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A few more words: they’re struggling to find a niche where their ungodly expensive product makes more sense than the readily available alternatives. In this cas

A few more words: they’re struggling to find a niche where their ungodly expensive product makes more sense than the readily available alternatives. In this case, fair play it’s objectively better.

mediaman 7mo ago
It's not that expensive. The Starlink Mini is around $200, and service is $50/mo for 100gb. I've been somewhat skeptical of the addressable market (doesn't fiber + cell tower network offer good enough coverage?) but I know so many people who have put it on their RV, their boat, or are using it rurally that I've started changing my mind. And the service really is better than cell phone networks, which are far too patchy to provide reliable service at decent speed. And you can put it on standby mode for $5/mo, so you're not even really locked into $50/mo if you're occasionally doing travel where you want to stay connected. And in places like Africa, they've had to tightly rate limit new customers because demand is so high.
- mattmaroon 7mo ago
  Yeah, as an RVer, I can tell you that you would probably be surprised by how much of the country does not have readily available cell service. And even if it does, they might not have it on your network. I was paying more to have SIM cards for all of the big three, and getting much less out of it
  - infinitewars 7mo ago
    RV is a great use case but a tiny market. For fixed broadband the others are cheaper most everywhere in the U.S. that people actually live.
    - panick21_ 7mo ago
      The markets are additive. The great thing about Starlink is that it is GLOBAL. Meaning if you want to offer it for ships and planes (where there are no alternatives) you might as well also offer it to RV. And to rural people. And to the military. And you can do so in every country on the whole planet at the same time. Having a few 1000s of sats to cover the whole planet is crazy efficient.
      - infinitewars 7mo ago
        If you look at just the satellites, the build + launch costs are about $2.5M ea, which is impressive to be sure. But they only last 5 years, so that's $500k per year replacement costs. Then if you look at their capacity, they still can't meet their FCC / RDOF broadband designation speeds, but let's be generous and say they can serve 1000 simultaneous users per satellite (their current ratio, let's say it's good enough, incl. oversubscription ratio). So that already means 50%-100% of the entire monthly Internet bill from a consumer is going to just be replacing satellites. Let alone everything else to be an ISP. This is very basic math. They need to launch more satellites if they want to hit their RDOF throughput goals and serve customers in the remaining areas. The most valuable extra-rural areas were low hanging fruit and already drying up.. the future addressable market is more dense and competitive suburban areas, which further limits the number of users per satellite because everyone shares the same spot beam spectrum. But as you know well--having your personal connections to SpaceX it seems as you always defend them on HN--Starlink is about Golden Dome not consumer internet, so the private markets will fund it.
        mattmaroon 7mo ago
        I live in a city. Like a large number of Americans, I had one broadband provider available for 20 years. (Something like 75% of us have 1 or 2). The price was high and the service was bad. I struggled to reliably achieve 20mbs at $80/mo. Starlink is better than that, and it’s millions of people. 5g home internet is slow to spread here too. Their market is large.
        infinitewars 7mo ago
        Yes and unless you're paying Starlink say $300/mo, they are taking a loss to serve you internet. Cities are especially difficult for them because more users are in the same spot beam so everyone shares the spectrum and they need even lower oversubscription ratios.
        mattmaroon 7mo ago
  - sangel21 7mo ago
    Australia we just turned 3G off now there are large black spots everywhere for hours. Some trades now use them in there cars, they can use it for mobile service/internet nearly anywhere
- uyzstvqs 7mo ago
  Residential prices: 100 Mbps down / 15-35 Mbps up, unlimited data, includes hardware rental: €29/month in Europe, $39/month in the US. 200 Mbps down / 15-35 Mbps up, unlimited data, includes hardware rental: €49/month in Europe, $69/month in the US. 400+ Mbps down / 20-40 Mbps up (QoS higher priority), unlimited data, includes hardware rental: €69/month in Europe, $109/month in the US. A good high-speed fiber connection is obviously better quality and value; but if you don't have one, then Starlink is absolutely the most competitive option you're going to get.
