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I don't think the general hype was that Starlink would replace existing ISPs everywhere. It was always understood that this product was for rural/remote areas t

I don't think the general hype was that Starlink would replace existing ISPs everywhere. It was always understood that this product was for rural/remote areas that don't have direct lines for internet connection.

StillBored 5y ago
Well, at least in my case there was some hope that it would set a floor for internet service in larger towns where the local cable/telco monopoly just milks the customers for $100+ a month for really subpar internet service (I pay about that for 20Mbit upload from the cable co, the DSL provider can barely do 2 up 40 mbits down for roughly the same price). Where as a couple miles away the DSL provider strung fiber to compete with google and the price is less than they would charge me for said crummy internet. The joke here is that the lucky few percent of people who can get fiber here have two choices, but the rest of us are stuck in the 1990s. And this is a dense area, far more dense than 100 miles W of here in the little towns of population 1k that can also get fiber from their local telco co-op.
- woah 5y ago
  That density means there is no way that Starlink will be able to service more than a couple percent of your town any time soon.
justapassenger 5y ago
That was totally the hype. I had multiple friends, living in SF, telling me how they'll finally ditch Comcast and use Starlink. I also had other friends telling me how SpaceX is going to bankrupt all ISPs in the world, and they'll make trillions of dollars in revenue. And even here, in comments to this very article, you can still find people waiting for Starlink, to lower down their internet cost, while they live in suburbs of big metropolitan areas. Anything that's coming from Musk has a huge hype, for better or worse.
- steelstraw 5y ago
  Even though Musk was saying that it's not really meant for cities and wouldn't be a serious competitor there? "the SpaceX CEO argued that Starlink won't be a major threat to telcos because the satellite service won't be good enough for high-population areas and will mostly be used by rural customers without access to fast broadband." https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/musk-says-starlink-isnt-for-big-cities-wont-be-huge-threat-to-telcos/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/musk-...
  - justapassenger 5y ago
    > Starlink was publicly announced in January 2015, with bandwidth to carry up to 50% of all backhaul communications traffic, and up to 10% of local Internet traffic, in high-density cities. CEO Elon Musk said that there is significant unmet demand for low-cost global broadband capabilities. Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink It's typical Musk - announcing something that sounds super cool and impossible, because it's impossible. Ad later quietly scale it down to something still pretty cool, but nothing like it was presented initially. And ride the hype as much as you can in the process.
    - mdasen 5y ago
      Elon Musk often makes contradictory statements. He's more recently said that Starlink has received 500,000 pre-orders and that, "Most likely, all of the initial 500k will receive service. More of a challenge when we get into the several million user range." Some of this might be coming from real-world experience with the network and an update on previous incorrect assumptions. Part of it might be simply making bombastic claims. Right now, Starlink hit around 100,000 customers with 1,700 satellites. With the full 12,000 satellites we'd then expect 700,000 customers. That might change given that the satellites aren't geostationary and they haven't launched in many countries, but to hit a million customers in the US, they'd need to increase the number of customers per satellite significantly. Maybe there are improvements they can make that we don't know about, but it seems like Starlink's advantages are in making cheap rockets and cheap satellites - which is very cool, but they likely don't have radio advantages. Starlink is also thinking about an additional 20,000 satellites so it's possible that they'll just keep increasing the number of satellites. Still, if they're seeing linear gains, that's still a relatively small number of users even with 32,000 satellites (and even the 12,000 is 4-5 years away). https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210510/08050146767/elon-musk-makes-it-clear-starlink-wont-have-capacity-to-disrupt-us-broadband.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210510/08050146767/elon-...
jcrawfordor 5y ago
I know a surprising number of Starlink customers who are paying more for slower service compared to our incumbent ISP (Comcast). This seems to have been a very common part of the hype. I get it, there have been times in the past that I've used fixed LTE to avoid Comcast, but I actually think I was still paying less and getting faster service on fixed LTE as compared to Starlink. Notably these are all of the Starlink customers I know despite living in a region with vast rural areas... I've heard from a couple people I know out in the country that they are stuck on the waitlist. I think Starlink may have prioritized urban areas first for whatever reason (just higher customer count presumably).

