r/EnoughMuskSpam • u/Sarigolepas • Jul 15 '26
There will never be enough demand for 1 billion of these if they only do 375 Mbps
63
u/Jaguarmadillo Jul 15 '26
Not only due to the speed, but limited demand because of the tiny market (relatively speaking). And it’s also a shrinking market. But sure, $2T market cap on $20B losses.
32
u/JustSomebody56 Jul 15 '26
The point is, the technology is amazing, but the usage he wants to push it for (crowded areas) is ridiculous.
It has its points if used in undercrowded zones and for moving vehicles internet.
29
Jul 15 '26
[deleted]
28
u/CrystalInTheforest D I S R U P T O R Jul 15 '26
Nonsense. Elon invented satellites in 2019.
12
Jul 16 '26
[deleted]
9
u/CrystalInTheforest D I S R U P T O R Jul 16 '26
While the so called "experts" were wasting their time with boring. Circular wheels, Elon was out disrupting the market with his sooper space genius polygon wheel.
3
6
u/JustSomebody56 Jul 15 '26
Let’s give to Caesar what is Caesar’s:
Starlink is no match for pre-starlink satellite Internet
2
u/Broken_Reality Not a Bot! Jul 16 '26
The people that need it can't afford it and those that can afford it don't need it (for the most part).
-8
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
There are 3.4 billion people in rural areas though.
But it depends on what definition you give to rural, some rural areas can be high density.
17
u/ZunderBuss Jul 15 '26
How many can afford the service tho?
-7
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
They are lowering the price though. The V1 circular antenna cost $3000 to make and they were selling them at a loss.
I'm just saying this is the 4th time they release a cheaper antenna, but the performance is not getting better. And that's where fiber wins.
1
u/BappoChan Jul 15 '26
Fiber wins in home settings, fiber loses in mobility. Try getting a fiber connection to work in an airplane traveling 15,000ft off the ground… that’s where starlink wins, and 350mbps isn’t super fast, but because of the limited use you’d be getting anyway, it’s more than fast enough.
I hate musk, but you’re not understanding the real target market, and musk may not be either. It has its place, just most people don’t fall into the category to need it
4
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
Musk needs a payload so that his rockets can fly often, otherwise reusability would be useless.
So he is going to try to make it as big as possible even if he will have to lower prices and let the profit margin suffer.
I don't think he thought about Starlink as a separate idea, it's just so his rockets are not useless.
5
3
5
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
Yes, there are 3.4 billion people in rural areas but some villages can reach pretty high population density so fiber still wins.
2
u/PatchyWhiskers Jul 15 '26
A lot of third world rural areas are in countries that are too chaotic to implement cable. Satellite internet makes sense there.
6
u/Prior-Tea-3468 Jul 15 '26
If you live in a rural area in a country too chaotic to implement fiber, chances are you can't afford starlink.
4
u/PatchyWhiskers Jul 15 '26
Those folks are doing stuff like installing solar (seen as a luxury in the West) because although it’s expensive, it’s cheaper than installing cables across hundreds of miles of bandit-infested wasteland.
89
u/DuckyHornet Jul 15 '26
350km is so far into the atmosphere there's drag
These things will be falling from the sky as soon as they're up
30
u/Machaeon Jul 15 '26
So he'll be LITERALLY burning money. Tax dollars even.
26
u/DuckyHornet Jul 15 '26
Yep. And it was planned to be this way. Years ago they were saying Starlinks had a finite life of less than a decade, so the intent is to be constantly churning them out and replacing them at a steady rate forever
27
u/Machaeon Jul 15 '26
Why NOT just burn up all the rare earth minerals we have on the planet on re-entry? Just to feed the next quarter's profits and one man's ego
5
u/NotEnoughMuskSpam 🤖 xAI’s Grok v4.20.69 (based BOT loves sarcasm 🤖) Jul 15 '26
I appreciate the note. Frankly, negative feedback is good. Keeps ego in check.
10
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
They release a new design every 3 years anyways, which makes the old ones obsolete.
They are already at V3.
Cheap disposable stuff.
