SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites – for 100x the bandwidth

When COVID hit, I knew a lot of engineers who decided to move to rural areas / small farms because they could leverage Starlink to work remotely.

Last year, when I asked whether they still liked Starlink, all of them said it is amazing, but they had gotten fiber coverage in their area from a local provider, so they don't use it anymore, or just use it as a backup.

I think Starlink was a huge demand signal that there were people willing to pay a premium for faster-than-radio internet. So, unless they manage to be cheaper and faster than fiber, I don't think there is much of an endgame there.

But there are a few places that will need Starlink, like planes, cruise ships, and islands. I'm just not sure if that will justify that $1T valuation.

Europe is too well-run (even the poorer parts) for Starlink to be as relevant.

Having lived in Central America, imagine all the workers that are laying the internet cables going back at night and digging them up to sell. A government that, 50% of the time, won't actually build anything when given the funding, and usually can't get the funding anyways. Plus, in some parts, weather can result in internet going out and, given the government, staying out for quite a while.

It's a fair point that those in poorer places will have less money, but for instance, Mexico's Starlink pricing is pretty standard, it's like 50-100 EUR per month. They pay it anyways because they need it, and because it's the best option.

Starlink is a great decentralization for anyone living under corrupt dysfunctional governments, where they can't rely on that centralized system.

one difference is that fiber isn't mobile.

Though all these satellites might give fixed-location folks higher bandwidth, they could also service many more concurrent mobile customers. Connectivity would probably be better too because more satellites would be in view.

Also, don't underestimate the benefit of robust competition, even if you don't use starlink.

I have a really good friend who used Starlink for his cottage in Canada and as soon as there was broadband he switched away. Starlink was unreliable and slow compared to what he has now.

In my country today the people who use it the most are in northern cities that don't even have roads going to them.

I have fiber (I can get up to 300 Gbps at my home in the Seattle area, but I got opted for the 2Gbps) and I have Starlink as backup/failover. I previously used my mobile service for that but learned the hard way that when there's a large internet outage in the area, as it did when we had a bad storm, so does mobile service, either power loss or it can't support the influx of everyone using their phone internet. So now I have starlink as a backup. It's a very small portable unit that I can also take when camping. It's a great service. Also it's powering a lot of airlines now, it's fast and reliable to the point I can watch youtube and tiktok on my flights.

India really has very deep penetration of 5g, and at very low cost. There might be a rare place that starlink might be needed but really I cannot image starlink having much consumer/retail uptake in india. Not needed, and too expensive. There might be commercial users - offshore rigs etc, but india is too densely populated for there to be many 'truly remote' locations.

India has still not permitted starlink to start ops.

> I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have <.1% the money to spend on such things.

Starlink has a Military arm called Starshield. If strategically important to US military and other militaries who are partners of the USA, that will be many millions/billions.

https://www.spacex.com/starshield

Eeh even ther its a stretch , when people talk about Africa - they should really specify where exactly. PLaces like SouthAfrica [1] already have a robust Fiber network with accelerated buildout of FTTH. Ditto for most of Eastern Africa countries which have FTTH to most of the major cities and subururbs with accelerated buildouts ongoing. Unless its a conflict area most regions are getting wired up pretty fast to enhancce business connectivity - the speeds and bandwith for starlink make noe economic sense once a developing pop are factored in.The only major push for many countries approvals is basically strong armed and shaken down by the US admin on behalf of Musk[2].

[1]https://ctcommunications.co.za/blog/south-africa-fiber-rollo...

[2]https://tech.yahoo.com/science/articles/us-pushes-nations-fa...

Recently I flew on a long-distance (so at least a dozen hours of flight time) low-budget airline that had 60 Mbps download/12 Mbps upload and it specifically called out SpaceX Starlink for being able to provide this for free. A video call went smoothly. There was connectivity from takeoff to landing with no interruption in between. This was the best airline experience I've had yet.

I feel like no-earth orbit is always going to beat out low-earth orbit in the long-term. I live an area that the USDA classifies as rural and I now have multiple fiber options, including municipal. This isn't to say that Starlink doesn't have its place and I only see it becoming more niche over time and facing more competition in the LEO segment.

Many places have incompetent government that can't/won't build proper infrastructure. For example, the US has allocated around $50B for rural broadband and almost nothing has been built.

There's a lot of places without fiber, e.g. all the ships/jets etc. there's a lot of low-density areas, there's islands with no internet or VERY expensive internet

It's very popular in rural US where running wired broadband is cost prohibitive.

There are many parts of the US that are very spread out, and thus running wires to every home is expensive without subsidies.

There are many places, even in the US, where your only alternative is--believe it or not--dial-up modems. Others had painfully slow--1 Mbps up, 5 Mbps down--Internet.

i live a few miles west of core Palo Alto (technically, still in Palo Alto); Starlink is my only real choice for broadband, and it's great.

24/7 high fidelity radar of the entire earth’s surface. Probably used by NRO’s sentient system and similar classified skynet projects

It's good to have option in case your own government turns rogue.

People in rural parts of America where ISPs don't want to expand into.

You’ve clearly never lived in the US! Big place, not a lot of fiber.

Elon listen to this guy, shut it down, he got fiber and switched so bring the satellites down, it's not going to work. Hackernews has become like reddit, shame it used to be good, now it's an Elon bashing woke echo chamber.

I love being off-grid with just my slow inReach Mini 1. I can communicate in case of an emergency, but otherwise it's a great forcing function to not be hyper connected. I worry if I brought the portable Starlink with I'd connect much more than necessary.

Your comment was interesting.

i just read somewhere about spacex slowly destroying our dark night skies due to their satellite constellations. Thoughts?

You want them to pay a multi-trillion dollar clean-up and cancer fund for car-sized multi-year-service-life satellites burning up in the atmosphere? How much do you want incumbent multi-decade culprits to pay?

EDT: I should have clarified I'm not only talking about incumbent satellite companies because people are replying about the launch volume. Think about pollution from oil companies and coal plants and consider how that compares to an aerospace company. How much have polluting companies been fined relative to multiple trillions of dollars?

The amount of matter which enters Earth's atmosphere from non-manmade sources is far higher than any conceivable amount of space junk today.

Do you have any proof that starlink satellites are worse than the tons of space debris that enter the atmosphere every day?

Eh, his promises are ambitious.

And the gullibility of his investors is bottomless.

I too plan on increasing my revenue 100-fold by 2030.

"...we're good." ? It seems that you are excluding all of the actual users onboard with Starlink tech. I'm one. I had choices and Starlink was a welcome addition to the short list.

In a short time, Starlink proved to be that disruptive "invention" that changed everything. There are already millions of users. Nobody is forced to use Starlink. Yet here we are.

Whether there are investors or not, a positive cashflow and the millions of users prove that Starlink is not just valid to our society at large, but wildly so. My opinion is that it is almost as disruptive as cell phones when they became affordable.

Current number of paid subscriptions: 12 million +. So, actual users is many times that, if subscribers generally represent multiple users per account. Think "Household". And then, if one extrapolates users under institutional, municipal, state or military, the numbers are astronomically increased. Just, individuals walking around inside a Dollar General store...

Are you maybe swayed to make public comments regarding Starlink and other SpaceX products because of your political opinions instead of facts? This is a valid and sincere question, not an accusation.

Starlink was funded internally by SpaceX. What investors are you talking about?

imagine thinking you speak for the 99.9% lol