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And why should one assume the cost once deployed in the millions will equal the cost while in beta with 60k users? There's another comment here already mentioni

And why should one assume the cost once deployed in the millions will equal the cost while in beta with 60k users? There's another comment here already mentioning their prediction of a $300 cost for the dish in the future, you can only expect the subscription to go down as well. Plus, the places where Starlink is the most useful - rural areas - already have sky high costs. I just looked up what service looks like in Brazil: ~R$400/month (US$76) for 20mbps, with a 80GB data cap. When you have to buy the dish it costs over R$10k (~US$2000). This is the best you can get.

tsimionescu 5y ago
According to them, the satellites have a maximum life span in orbit of 5 years. They can launch 60 satellites at a time, at a cost of 50M$ per launch. So they need to spend ~1.4 billion dollars every five years just to keep the constellation at its current size, ignoring the cost of the satellites, ground stations etc. If they have 500k customers, that means that each customer must pay ~50$/month just to pay for the cost of keeping the satellites in orbit. Add ground station costs, internet bandwidth, satellite production, dish production, customer service, personnel costs, R&D and you'll quickly see that the current prices are much below what is required to be profitable. Even if they have 5M customers (very hard to do in 5 years time), I wouldn't be hopeful for their prospects of not going under. Of course, they may well survive on government handouts. Edit to add: the bottom 45% who don't currently have access to high speed internet are unlikely to afford even a 300$ dish and an expensive data plan. The price of current plans is one of the main reasons why they don't have access in the first place.
- regnerba 5y ago
  If they are able to get Strarship and the Super Heavy Booster working, which at this point in time I think is very probable, those economics will change a good bit as the cost of launch will come down a lot.
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  $50M is the launch cost for SpaceX customers. Musk has said in an interview that the marginal cost of a reused Falcon 9 launch is $15 million. That means even the tiny subscriber base they have at the moment is already paying a significant chunk of the launches. That would make your numbers $420m every five years, or $84 million a year - slighly more than your average telecom CEO compensation. But the goal for starship is $2m per launch. Let's assume that is bullshit and go for $10M instead, and only 300 satellites per launch. That's already down to ~$10M/year to maintain the entire constellation. Now you have room for all the other costs you mention. If they reach the stated goals, it will cost peanuts... you can see where this is going. Starship will be a ridiculous leap in launch costs if it comes to fruition. The max capacity for the network, once at 42k satellites, is estimated to be around 50M people worldwide. Plus, you could have a downlink shared, say, among 50 people and spread the cost - 1-10mbps is still miles beyond 'no internet access'. You might think the plan is crazy, but the math checks out. If this whole thing works, they could charge $10/month and be in the green - the satellites themselves will be the cheapest part of the whole system. No rent, no right of way, no construction, no maintenance work, free energy and extremely low material costs.
  - ricardobeat 5y ago
    To add on the costs (yeah I have nothing better to do) - ground station: must be negligible compared to everything else. They are literally planting giant routers out in a farm, need to pay rent, power and cabling to an exchange. Zero other infrastructure costs - internet bandwidth: despite Netflix's attempts, ISPs have peering agreements that are usually free, as does Starlink - satellite production: nobody knows, but they have said the payload is cheaper than the launch, so somewhere between $250-500k each at start - customer service: online only, seems like the dish is self-diagnosing, will likely end up being much lower than traditional broadband
