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>Have you ever paid for satellite Internet before? Yes, as the first public internet provider in North Europe (1988) I paid for almost all satellite Internet s
by morphle 3y ago
>Have you ever paid for satellite Internet before?
Yes, as the first public internet provider in North Europe (1988) I paid for almost all satellite Internet services before and usually was one of the earliest adopters. For example [1].
In 1997 I met with Ian Alexander and proposed him to deploy his first 400 meter long rigid airships at 10km-20km height to become the first very low-orbit internet provider. He subsequently got an experimental flying permit in my country through my political parliamentary contacts.
It turned out to cost $40K per month to crew the rigid airships 24/7, just barely profitable for a 500km circle of reception.
>Paying less than $1 per GB is something that happened because of starlink.
The actual cost of 1 GB transit traffic in 2024 is $0,00006944 (I am sorry, I may be off by a factor of 1024, than it could be $0,0711, My apologies, as soon as I have this confirmed I won't be able to edit this HN comment anymore).
Starlink buys internet transit traffic locally where your receiver is, then bounces it off their satellite back to you. So they pay very little compared to what they charge you. And I have never ever been able to download 1 GB for $1, they throttle you long before you reach 75 GB per month.
And when your area is oversubscribed they just throttle your traffic, no need to raise the price.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...
[2]http://landewers.net/Rigid%20Airship%20Design-UK.pdf http://landewers.net/Rigid%20Airship%20Design-UK.pdf
- notquitetrue 3y agoYou’re forgetting the part where they launch and operate thousands of satellites and many earth stations, as well as manufacture the user terminals. Oh and they have to write the software that makes the whole thing work.
- morphle 3y ago"In May 2018, SpaceX estimated the total cost of designing, building and deploying the constellation would be at least US$10 billion. Revenues from Starlink in 2022 were reportedly $1.4 billion accompanied by a net loss, with a small profit being reported starting in 2023." [1]. Other estimates and other credible sources point out that SpaceX made adequate profits if you count the military and government subsidies[1]. Not only the Chinese government is deploying their own satellite internet, several other are too. Probably because its profitable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink
- notquitetrue 3y agoAre you making an argument against supply and demand here? I’m trying to figure out what basic principles of economics I need to explain before I further engage.
- morphle 3y agoI sincerely doubt economic principles where ever a concern [1]. I remember many rumours of Elon Musk in Moscow at the founding of SpaceX with former Pentagon people? Lots of other reports on military considerations of SpaceX. Hard to verify [2][3]. [1] https://spacenews.com/spacex-providing-starlink-services-to-dod-under-unique-terms-and-conditions/ https://spacenews.com/spacex-providing-starlink-services-to-... [2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3082067/Russian-space-bosses-SPAT-Elon-Musk-tried-buy-rocket-persuading-build-new-book-reveals.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3082067/Russ... [3] https://spacenews.com/first-satellite-for-chinese-g60-megaconstellation-rolls-off-assembly-line/ https://spacenews.com/first-satellite-for-chinese-g60-megaco...
- dotnet00 3y agoYou're mixing up stories. Elon was in Moscow prior to founding SpaceX as he was attempting to purchase an ICBM to refurbish into a rocket to send a terrarium to Mars. He settled on founding SpaceX on the flight back because after the oligarchs lead him around a bunch with no intention of actually negotiating a sale, they straight up spat at him.
- morphle 3y agoI was only vaguely alluding to the military background of Elon's contacts around the funding cycles of SpaceX. I'm sure we don't know the real story. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_SpaceX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_SpaceX
- justinwp 3y ago> they throttle you long before you reach 75 GB per month I regularly go over 1TB in a month without throttling on the standard plan...
- inemesitaffia 3y agoI'm talking about $1 per GB for satellite internet. In 2019. Or even today in 2024 I'd like to pay that kinda money for transit in sub Saharan Africa. We don't all live in Ashburn and Frankfurt. Some people are connected only via Intelsat and OneWeb As for starlink throttling. There's people doing multiple TB per month every month. Go try that on your residential Viasat, HughesNet or Eutelsat plan Transit is only expensive when you're small. What makes you think it's a big part of operational cost? Or something to base the retail price on? You likely spend more on power and staff In Europe, starlink buys virtual or real l2 transport circuits and carries traffic to Frankfurt. They use lasers to carry traffic too when they don't have ground stations like in Kazakhstan You can't afford to use Iridium to watch Netflix if you could even get enough bandwidth