StillBored 5y ago

Well, at least in my case there was some hope that it would set a floor for internet service in larger towns where the local cable/telco monopoly just milks the customers for $100+ a month for really subpar internet service (I pay about that for 20Mbit upload from the cable co, the DSL provider can barely do 2 up 40 mbits down for roughly the same price). Where as a couple miles away the DSL provider strung fiber to compete with google and the price is less than they would charge me for said crummy internet. The joke here is that the lucky few percent of people who can get fiber here have two choices, but the rest of us are stuck in the 1990s. And this is a dense area, far more dense than 100 miles W of here in the little towns of population 1k that can also get fiber from their local telco co-op.

woah 5y ago
That density means there is no way that Starlink will be able to service more than a couple percent of your town any time soon.

justapassenger 5y ago

That was totally the hype. I had multiple friends, living in SF, telling me how they'll finally ditch Comcast and use Starlink. I also had other friends telling me how SpaceX is going to bankrupt all ISPs in the world, and they'll make trillions of dollars in revenue. And even here, in comments to this very article, you can still find people waiting for Starlink, to lower down their internet cost, while they live in suburbs of big metropolitan areas. Anything that's coming from Musk has a huge hype, for better or worse.

steelstraw 5y ago
Even though Musk was saying that it's not really meant for cities and wouldn't be a serious competitor there? "the SpaceX CEO argued that Starlink won't be a major threat to telcos because the satellite service won't be good enough for high-population areas and will mostly be used by rural customers without access to fast broadband." https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/musk-says-starlink-isnt-for-big-cities-wont-be-huge-threat-to-telcos/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/musk-...
- justapassenger 5y ago
  > Starlink was publicly announced in January 2015, with bandwidth to carry up to 50% of all backhaul communications traffic, and up to 10% of local Internet traffic, in high-density cities. CEO Elon Musk said that there is significant unmet demand for low-cost global broadband capabilities. Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink It's typical Musk - announcing something that sounds super cool and impossible, because it's impossible. Ad later quietly scale it down to something still pretty cool, but nothing like it was presented initially. And ride the hype as much as you can in the process.
  - mdasen 5y ago
    Elon Musk often makes contradictory statements. He's more recently said that Starlink has received 500,000 pre-orders and that, "Most likely, all of the initial 500k will receive service. More of a challenge when we get into the several million user range." Some of this might be coming from real-world experience with the network and an update on previous incorrect assumptions. Part of it might be simply making bombastic claims. Right now, Starlink hit around 100,000 customers with 1,700 satellites. With the full 12,000 satellites we'd then expect 700,000 customers. That might change given that the satellites aren't geostationary and they haven't launched in many countries, but to hit a million customers in the US, they'd need to increase the number of customers per satellite significantly. Maybe there are improvements they can make that we don't know about, but it seems like Starlink's advantages are in making cheap rockets and cheap satellites - which is very cool, but they likely don't have radio advantages. Starlink is also thinking about an additional 20,000 satellites so it's possible that they'll just keep increasing the number of satellites. Still, if they're seeing linear gains, that's still a relatively small number of users even with 32,000 satellites (and even the 12,000 is 4-5 years away). https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210510/08050146767/elon-musk-makes-it-clear-starlink-wont-have-capacity-to-disrupt-us-broadband.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210510/08050146767/elon-...

jcrawfordor 5y ago

I know a surprising number of Starlink customers who are paying more for slower service compared to our incumbent ISP (Comcast). This seems to have been a very common part of the hype. I get it, there have been times in the past that I've used fixed LTE to avoid Comcast, but I actually think I was still paying less and getting faster service on fixed LTE as compared to Starlink. Notably these are all of the Starlink customers I know despite living in a region with vast rural areas... I've heard from a couple people I know out in the country that they are stuck on the waitlist. I think Starlink may have prioritized urban areas first for whatever reason (just higher customer count presumably).