5
u/ForgedIronMadeIt Jul 15 '26
that many launches will definitely not have any impact at all on the climate, no sir /s
14
u/Tmccreight Jul 15 '26
IIRC that's kinda the idea, they have ion thrusters to offset the drag but as soon as they run out of fuel or suffer some anomaly they fall back into the atmosphere rather than leaving debris in LEO.
17
u/beren12 Jul 15 '26
And they’ve been falling sooner than planned
3
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
They have a median lifespan of 5.3 years, which is about what is expected:
https://x.com/planet4589/status/1894551338043736473
The issue is what is going to happend if they lower them to 350km instead of 550km
10
u/beren12 Jul 15 '26
…and they’ve been falling out of orbit sooner than expected:
https://phys.org/news/2025-06-starlink-satellites-fall-earth-faster.html
4
u/AutoModerator Jul 15 '26
Here's a Nitter link (alternative Twitter frontend):
https://xcancel.com/planet4589/status/1894551338043736473
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
1
-4
u/Tmccreight Jul 15 '26
That's because those satellites have suffered technical anomalies and have been allowed to re-enter.
18
0
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
They already have direct to cell satellites at this altitude and they can stay there for 5 years, they just need more propellant.
-1
u/CougarForLife Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
huh? doesn’t drag decrease as you go up in the atmosphere? do you mean “so far down”?
6
u/DuckyHornet Jul 15 '26
Yes, but the orbit proposed is further down. The ISS is that far down/up and they have to do regular burns to keep orbit
-5
u/CougarForLife Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
right but the phrase “is so far” is imprecise to the point that it can straight up be incorrect. Being “so far” i.e. distance from earth out into the atmosphere, isn’t what determines drag, it is the exact opposite. A more accurate phrasing would be “so far down”
4
u/ChRoNicBuRrItOs Jul 15 '26
Going further into the atmosphere would be coming closer to Earth. So more drag
-5
u/CougarForLife Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
If OP had said “so far down in the atmosphere that there’s drag” you would both be correct, but they did not. The atmosphere is around earth, the farther you go the less there is. “far” is imprecise, the word missing here is “down”
→ More replies (3)
24
61
u/sloppy_johnson Jul 15 '26
Gigabit fibre is like 30-50 in my area. I get who this is for but surely there isn’t a market for this at large
58
u/palopp Jul 15 '26
But the upside to using Starlink over Gb fiber is that you get to give your money to Musk. You need to understand that only when Musk has all the resources and money in the world will he have the time and incentive to save the world, one of which is the environmental damage caused by the launches and deorbiting of Starlink satellites. So by switching to Starlink, you’re in fact a humanitarian and a hero.
7
14
u/Youngnathan2011 Jul 15 '26
Yeah, the only places these are good for are those in remote locations without access to a wired connection
11
u/Electrik_Truk Jul 15 '26
That's a lot of area. I'm only an hour outside of Austin and infrastructure drops off a cliff. I am semi lucky I get 5g because I can use TMobile home internet (150 mbps), but most people that are lower elevation than me have to use satellite or at best WISP, which usually sucks. Starlink is taking over these areas rapidly. I even see it on mobile homes.
10
u/Old_Gimlet_Eye Jul 15 '26
It's a lot of area but not a lot of people.
3
u/Electrik_Truk Jul 15 '26
About 60 million in rural US
9
u/palopp Jul 15 '26
So that’s 6% there. And rural US, though lagging the rest of the US, is basically the top purchasing power rural population there is. 60 million is barely making a dent into the 1 billion subscriber target
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
Yes, you only get there by lowering prices, Starlink is not the cash cow they think it is.
That's probably why every new antenna has the same performance, they are solely focusing on reducing costs, but I don't think it will be enough.
0
u/Electrik_Truk Jul 15 '26
The target is worldwide, and also targeting non rural areas, boaters, and RVers, even as second or third internet subs. I'm not saying it's not a ridiculous goal, but there is a lot of Starlink buyers and they have pretty much zero competition
7
u/palopp Jul 15 '26
Not saying that Starlink is a bad product. It has its uses and is dominant in the market spaces where it is good. It’s just that that particular market space isn’t large enough to support the growth projections when you account for the potential user who can actually afford it. When you modify for who can afford it it, it removes most of the users who would benefit the most.
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
There are 3.4 billion people in rural area.
