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> by the way, that would leave an addressable market of close to 1B people Hell would freeze over before Musk would even dream about making a philantropic serv

> by the way, that would leave an addressable market of close to 1B people Hell would freeze over before Musk would even dream about making a philantropic service for poor people, because that's what you are describing. The poorest of the poorest in the next 50 years will be the last 10-20% who for whatever reason remains stuck in the badlands as opposed to moving to the urbanized world

bryanlarsen 4y ago
I'd take the "hell freezing over" side of that bet. He's already providing 10s of millions worth of internet service for free to Ukrainians. Do they count as poor? Starlink satellites spend a lot of time flying over Africa. And if it's priced at $110/month it will not see a lot of use. So for a very low marginal cost he can provide a very valuable service. Therefore I wouldn't be surprised if somebody talks him into giving it away for the next cause du jour, especially if its structured so he only gives away the service (low marginal cost) and not the terminals (high marginal cost).
chrisco255 4y ago
No I am not. The "90% urbanized" figure was just thrown out there. Let's not debate urban vs. rural because even in the U.S. nowhere close to 90% of people have gigabit internet speeds or 5G availability. The addressable market for Starlink in US alone is likely 50-80 million people. DirecTV and Dish Network alone have over 30 million U.S. customers combined. Keep in mind Starlink has been engineered for portability unlike DirecTV and Dish. More than 11 million families own an RV. And 12 million own registered boats. How many own second homes? Starlink takes 2 minutes to setup and 2 minutes to tear down. Back to residential service though. There are tens of millions of households that are limited by old copper lines that were never filled in or cable extensions that were never dug. Or if the cable does exist, it's still at slower speeds and certainly not gigabit. Relying on mobile isn't a great option as most services today still throttle speeds down to 600 kbps when exceeding 15GB a month (which is nothing these days). But worldwide, including in all the BRICS countries and the global south that rapidly growing in GDP and global importance is about 2-3 billion people with varying levels of spotty, congested, unreliable internet. These communities are probably lucky if they have 4G in many cases. That market is worth hundreds of billions over the next few decades, even when adjusting for purchasing power. Easily. And your assumptions about relative competitiveness vs the highest quality residential speeds (which are only largely available to people in dense urban cores) are perhaps one upgrade away from being achieved. They already solved the hardest problem with regards to satellite communication: latency. It will be interesting to see how far they can push the bandwidth at scale over the years.

bryanlarsen 4y ago

I'd take the "hell freezing over" side of that bet. He's already providing 10s of millions worth of internet service for free to Ukrainians. Do they count as poor? Starlink satellites spend a lot of time flying over Africa. And if it's priced at $110/month it will not see a lot of use. So for a very low marginal cost he can provide a very valuable service. Therefore I wouldn't be surprised if somebody talks him into giving it away for the next cause du jour, especially if its structured so he only gives away the service (low marginal cost) and not the terminals (high marginal cost).

chrisco255 4y ago

No I am not. The "90% urbanized" figure was just thrown out there. Let's not debate urban vs. rural because even in the U.S. nowhere close to 90% of people have gigabit internet speeds or 5G availability. The addressable market for Starlink in US alone is likely 50-80 million people. DirecTV and Dish Network alone have over 30 million U.S. customers combined. Keep in mind Starlink has been engineered for portability unlike DirecTV and Dish. More than 11 million families own an RV. And 12 million own registered boats. How many own second homes? Starlink takes 2 minutes to setup and 2 minutes to tear down. Back to residential service though. There are tens of millions of households that are limited by old copper lines that were never filled in or cable extensions that were never dug. Or if the cable does exist, it's still at slower speeds and certainly not gigabit. Relying on mobile isn't a great option as most services today still throttle speeds down to 600 kbps when exceeding 15GB a month (which is nothing these days). But worldwide, including in all the BRICS countries and the global south that rapidly growing in GDP and global importance is about 2-3 billion people with varying levels of spotty, congested, unreliable internet. These communities are probably lucky if they have 4G in many cases. That market is worth hundreds of billions over the next few decades, even when adjusting for purchasing power. Easily. And your assumptions about relative competitiveness vs the highest quality residential speeds (which are only largely available to people in dense urban cores) are perhaps one upgrade away from being achieved. They already solved the hardest problem with regards to satellite communication: latency. It will be interesting to see how far they can push the bandwidth at scale over the years.