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I'm curious how no other company has managed to even directly compete with Musk when it comes to a service like Starlink. I believe it had to go through regulat

I'm curious how no other company has managed to even directly compete with Musk when it comes to a service like Starlink. I believe it had to go through regulatory approval. Did no other companies get contracts to provide a similar service, or is this just regulation enabling monopolies?

wumpus 4y ago
Tons of companies can provide services to cruise ships, with bandwidth and latencies depending on how sophisticated their satellites are, and their choice of orbits. SpaceX has 3 direct competitors in similar orbits. All 3 have global (ITU) regulatory approvals, but are behind on building and launching things.
betwixthewires 4y ago
SpaceX has the in house launch capacity, they can launch at cost. Nobody else can do that yet.
pavon 4y ago
It isn’t regulatory - Amazon and OneWeb also have regulatory approval for satellite broadband constellations and have little to show for it. It is all about efficiency. You have to build and launch thousands of satellites, and no company other than SpaceX has driven down the cost of those two things enough to make it feasible.
mschuster91 4y ago
> I'm curious how no other company has managed to even directly compete with Musk when it comes to a service like Starlink. Simple: to provide maximum speed to the end users, you want a large amount of small cells so you can better use the allocated frequency spectrum. However, launches used to be really expensive, so operators had to go for high orbits covering large areas - Iridium, for example, cost 5 billion dollars to build for 77 satellites, meaning a cost per satellite of ~64 million dollars (hardware+launch). In contrast, SpaceX is at ~250k-500k dollars for the satellite and anything from 30-60 million dollars per launch of 60 satellites, so total cost of ~750k-1.5 million dollars per satellite [2]. That's a whole order of magnitude less cost than Iridium. And on top of that, SpaceX's lower orbit also means better service quality due to lower latency and better signal quality. Established satcom providers physically cannot compete with that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellation#First_generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio... [2] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/12/spacex-starlink-satellites-cost-well-below-500000-each-and-falcon-9-launches-less-than-30-million.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/12/spacex-starlink-satell...
bb123 4y ago
I was on a Princess cruise last week that had broadband quality internet provided by SES Networks: https://www.ses.com https://www.ses.com
twic 4y ago
I don't think it's yet clear that Starlink is sustainably profitable. Why would other companies enter a market segment where that is the case? Without VC backing, i mean.

wumpus 4y ago

Tons of companies can provide services to cruise ships, with bandwidth and latencies depending on how sophisticated their satellites are, and their choice of orbits. SpaceX has 3 direct competitors in similar orbits. All 3 have global (ITU) regulatory approvals, but are behind on building and launching things.

betwixthewires 4y ago

SpaceX has the in house launch capacity, they can launch at cost. Nobody else can do that yet.

pavon 4y ago

It isn’t regulatory - Amazon and OneWeb also have regulatory approval for satellite broadband constellations and have little to show for it. It is all about efficiency. You have to build and launch thousands of satellites, and no company other than SpaceX has driven down the cost of those two things enough to make it feasible.

mschuster91 4y ago

> I'm curious how no other company has managed to even directly compete with Musk when it comes to a service like Starlink. Simple: to provide maximum speed to the end users, you want a large amount of small cells so you can better use the allocated frequency spectrum. However, launches used to be really expensive, so operators had to go for high orbits covering large areas - Iridium, for example, cost 5 billion dollars to build for 77 satellites, meaning a cost per satellite of ~64 million dollars (hardware+launch). In contrast, SpaceX is at ~250k-500k dollars for the satellite and anything from 30-60 million dollars per launch of 60 satellites, so total cost of ~750k-1.5 million dollars per satellite [2]. That's a whole order of magnitude less cost than Iridium. And on top of that, SpaceX's lower orbit also means better service quality due to lower latency and better signal quality. Established satcom providers physically cannot compete with that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellation#First_generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio... [2] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/12/spacex-starlink-satellites-cost-well-below-500000-each-and-falcon-9-launches-less-than-30-million.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/12/spacex-starlink-satell...

bb123 4y ago

I was on a Princess cruise last week that had broadband quality internet provided by SES Networks: https://www.ses.com https://www.ses.com

twic 4y ago

I don't think it's yet clear that Starlink is sustainably profitable. Why would other companies enter a market segment where that is the case? Without VC backing, i mean.