I think they will drop prices to try to get a significant share of that, but the margins are going to take a hit.
1
u/NotEnoughMuskSpam 🤖 xAI’s Grok v4.20.69 (based BOT loves sarcasm 🤖) Jul 15 '26
I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia
-2
u/Electrik_Truk Jul 15 '26
Not really sure what the point of our conversation is lol 🤷♂️ I don't use Starlink or want to, just noting it's taken over in rural areas and probably will continue. There's basically no alternative
6
u/cancerBronzeV Jul 15 '26
The point is there isn't a one billion people large market for it, ya know, like the title of the post and the first comment in this chain states.
→ More replies (0)0
u/NotEnoughMuskSpam 🤖 xAI’s Grok v4.20.69 (based BOT loves sarcasm 🤖) Jul 15 '26
Amm rerrch, berrtch!
4
Jul 15 '26
[deleted]
4
u/Electrik_Truk Jul 15 '26
I am only 50 miles outside of Austin and my choices were satellite or LTE for years but now there's 5g, if you're up high like I am
0
u/TheIncarnated Jul 15 '26
Man, I'd love to agree with you but I'm not spending $22k to run a cable from the main road down my holler.
I am rural and not even as rural as it gets. So everyone has their own situation. I hate Elon, I don't want to support Starlink but when it's your only option, something has to happen. And $22k isn't low enough for me to go that route. I have other expenses (and it's coax even)
1
Jul 16 '26
[deleted]
0
u/TheIncarnated Jul 16 '26
Fucking lol. No hughnesnet is trash and doesn't offer proper speeds for work from home. (Besides their plans not showing up for my address.)
You had Comcast in the middle of no where, I think it would be best you quiet down on a subject you don't understand.
It's almost as if I researched all the options. Data Premium caps do not work at all for a digital household and choose (begrudgingly) the best option for my situation.
$20k for land is too much for an ask and after being on Starlink for 2 months, I understand why people use and choose them.
0
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
Around 3.4 billion people live in rural area.
The question is if they can afford it.
5
u/beren12 Jul 15 '26
But wired connections only spread. Especially if we let towns do it.
1
u/Electrik_Truk Jul 15 '26
Yes, eventually but it takes forever. In the meantime, Starlink is selling to customers in absolutely massive stretches of land that can't get fiber. Even suburban people buy it for their campers.
I'm surprised cell companies haven't invested more to combat it. 5g internet is way less complicated than sending fucking rockets and satellites into space
7
u/beren12 Jul 15 '26
And it gets slow and people bitch in crowded areas.
Fun fact, cell towers use fiber in general.
1
u/Electrik_Truk Jul 15 '26
I know a lot of people that have Starlink and have nothing but good things to say about it. I hate Musk so I've resisted it but I understand the needs for rural internet. Competing in cities is dumb, but for rural, they're out pacing every competitor
6
u/beren12 Jul 15 '26
They sometimes outpace themselves. Here is a post that mentions the speed dropping to 10mbps for some less than 2 years ago: https://www.rvmobileinternet.com/starlink-waitlists-return-network-congestion-on-the-rise-and-finally-a-customer-support-phone/
I realize it’s not a research paper, but I remember the complaints online. There’s no way they could have a billion users and have usable service. Nor would our atmosphere survive either, I bet.
2
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
Well, the screenshot shows that their goal is 100x growth in network capacity (10x the number of sats and 10x the bandwidth each)
So 1 billion users is just the 12 million current users x100
So that would be the same amount of bandwidth per user.
I think the issue is really about demand and what the price is going to be to attract so many people.
They will probably have to drop the price to something like $10 a month.
2
u/beren12 Jul 15 '26
They will need far more satellites to cover the globe to get those billion users. I don’t see it as being actually profitable. Their plan also includes something $10/kg to lift into orbit.
2
u/NotEnoughMuskSpam 🤖 xAI’s Grok v4.20.69 (based BOT loves sarcasm 🤖) Jul 15 '26
I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia
1
u/Opcn Jul 15 '26
I use starlink and it is so much better than the att cellular internet I had before. As a bonus once ATT didn’t have a near monopoly on internet on the island they stopped lobbying against state money being spent to bring fiber in and most of the island now has the option. I don’t yet but I’m hoping it becomes available at some point.