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      > - ground station: must be negligible compared to everything else. They are literally planting giant routers out in a farm, need to pay rent, power and cabling to an exchange. Zero other infrastructure costs Fair enough, though you're neglecting the costs for building this all over the world, if they want to get access to any size of market. > - internet bandwidth: despite Netflix's attempts, ISPs have peering agreements that are usually free, as does Starlink Actually, according to Cloudlflare[0], you still need to buy a significant amount of traffic through transit agreements - cloud flare pays for 40% of its traffic in Europe (at a price they don't disclose), 60% in the USA (same price as in Europe), 40% in Asia (at 7 times the European price), 10% in Africa (at 14 times European price), 40% in South America (at 17 times European price), and 50% in Oceania (at 17 times European price). Only the Middle East region is 100% peered for them. So the cost to actually deliver internet is definitely not going to be 0. > - satellite production: nobody knows, but they have said the payload is cheaper than the launch, so somewhere between $250-500k each at start So that is another 15M$ per launch at their declared aspirational cost (or an extra 100M$ per launch if you believe the Starship numbers). Just maintaing the entire constellation today would cost ~100M$/year, assuming almost all satellites reach their 5 year life span (current failure rate is 6% after one year). > - customer service: online only, seems like the dish is self-diagnosing, will likely end up being much lower than traditional broadband You can't sell online only customer support for access to the Internet if you want to reach any kind of realistic market. Furthermore, customer service more broadly includes delivery, sales, marketing, training materials; and this will be required all over the world, since they must target customers in remote places with little or no acces to the internet today. [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-costs-around-the-world/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-costs-around-the-world...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tigershark 5y ago
  No, there are so many wrong statements in your comment that I don’t even know from where to start. The current cost for 60 satellites on falcon 9 is around 10M$ if I remember correctly. From next year they will likely be able to send 400 satellites for the same price with starship and the aspirational goal is to have a cost of 2M$ per launch. It implies a cost of ~55M$ to send 11000 satellites. Even if they will never reach that aspirational goal it would probably cost them ~300M$ for 11k satellites and ~1B$ for 42k satellites at 10M$ per launch. It’s perfectly feasible, you just can’t understand how starship is such a game changer.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    > The current cost for 60 satellites on falcon 9 is around 10M$ if I remember correctly. Apparently Musk is claiming 15M$. The public numbers for a launch are 3.3 times that, so even if that is pure profit, it's awfully good profit compared to what Starlink is bringing in. > From next year they will likely be able to send 400 satellites for the same price with starship and the aspirational goal is to have a cost of 2M$ per launch. This is based on Musk time - the likelihood of that happening in this time-line is not particularly good, given the track record of his promises. Time will tell. The claimed 2M$ price is laughably 'aspirational'. Until I see it, I don't believe a word of it. > It’s perfectly feasible, you just can’t understand how starship is such a game changer. Let's wait for it to actually fly to space and back until we declare it such a game changer, ok? Musk's promises have a habit of never happening, or happening much later than claimed.
shaklee3 5y ago
There is absolutely no basis for the cost to be that low. Nobody believes that. Not even Elon, since he's commented on it several times.