  - dadoum 7mo ago
    I don't have a lot of data points, but in metropolitan France at least I think you would always be better off with either a fiber or a 5G subscription, because it will be cheaper for more throughput, and because fiber is very widespread. In Germany I think you are still better off with a cable subscription which also seems to be widespread in my experience and is cheaper than Starlink even if it's not as good as French deals (I only take in account offers without a contract for fairness, but if you don't mind you may be able to get even cheaper offers).
htx80nerd 7mo ago
>A few more words: they’re struggling to find a niche where their ungodly expensive product makes more sense than the readily available alternatives pretty obvious you never worked for an ISP and forgot about all the `middle of nowhere` customers who have no high speed internet. even for me, in houston texas, we cant get fiber to the home and were stuck with AT&T DSL which was like $60 per month and ungodly slow. Also my GF and I both work from home and she does massive file uploads. had xfinity not been available starlink would be an easy choice. ive tried 5g hotspots and they are not super reliable.
- overfeed 7mo ago
  In all fairness, it was a qualified statement: "readily available alternatives". That immediately disqualifies customers stuck in the boonies, or a few hundred feet away from service coverage.
  - mattmaroon 7mo ago
    He has readily available alternatives, but they suck. There are other, far worse forms of satellite Internet, so everybody has a readily available alternative. That makes it not a qualifying statement at all.
  - Wyverald 7mo ago
    Just noting that the phrasing "readily available alternatives" by itself is slightly ambiguous: it could be read as subsetting ("the alternatives that are readily available") or just attributive ("the alternatives, which are readily available").
- kdkdkrjrj 7mo ago
  To be fair: this is an america regulatory capture problem.
  - nradov 7mo ago
    Regulatory capture is only a secondary reason why many parts of the USA still lack cheap, reliable broadband Internet access. It turns out that running fiber everywhere is expensive, and in some areas the potential customer base doesn't justify the cost.
lurkingllama 7mo ago
In the (relatively) rural area that I live in, the only ISP options available were something like $75/mo for 10mbsp speeds. Starlink was an incredible blessing when it became available. Legitimately feels like magic in comparison to the existing options we had.
mattmaroon 7mo ago
They have several niches where the alternatives are more expensive and worse. Half the RVers in any park have it now. RVing teaches you how much of the country is not covered by cell signal. Boats. Another one I know first hand: food trucks. I do several events a year where cell signals get overwhelmed and cease to function, but I still have to process my credit cards. I’d say a solid 25% of food trucks are running these now.
inemesitaffia 7mo ago
Starlink costs around the same as business mobile Internet. Or see T-Mobile away
lxgr 7mo ago
> their ungodly expensive product Do you have any idea how much other satellite operators charge per megabyte or Mbit/s?
- victorbjorklund 7mo ago
  Their competitors isn’t other satellite in most cases. It’s fiber, 5G and so on.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - nostromo 7mo ago
    Starlink isn't expensive by those standards either.
    - victorbjorklund 7mo ago
      Probably depends where. It is for sure more expensive than fiber with the same speed where I live.
  - infinitewars 7mo ago
    Starlink's main goal isn't consumer internet, it's being the backbone for Golden Dome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...
    - DarmokJalad1701 7mo ago
      > Of course that's terrifying... Why would you be "terrified" of space-based ballistic missile defense? Seems a lot better than ground-based interceptors that have a not-great rate of interception.
    - infinitewars 7mo ago
      For trillions of dollars, Golden Dome is unlikely to be effective at interception, but it destabilizes MAD and can be used as a global prompt strike offense weapon. So, worth it?
wat10000 7mo ago
$39/month for 100Mbps in the middle of nowhere is spectacularly cheap.
- nomel 7mo ago
  [dead]

