5 ms·

I think Starlink is a gamechanger, but I guess that's part of SpaceX?

yumraj 4y ago
But what's the size of the market? TAM may be huge, but what's a realistic SOM? In other words, how many people with hard wired fiber/coax will change to Starlink or will be be useful only for the rural/remote segment. Yes, there's some international, marine, flight etc. market, but, again, how big is that. Serious question - is there any real data?
- dboreham 4y ago
  Starlink will never be competitive with wired connectivity. Source: Claude Shannon.
  - yumraj 4y ago
    Exactly my point. So, it will always be limited in market size and hence it may be a gamechanger for a subset of the use-cases, such as the ones I mentioned, but not from an financial standpoint.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    Don't go too far with that. Fiber beats starlink by orders of magnitude. With coax it depends on how it's set up. Plenty of existing lines have worse upload speed than starlink because of frequency allocations that are expensive to change. Phone wires are very bad at carrying data and are usually much slower than starlink.
- kjksf 4y ago
  "42 million Americans don't have high-speed internet" That's just in U.S. Starlink is world-wide. Back of envelope calcs: $100/month == $1k a year. 1 million * $1k = $1 billion 10 million = $10 billion. Estimated cost to replace all Starlink satellites every 5 years: $10 billion. That's $2 billion a year. Cost: $2 billion/year. Revenue: $10 billion/year. Profit: $8 billion/year. Assuming only 25% of Americans currently without high-speed internet will opt for Starlink, not counting world-wide users, not counting commercial applications (boats, planes, gas stations), not counting using Starlink as internet backbone (i.e. alternative to under sea fiber). Most likely Starlink will be a cash cow (and finance Mars colonization). https://www.npr.org/2022/05/11/1098368187/42-million-americans-dont-have-high-speed-internet-local-providers-may-be-the-ke https://www.npr.org/2022/05/11/1098368187/42-million-america...
  - yumraj 4y ago
    Quick comments: 42M Americans = ~10M households (assuming 4 per household). Starlink is $110/month and upfront $599, which puts it outside many/most of these remote folks. 10M household is the TAM, so SOM would be just 5-10% of that, about 500K-1M households, or even less. Regarding the cost of replacement of satellites and their operational costs, I have no clue.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      2.5 people per household. So 7.5% of 42 million people would be 1.3M households. The current price is $1.3k a year, so that's $1.7B of service revenue just from the US. And there are more households that are interested even if they have "high speed" service already. So even with those numbers it looks pretty good.
giobox 4y ago
By Musk's own admission, it can never be competitive against the cellular providers - they have the advantage in simple radio/physics terms over satellites. I have some doubts - 4G/5G access is more and more prevalent throughout the US, and it provides better speeds and lower latency for less cost. T-Mobile's latest "home broadband" router that has an integrated 5G modem is surprisingly fast and affordable now, as one example. Starlink simply can't compete there, ever, seemingly. Cellular coverage grows and grows. Maybe there truly are enough customers cellular will never reach to justify low cost satellite internet? I have no doubts a market exists for expensive satellite internet for those that really need it. I pulled 600mbps over the air the other day on a Verizon 5G connection, just sitting in a store in a small town. There is absolutely a risk Starlink will be an amazing technical invention, but not one enough people actually need to buy to justify continuing an affordable service. I think even owning a 2nd internet connection outside of your devices could become weird in the future - who wants wifi if the device can just have connectivity embedded from the factory, skipping wifi, routers and broadband connections altogether unless you want them? Smartphones and watches have already ditched the physical sim cards...
- jcims 4y ago
  The metro/urban bias on HN is rarely more prevalent than when the subject is cars or Internet access. I live on a wooded lot in a reasonably developed area in Ohio. DSL was brought out to my address in ~2004. Today it is limited to 15Mbps down, 768kbps up. 4G has been available since Verizon rolled it out in the area. I have no idea how long ago that was, maybe ten years ago. Today it's good for 25Mbps/2Mbps on a good day, no carrier on bad. I've had Starlink since Feb of 2021. Around November of last year it had become reliable enough that I could use it as my primary Internet access method. The numbers vary, but I would say my average is 140Mbps down and 25Mbps up. So in my specific case, Starlink is the best Internet access, hands down. It has the lowest latency, it has the highest raw and average performance, and it is the most reliable. It has been this way for approximately a year. So in circumstances where the customer is anywhere outside of a urban/suburban area, Starlink is incredibly competitive and may in fact be the best option available.
  - 4y ago
datavirtue 4y ago
I was excited about it also, until I looked into it deeper. It is internet service of last resort. I would default to Hughesnet or skyblue first if I didn't have access to DSL, fiber or cable.
- taeric 4y ago
  This has me intrigued, why? Hughesnet has ludicrously low data caps. (Asking as someone that fits your description. DSL is offered where I live, at 3mbps. :( Cable/fiber are offered if I want to shell a quarter million to help them build their infrastructure... so no.)
- grecy 4y ago
  Tell me you’ve never been stuck with hughesnet without telling me. It is atrocious, and millions of people will jump ship the second they can
  - datavirtue 4y ago
    I agree. But going with Starlink is like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Very spotty service that is more brittle than existing services.
    - grecy 4y ago
      From my experience it’s only spotty in densely populated areas that are oversubscribed. I’ve used it in Canada and Australia and it’s flawless