tsimionescu 5y ago

According to them, the satellites have a maximum life span in orbit of 5 years. They can launch 60 satellites at a time, at a cost of 50M$ per launch. So they need to spend ~1.4 billion dollars every five years just to keep the constellation at its current size, ignoring the cost of the satellites, ground stations etc. If they have 500k customers, that means that each customer must pay ~50$/month just to pay for the cost of keeping the satellites in orbit. Add ground station costs, internet bandwidth, satellite production, dish production, customer service, personnel costs, R&D and you'll quickly see that the current prices are much below what is required to be profitable. Even if they have 5M customers (very hard to do in 5 years time), I wouldn't be hopeful for their prospects of not going under. Of course, they may well survive on government handouts. Edit to add: the bottom 45% who don't currently have access to high speed internet are unlikely to afford even a 300$ dish and an expensive data plan. The price of current plans is one of the main reasons why they don't have access in the first place.

regnerba 5y ago
If they are able to get Strarship and the Super Heavy Booster working, which at this point in time I think is very probable, those economics will change a good bit as the cost of launch will come down a lot.
ricardobeat 5y ago
$50M is the launch cost for SpaceX customers. Musk has said in an interview that the marginal cost of a reused Falcon 9 launch is $15 million. That means even the tiny subscriber base they have at the moment is already paying a significant chunk of the launches. That would make your numbers $420m every five years, or $84 million a year - slighly more than your average telecom CEO compensation. But the goal for starship is $2m per launch. Let's assume that is bullshit and go for $10M instead, and only 300 satellites per launch. That's already down to ~$10M/year to maintain the entire constellation. Now you have room for all the other costs you mention. If they reach the stated goals, it will cost peanuts... you can see where this is going. Starship will be a ridiculous leap in launch costs if it comes to fruition. The max capacity for the network, once at 42k satellites, is estimated to be around 50M people worldwide. Plus, you could have a downlink shared, say, among 50 people and spread the cost - 1-10mbps is still miles beyond 'no internet access'. You might think the plan is crazy, but the math checks out. If this whole thing works, they could charge $10/month and be in the green - the satellites themselves will be the cheapest part of the whole system. No rent, no right of way, no construction, no maintenance work, free energy and extremely low material costs.
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  To add on the costs (yeah I have nothing better to do) - ground station: must be negligible compared to everything else. They are literally planting giant routers out in a farm, need to pay rent, power and cabling to an exchange. Zero other infrastructure costs - internet bandwidth: despite Netflix's attempts, ISPs have peering agreements that are usually free, as does Starlink - satellite production: nobody knows, but they have said the payload is cheaper than the launch, so somewhere between $250-500k each at start - customer service: online only, seems like the dish is self-diagnosing, will likely end up being much lower than traditional broadband
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    > - ground station: must be negligible compared to everything else. They are literally planting giant routers out in a farm, need to pay rent, power and cabling to an exchange. Zero other infrastructure costs Fair enough, though you're neglecting the costs for building this all over the world, if they want to get access to any size of market. > - internet bandwidth: despite Netflix's attempts, ISPs have peering agreements that are usually free, as does Starlink Actually, according to Cloudlflare[0], you still need to buy a significant amount of traffic through transit agreements - cloud flare pays for 40% of its traffic in Europe (at a price they don't disclose), 60% in the USA (same price as in Europe), 40% in Asia (at 7 times the European price), 10% in Africa (at 14 times European price), 40% in South America (at 17 times European price), and 50% in Oceania (at 17 times European price). Only the Middle East region is 100% peered for them. So the cost to actually deliver internet is definitely not going to be 0. > - satellite production: nobody knows, but they have said the payload is cheaper than the launch, so somewhere between $250-500k each at start So that is another 15M$ per launch at their declared aspirational cost (or an extra 100M$ per launch if you believe the Starship numbers). Just maintaing the entire constellation today would cost ~100M$/year, assuming almost all satellites reach their 5 year life span (current failure rate is 6% after one year). > - customer service: online only, seems like the dish is self-diagnosing, will likely end up being much lower than traditional broadband You can't sell online only customer support for access to the Internet if you want to reach any kind of realistic market. Furthermore, customer service more broadly includes delivery, sales, marketing, training materials; and this will be required all over the world, since they must target customers in remote places with little or no acces to the internet today. [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-costs-around-the-world/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-costs-around-the-world...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tigershark 5y ago
No, there are so many wrong statements in your comment that I don’t even know from where to start. The current cost for 60 satellites on falcon 9 is around 10M$ if I remember correctly. From next year they will likely be able to send 400 satellites for the same price with starship and the aspirational goal is to have a cost of 2M$ per launch. It implies a cost of ~55M$ to send 11000 satellites. Even if they will never reach that aspirational goal it would probably cost them ~300M$ for 11k satellites and ~1B$ for 42k satellites at 10M$ per launch. It’s perfectly feasible, you just can’t understand how starship is such a game changer.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > The current cost for 60 satellites on falcon 9 is around 10M$ if I remember correctly. Apparently Musk is claiming 15M$. The public numbers for a launch are 3.3 times that, so even if that is pure profit, it's awfully good profit compared to what Starlink is bringing in. > From next year they will likely be able to send 400 satellites for the same price with starship and the aspirational goal is to have a cost of 2M$ per launch. This is based on Musk time - the likelihood of that happening in this time-line is not particularly good, given the track record of his promises. Time will tell. The claimed 2M$ price is laughably 'aspirational'. Until I see it, I don't believe a word of it. > It’s perfectly feasible, you just can’t understand how starship is such a game changer. Let's wait for it to actually fly to space and back until we declare it such a game changer, ok? Musk's promises have a habit of never happening, or happening much later than claimed.

shaklee3 5y ago

There is absolutely no basis for the cost to be that low. Nobody believes that. Not even Elon, since he's commented on it several times.