mediaman 7mo ago

It's not that expensive. The Starlink Mini is around $200, and service is $50/mo for 100gb. I've been somewhat skeptical of the addressable market (doesn't fiber + cell tower network offer good enough coverage?) but I know so many people who have put it on their RV, their boat, or are using it rurally that I've started changing my mind. And the service really is better than cell phone networks, which are far too patchy to provide reliable service at decent speed. And you can put it on standby mode for $5/mo, so you're not even really locked into $50/mo if you're occasionally doing travel where you want to stay connected. And in places like Africa, they've had to tightly rate limit new customers because demand is so high.

mattmaroon 7mo ago
Yeah, as an RVer, I can tell you that you would probably be surprised by how much of the country does not have readily available cell service. And even if it does, they might not have it on your network. I was paying more to have SIM cards for all of the big three, and getting much less out of it
- infinitewars 7mo ago
  RV is a great use case but a tiny market. For fixed broadband the others are cheaper most everywhere in the U.S. that people actually live.
  - panick21_ 7mo ago
    The markets are additive. The great thing about Starlink is that it is GLOBAL. Meaning if you want to offer it for ships and planes (where there are no alternatives) you might as well also offer it to RV. And to rural people. And to the military. And you can do so in every country on the whole planet at the same time. Having a few 1000s of sats to cover the whole planet is crazy efficient.
    - infinitewars 7mo ago
      If you look at just the satellites, the build + launch costs are about $2.5M ea, which is impressive to be sure. But they only last 5 years, so that's $500k per year replacement costs. Then if you look at their capacity, they still can't meet their FCC / RDOF broadband designation speeds, but let's be generous and say they can serve 1000 simultaneous users per satellite (their current ratio, let's say it's good enough, incl. oversubscription ratio). So that already means 50%-100% of the entire monthly Internet bill from a consumer is going to just be replacing satellites. Let alone everything else to be an ISP. This is very basic math. They need to launch more satellites if they want to hit their RDOF throughput goals and serve customers in the remaining areas. The most valuable extra-rural areas were low hanging fruit and already drying up.. the future addressable market is more dense and competitive suburban areas, which further limits the number of users per satellite because everyone shares the same spot beam spectrum. But as you know well--having your personal connections to SpaceX it seems as you always defend them on HN--Starlink is about Golden Dome not consumer internet, so the private markets will fund it.
      - mattmaroon 7mo ago
        I live in a city. Like a large number of Americans, I had one broadband provider available for 20 years. (Something like 75% of us have 1 or 2). The price was high and the service was bad. I struggled to reliably achieve 20mbs at $80/mo. Starlink is better than that, and it’s millions of people. 5g home internet is slow to spread here too. Their market is large.
        infinitewars 7mo ago
        Yes and unless you're paying Starlink say $300/mo, they are taking a loss to serve you internet. Cities are especially difficult for them because more users are in the same spot beam so everyone shares the spectrum and they need even lower oversubscription ratios.
        mattmaroon 7mo ago
- sangel21 7mo ago
  Australia we just turned 3G off now there are large black spots everywhere for hours. Some trades now use them in there cars, they can use it for mobile service/internet nearly anywhere
uyzstvqs 7mo ago
Residential prices: 100 Mbps down / 15-35 Mbps up, unlimited data, includes hardware rental: €29/month in Europe, $39/month in the US. 200 Mbps down / 15-35 Mbps up, unlimited data, includes hardware rental: €49/month in Europe, $69/month in the US. 400+ Mbps down / 20-40 Mbps up (QoS higher priority), unlimited data, includes hardware rental: €69/month in Europe, $109/month in the US. A good high-speed fiber connection is obviously better quality and value; but if you don't have one, then Starlink is absolutely the most competitive option you're going to get.
- dadoum 7mo ago
  I don't have a lot of data points, but in metropolitan France at least I think you would always be better off with either a fiber or a 5G subscription, because it will be cheaper for more throughput, and because fiber is very widespread. In Germany I think you are still better off with a cable subscription which also seems to be widespread in my experience and is cheaper than Starlink even if it's not as good as French deals (I only take in account offers without a contract for fairness, but if you don't mind you may be able to get even cheaper offers).

htx80nerd 7mo ago

>A few more words: they’re struggling to find a niche where their ungodly expensive product makes more sense than the readily available alternatives pretty obvious you never worked for an ISP and forgot about all the `middle of nowhere` customers who have no high speed internet. even for me, in houston texas, we cant get fiber to the home and were stuck with AT&T DSL which was like $60 per month and ungodly slow. Also my GF and I both work from home and she does massive file uploads. had xfinity not been available starlink would be an easy choice. ive tried 5g hotspots and they are not super reliable.

overfeed 7mo ago
In all fairness, it was a qualified statement: "readily available alternatives". That immediately disqualifies customers stuck in the boonies, or a few hundred feet away from service coverage.
- mattmaroon 7mo ago
  He has readily available alternatives, but they suck. There are other, far worse forms of satellite Internet, so everybody has a readily available alternative. That makes it not a qualifying statement at all.
- Wyverald 7mo ago
  Just noting that the phrasing "readily available alternatives" by itself is slightly ambiguous: it could be read as subsetting ("the alternatives that are readily available") or just attributive ("the alternatives, which are readily available").
kdkdkrjrj 7mo ago
To be fair: this is an america regulatory capture problem.
- nradov 7mo ago
  Regulatory capture is only a secondary reason why many parts of the USA still lack cheap, reliable broadband Internet access. It turns out that running fiber everywhere is expensive, and in some areas the potential customer base doesn't justify the cost.

lurkingllama 7mo ago

In the (relatively) rural area that I live in, the only ISP options available were something like $75/mo for 10mbsp speeds. Starlink was an incredible blessing when it became available. Legitimately feels like magic in comparison to the existing options we had.

mattmaroon 7mo ago

They have several niches where the alternatives are more expensive and worse. Half the RVers in any park have it now. RVing teaches you how much of the country is not covered by cell signal. Boats. Another one I know first hand: food trucks. I do several events a year where cell signals get overwhelmed and cease to function, but I still have to process my credit cards. I’d say a solid 25% of food trucks are running these now.

inemesitaffia 7mo ago

Starlink costs around the same as business mobile Internet. Or see T-Mobile away

lxgr 7mo ago

> their ungodly expensive product Do you have any idea how much other satellite operators charge per megabyte or Mbit/s?

victorbjorklund 7mo ago
Their competitors isn’t other satellite in most cases. It’s fiber, 5G and so on.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- nostromo 7mo ago
  Starlink isn't expensive by those standards either.
  - victorbjorklund 7mo ago
    Probably depends where. It is for sure more expensive than fiber with the same speed where I live.
- infinitewars 7mo ago
  Starlink's main goal isn't consumer internet, it's being the backbone for Golden Dome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...
  - DarmokJalad1701 7mo ago
    > Of course that's terrifying... Why would you be "terrified" of space-based ballistic missile defense? Seems a lot better than ground-based interceptors that have a not-great rate of interception.
  - infinitewars 7mo ago
    For trillions of dollars, Golden Dome is unlikely to be effective at interception, but it destabilizes MAD and can be used as a global prompt strike offense weapon. So, worth it?

wat10000 7mo ago

$39/month for 100Mbps in the middle of nowhere is spectacularly cheap.

nomel 7mo ago
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