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Extremely misleading comment. As was publicly stated multiple times in basically every forum where this was discussed again and again the core issue was/is: Uk

Extremely misleading comment. As was publicly stated multiple times in basically every forum where this was discussed again and again the core issue was/is: Ukrainian military user =/= typical western starlink user. Starlinks in Ukraine were/are seeing an order of magnitude more usage in an adversarial environment, the cost to provide this level of service is clearly not the same vs supplying some Canadian shack in the woods. Even for civilians the star links are overwhelmingly shared, used as public access for a whole town as the only way to talk etc. This again is not typical and far exceeds the designed-for workload So I see a few possibilities here 1) You were aware of this basic reality but chose to mislead others Or the more charitable/HN friendly take: 2) Your routine sources of information are so biased and agenda-driven that this obvious, basic set of facts didn’t get to you because it would be inconvenient for their narrative. Since it’s probably #2 I encourage you to seek out more diverse sources of information, as you’re probably being misled about a lot more than just Starlink in Ukraine

foobarqux 3y ago
The issue is not "is the cost more?" it's "is it 10x more?" This is hundreds of millions of dollars in this case. There is no evidence that anything at all has been changed in terms of hardware, satellites etc. Maybe you to have to hire extra cybersecurity personnel but not $100m worth (and you could tell if they had).
- smallnamespace 3y ago
  It seems to me that if satellite bandwidth is the dominant cost, and a customer requires 10x more bandwidth, then you should charge 10x more. You should do that even if you haven’t launched any other satellites, because serving that customer means you can’t serve 10 others.
  - foobarqux 3y ago
    There isn't any evidence that there is actually 10x more bandwidth cost on average across all mil-gov terminals vs average across all retail users (who are pretty likely to be streaming Netflix/Youtube as well). 10x increase is a lot. More importantly, if you don't increase capacity all you are doing is charging an arbitrary price to implement priority. Starlink knows which are the military terminals so it can do that at no cost. I haven't seen reports of them increasing capacity and I don't think it costs anywhere near $100 million to do so. But if this is so easy to justify why aren't they making the per-unit/per-unit-service cost public? Or the total cost. I don't think most other cost of arms to Ukraine are hidden.
    - smallnamespace 3y ago
      > if you don't increase capacity all you are doing is charging an arbitrary price to implement priority This sort of logic, followed to its conclusion, implies that nobody should charge for variable costs before they have actually been incurred, even if said costs are 'chunky'. For example, it implies that TSMC shouldn't charge a customer (Apple, let's say) more for its large order, unless TSMC has already broken ground on a new fab.
      - foobarqux 3y ago
        You would be right if 1. there were any reason to believe that Starlink would be increasing capacity 2. the hundreds of millions of dollars of premium were "reasonable" to build that increased capacity. But I don't see much sign of increased capacity (they may have built an extra ground station somewhere) certainly not anywhere near hundreds of millions of dollars worth. And I'm not even sure it is possible to increase capacity: The constraint is probably the satellite to ground bandwidth which you can increase by adding satellites but not in a specific area because they are LEO.
        smallnamespace 3y ago
        I think Starlink is justified in charging more for higher bandwidth usage even if they have not increased capacity, and have no current plans to do so. In another context, it's fair that I should pay 10x more for 10 diapers than one diaper. This is true even if the diaper company has no immediate plans to make another diaper factory. Price here is a signal to allocate scarce resources — in this case, the resources and labor that went into the diapers, as well as the amortized cost of the factory needed to make them. Is Starlink special and thus subject to pricing rules that other businesses are not? If not, is it a special case simply because it's Ukraine? If the latter, it'd be more honest to simply say: Ukraine is under attack and needs a helping hand. Starlink is uniquely positioned to help and ought to pitch in out of the goodness of their own hearts. Digging into their cost structure is really a diversion from the actual argument, which is that we feel they have a moral duty to help.

foobarqux 3y ago

The issue is not "is the cost more?" it's "is it 10x more?" This is hundreds of millions of dollars in this case. There is no evidence that anything at all has been changed in terms of hardware, satellites etc. Maybe you to have to hire extra cybersecurity personnel but not $100m worth (and you could tell if they had).

smallnamespace 3y ago
It seems to me that if satellite bandwidth is the dominant cost, and a customer requires 10x more bandwidth, then you should charge 10x more. You should do that even if you haven’t launched any other satellites, because serving that customer means you can’t serve 10 others.
- foobarqux 3y ago
  There isn't any evidence that there is actually 10x more bandwidth cost on average across all mil-gov terminals vs average across all retail users (who are pretty likely to be streaming Netflix/Youtube as well). 10x increase is a lot. More importantly, if you don't increase capacity all you are doing is charging an arbitrary price to implement priority. Starlink knows which are the military terminals so it can do that at no cost. I haven't seen reports of them increasing capacity and I don't think it costs anywhere near $100 million to do so. But if this is so easy to justify why aren't they making the per-unit/per-unit-service cost public? Or the total cost. I don't think most other cost of arms to Ukraine are hidden.
  - smallnamespace 3y ago
    > if you don't increase capacity all you are doing is charging an arbitrary price to implement priority This sort of logic, followed to its conclusion, implies that nobody should charge for variable costs before they have actually been incurred, even if said costs are 'chunky'. For example, it implies that TSMC shouldn't charge a customer (Apple, let's say) more for its large order, unless TSMC has already broken ground on a new fab.
    - foobarqux 3y ago
      You would be right if 1. there were any reason to believe that Starlink would be increasing capacity 2. the hundreds of millions of dollars of premium were "reasonable" to build that increased capacity. But I don't see much sign of increased capacity (they may have built an extra ground station somewhere) certainly not anywhere near hundreds of millions of dollars worth. And I'm not even sure it is possible to increase capacity: The constraint is probably the satellite to ground bandwidth which you can increase by adding satellites but not in a specific area because they are LEO.
      - smallnamespace 3y ago
        I think Starlink is justified in charging more for higher bandwidth usage even if they have not increased capacity, and have no current plans to do so. In another context, it's fair that I should pay 10x more for 10 diapers than one diaper. This is true even if the diaper company has no immediate plans to make another diaper factory. Price here is a signal to allocate scarce resources — in this case, the resources and labor that went into the diapers, as well as the amortized cost of the factory needed to make them. Is Starlink special and thus subject to pricing rules that other businesses are not? If not, is it a special case simply because it's Ukraine? If the latter, it'd be more honest to simply say: Ukraine is under attack and needs a helping hand. Starlink is uniquely positioned to help and ought to pitch in out of the goodness of their own hearts. Digging into their cost structure is really a diversion from the actual argument, which is that we feel they have a moral duty to help.