But what's the size of the market? TAM may be huge, but what's a realistic SOM? In other words, how many people with hard wired fiber/coax will change to Starlink or will be be useful only for the rural/remote segment. Yes, there's some international, marine, flight etc. market, but, again, how big is that. Serious question - is there any real data?

dboreham 4y ago
Starlink will never be competitive with wired connectivity. Source: Claude Shannon.
- yumraj 4y ago
  Exactly my point. So, it will always be limited in market size and hence it may be a gamechanger for a subset of the use-cases, such as the ones I mentioned, but not from an financial standpoint.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  Don't go too far with that. Fiber beats starlink by orders of magnitude. With coax it depends on how it's set up. Plenty of existing lines have worse upload speed than starlink because of frequency allocations that are expensive to change. Phone wires are very bad at carrying data and are usually much slower than starlink.
kjksf 4y ago
"42 million Americans don't have high-speed internet" That's just in U.S. Starlink is world-wide. Back of envelope calcs: $100/month == $1k a year. 1 million * $1k = $1 billion 10 million = $10 billion. Estimated cost to replace all Starlink satellites every 5 years: $10 billion. That's $2 billion a year. Cost: $2 billion/year. Revenue: $10 billion/year. Profit: $8 billion/year. Assuming only 25% of Americans currently without high-speed internet will opt for Starlink, not counting world-wide users, not counting commercial applications (boats, planes, gas stations), not counting using Starlink as internet backbone (i.e. alternative to under sea fiber). Most likely Starlink will be a cash cow (and finance Mars colonization). https://www.npr.org/2022/05/11/1098368187/42-million-americans-dont-have-high-speed-internet-local-providers-may-be-the-ke https://www.npr.org/2022/05/11/1098368187/42-million-america...
- yumraj 4y ago
  Quick comments: 42M Americans = ~10M households (assuming 4 per household). Starlink is $110/month and upfront $599, which puts it outside many/most of these remote folks. 10M household is the TAM, so SOM would be just 5-10% of that, about 500K-1M households, or even less. Regarding the cost of replacement of satellites and their operational costs, I have no clue.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    2.5 people per household. So 7.5% of 42 million people would be 1.3M households. The current price is $1.3k a year, so that's $1.7B of service revenue just from the US. And there are more households that are interested even if they have "high speed" service already. So even with those numbers it looks pretty good.

giobox 4y ago

By Musk's own admission, it can never be competitive against the cellular providers - they have the advantage in simple radio/physics terms over satellites. I have some doubts - 4G/5G access is more and more prevalent throughout the US, and it provides better speeds and lower latency for less cost. T-Mobile's latest "home broadband" router that has an integrated 5G modem is surprisingly fast and affordable now, as one example. Starlink simply can't compete there, ever, seemingly. Cellular coverage grows and grows. Maybe there truly are enough customers cellular will never reach to justify low cost satellite internet? I have no doubts a market exists for expensive satellite internet for those that really need it. I pulled 600mbps over the air the other day on a Verizon 5G connection, just sitting in a store in a small town. There is absolutely a risk Starlink will be an amazing technical invention, but not one enough people actually need to buy to justify continuing an affordable service. I think even owning a 2nd internet connection outside of your devices could become weird in the future - who wants wifi if the device can just have connectivity embedded from the factory, skipping wifi, routers and broadband connections altogether unless you want them? Smartphones and watches have already ditched the physical sim cards...

jcims 4y ago
The metro/urban bias on HN is rarely more prevalent than when the subject is cars or Internet access. I live on a wooded lot in a reasonably developed area in Ohio. DSL was brought out to my address in ~2004. Today it is limited to 15Mbps down, 768kbps up. 4G has been available since Verizon rolled it out in the area. I have no idea how long ago that was, maybe ten years ago. Today it's good for 25Mbps/2Mbps on a good day, no carrier on bad. I've had Starlink since Feb of 2021. Around November of last year it had become reliable enough that I could use it as my primary Internet access method. The numbers vary, but I would say my average is 140Mbps down and 25Mbps up. So in my specific case, Starlink is the best Internet access, hands down. It has the lowest latency, it has the highest raw and average performance, and it is the most reliable. It has been this way for approximately a year. So in circumstances where the customer is anywhere outside of a urban/suburban area, Starlink is incredibly competitive and may in fact be the best option available.
- 4y ago

datavirtue 4y ago

I was excited about it also, until I looked into it deeper. It is internet service of last resort. I would default to Hughesnet or skyblue first if I didn't have access to DSL, fiber or cable.

taeric 4y ago
This has me intrigued, why? Hughesnet has ludicrously low data caps. (Asking as someone that fits your description. DSL is offered where I live, at 3mbps. :( Cable/fiber are offered if I want to shell a quarter million to help them build their infrastructure... so no.)
grecy 4y ago
Tell me you’ve never been stuck with hughesnet without telling me. It is atrocious, and millions of people will jump ship the second they can
- datavirtue 4y ago
  I agree. But going with Starlink is like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Very spotty service that is more brittle than existing services.
  - grecy 4y ago
    From my experience it’s only spotty in densely populated areas that are oversubscribed. I’ve used it in Canada and Australia and it’s flawless