a satellite Internet constellation, so in that sense does compete, but it only has 3 satellites in geostationary orbit, so it isn't really going after the same direct market as Starlink. (ViaSat appears to be getting scared of Starlink, as evidenced by their anti-Starlink applications to FCC and threats of a lawsuit; given that, I wonder how much longer they'll be willing to buy launch services from SpaceX.)
- ncallaway 5y ago
  Is OneWeb still in the game? I saw that they had been financial issues and were sold to the UK and I kind of assumed that they had ended their constellation goals. It’d be great if they were still working on it, though
  - skissane 5y ago
    They are still in the game, but not quite the same game. They have done 8 launches so far, including 4 this year, with another 5 scheduled this year and then more next year. At the moment they have 248 operational satellites in their constellation. Their goal is 648 satellites, which is gong to take them (approximately) 11 more launches. But 648, is quite small in scale compared to Starlink's plan for an initial constellation of 12,000, with an additional 30,000 currently going through the approval process. Starlink already has more working satellites in orbit than OneWeb's planned full constellation size. Given that, it is difficult for OneWeb to compete with Starlink head-on, so they are basically ceding to Starlink the B2C space and going after B2B instead. I think with UK government and UK military they are going to have some success, since the UK will likely prefer OneWeb given that it is a UK-headquartered company with partial UK government ownership.
    - ncallaway 5y ago
      Well, that’s great! I’m glad they’re still competing in the space and have a good foot-hold. I think competition in this space is important in the long run.
ncallaway 5y ago
> I'm not sure what you mean here. Outside of, say, military usage, every single telecom company is a competitor to Starlink. Internet is internet. That’s certainly true, but there are real physical limitations that make it hard to compete with Starlink without a LEO constellation. Sure, you could do ground based infrastructure build outs, but the population density means it’s not profitable or you have to charge really high rates to make up the fixed costs. Other satellite providers can compete in the rural areas, but Geo and LEO are have important differences. The first is latency (internet is internet but 60ms internet is not the same as 600ms internet). When I made the statement I did, I was mostly referring to satellite internet providers, because land based providers have largely abandoned or drastically underserved this market segment. I don’t see a GEO constellation being able to provide a similar internet offering to Starlink ever, due to light delay. I don’t think ground based solutions will pop up to start competing for these low density market, because they’ve already been written off as unprofitable even before there was serious competition for the market. > This commercial product is turning out to be what the "naysayers" thought it would be; brilliant if you're in a place with terrible internet, but noncompetitive in any kind of urban environment. Well that’s probably because the naysayers were predicting the exact same thing as the supporters. Spaced has described Starlink consistently as being designed to service rural and suburban areas that are underserved by existing providers. The goals never were to compete with providers in super high density urban markets. I’ve been a huge supporter of Starlink since the first announcement, and it’s shaping up pretty much how I imagined which also lines up with your description.
mlindner 5y ago
> This commercial product is turning out to be what the "naysayers" thought it would be; brilliant if you're in a place with terrible internet, but noncompetitive in any kind of urban environment. I mean that's what Elon Musk himself said of the service. He said they don't really have interest in competing with most cable/fiber providers and that their system would actually be complementary and they could provide network backhaul for those companies to say remote cellular antennas.

spywaregorilla 5y ago

If you want to build a competitor to Starlink that does the same thing and is ideal for terrible internet areas, you need to put up satellites, and SpaceX is the only company that you can pay to do so economically.

skissane 5y ago

> I'm not sure what you mean here. Outside of, say, military usage, every single telecom company is a competitor to Starlink. Internet is internet. With regard to satellite Internet mega-constellations, it is true thus far. The two other major constellations (OneWeb and Kuiper) have avoided SpaceX as a launch provider, choosing competitors instead – OneWeb has gone with Arianespace Soyuz and Virgin; Kuiper has chosen ULA (and is assumably going to choose Blue Origin too once they are ready). SpaceX has said they are happy to launch competitor constellations, but it makes sense that its competitors aren't happy to fund their competition. It is very unlikely that Arianespace or ULA can actually beat SpaceX on price, so avoiding funding your competition is the only logical explanation for OneWeb and Kuiper's decisions. SpaceX is launching other satellite telecommunications systems, that obviously also compete with Starlink to some extent, but less head-on. For example, they are contracted to launch one of the ViaSat-3 satellites. ViaSat-3 is a satellite Internet constellation, so in that sense does compete, but it only has 3 satellites in geostationary orbit, so it isn't really going after the same direct market as Starlink. (ViaSat appears to be getting scared of Starlink, as evidenced by their anti-Starlink applications to FCC and threats of a lawsuit; given that, I wonder how much longer they'll be willing to buy launch services from SpaceX.)

ncallaway 5y ago
Is OneWeb still in the game? I saw that they had been financial issues and were sold to the UK and I kind of assumed that they had ended their constellation goals. It’d be great if they were still working on it, though
- skissane 5y ago
  They are still in the game, but not quite the same game. They have done 8 launches so far, including 4 this year, with another 5 scheduled this year and then more next year. At the moment they have 248 operational satellites in their constellation. Their goal is 648 satellites, which is gong to take them (approximately) 11 more launches. But 648, is quite small in scale compared to Starlink's plan for an initial constellation of 12,000, with an additional 30,000 currently going through the approval process. Starlink already has more working satellites in orbit than OneWeb's planned full constellation size. Given that, it is difficult for OneWeb to compete with Starlink head-on, so they are basically ceding to Starlink the B2C space and going after B2B instead. I think with UK government and UK military they are going to have some success, since the UK will likely prefer OneWeb given that it is a UK-headquartered company with partial UK government ownership.
  - ncallaway 5y ago
    Well, that’s great! I’m glad they’re still competing in the space and have a good foot-hold. I think competition in this space is important in the long run.

ncallaway 5y ago

> I'm not sure what you mean here. Outside of, say, military usage, every single telecom company is a competitor to Starlink. Internet is internet. That’s certainly true, but there are real physical limitations that make it hard to compete with Starlink without a LEO constellation. Sure, you could do ground based infrastructure build outs, but the population density means it’s not profitable or you have to charge really high rates to make up the fixed costs. Other satellite providers can compete in the rural areas, but Geo and LEO are have important differences. The first is latency (internet is internet but 60ms internet is not the same as 600ms internet). When I made the statement I did, I was mostly referring to satellite internet providers, because land based providers have largely abandoned or drastically underserved this market segment. I don’t see a GEO constellation being able to provide a similar internet offering to Starlink ever, due to light delay. I don’t think ground based solutions will pop up to start competing for these low density market, because they’ve already been written off as unprofitable even before there was serious competition for the market. > This commercial product is turning out to be what the "naysayers" thought it would be; brilliant if you're in a place with terrible internet, but noncompetitive in any kind of urban environment. Well that’s probably because the naysayers were predicting the exact same thing as the supporters. Spaced has described Starlink consistently as being designed to service rural and suburban areas that are underserved by existing providers. The goals never were to compete with providers in super high density urban markets. I’ve been a huge supporter of Starlink since the first announcement, and it’s shaping up pretty much how I imagined which also lines up with your description.

mlindner 5y ago

> This commercial product is turning out to be what the "naysayers" thought it would be; brilliant if you're in a place with terrible internet, but noncompetitive in any kind of urban environment. I mean that's what Elon Musk himself said of the service. He said they don't really have interest in competing with most cable/fiber providers and that their system would actually be complementary and they could provide network backhaul for those companies to say remote cellular antennas.