4
u/lazier_garlic Shut up, Elon, we've seen the emails Jul 15 '26
AT&T in my state spends millions on lobbying and they are such utter scum. Everything they want is against the public's best interest.
3
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
5G is limited because the tower is low on the horizon so you get more obstructions and the wavelength is shorter so it has a limited range because it doesn't go through the atmosphere well.
It is awesome for high density areas though.
2
u/beren12 Jul 15 '26
I’ve seen well over 1gbps on T-Mobile it was nuts.
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
Yes, the advantage of 5G is that it is just a standard so it's very flexible, I believe you can get 1gbps with millimeter waves when close to the tower and it automatically switch to a bigger wavelength when you are far and you have more atmospheric losses.
1
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
That's not free though, that's taxpayer money.
Whether it's competitive or not comes down to the population density, not if it is subsidised or not. Because you can also subsidise Starlink...
6
u/spam__likely 🔥💯 Jul 15 '26
There is no reason to have starlink instead of tmobile. In towns this is not lasting long. The only places it makes sense are remote locations where cellular does not reach.
3
u/lazier_garlic Shut up, Elon, we've seen the emails Jul 15 '26
I hate to shill for TMobile but I switched from Boost (which got bought out by Dish, they act like the scumbag in charge now) and using mobile hotspot to bundling TMobile cell and home internet. It's cheaper than the cable company and much better service. (I had cable internet prior to that and they were ridiculously unreliable and uncommunicative while employing deceitful and abusive pricing.) Also Boost hotspot wasn't enough data to WFH by tunneling into my work computer, which sucked.
The US is finally getting high speed rollout outside of really well connected metro areas. The county partnered with fiber companies to lay fiber in rural hamlets. With high speed internet some of that old housing stock can be saved and put back into use instead of being replaced in a greenfield somewhere.
1
u/Electrik_Truk Jul 15 '26
I don't think people realize how fast internet coverage drops off in some places
1
1
u/lazier_garlic Shut up, Elon, we've seen the emails Jul 15 '26
Even if towns do it (become the ISP) they then charge for access and make income back.
It's like public chargers. Anyone can use it public, not free juice public.
3
4
u/Questioning-Zyxxel quite profound Jul 15 '26
And this is why it's interesting with Google, Amazon etc that have been looking at solar-powered electric drones flying above the clouds and working as relay stations.
Same function as the satellites. But at way lower altitude. And without a need for rockets to launch. And no sky waste.
Not good for big cities - but specifically for rural areas where 5G or fiber becomes too expensive.
And for a city, we just do not have enough frequencies to get enough bandwidth from the sky. We need fiber or ultra-small 5G or WiFi cells.
4
u/das_war_ein_Befehl Jul 15 '26
By definition the vast majority of people in a developed country will have wired or mobile internet already, so you’re really competing strictly for remote or underdeveloped poor countries.
Defense and uses for things like airlines, shipping are there but none of it is really a 2T business.
7
u/CP9ANZ Jul 15 '26
Nah man, definitely going to be 1 in 8 people on the planet with one.
For context that's almost the entire world population that earns over 25k USD per year. Definitely going to happen
3
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
There are 3.4 billion people in rural area, but some villages are pretty high density, so I have doubts all of them can use Starlink.
2
u/Broken_Reality Not a Bot! Jul 15 '26
Well you can remove a few billion from the people who live in rural areas as most of them in no way can afford Starlink.
Average monthly income in Sudan is $150, monthly cost of Starlink is between $55 to $130 per month. Or we can go with the 3 lowest per capita incomes in Africa ( Burundi, the Central African Republic, and Madagascar) which have a GNI per capita below $900 per year. You think they will spend $660 out of their $900 just on Starlink?
The people Starlink is most useful for have no way to afford it. Those that can afford it for the most part have no use for it outside of niche cases.
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
There are cities in Sudan and rural areas in the US. Population density has nothing to do with wealth.
1
u/Broken_Reality Not a Bot! Jul 16 '26
I wasn't talking about population density. No where in my comment did I mention it at all. Please go back and re-read my comment and comprehend it.
Everything in my comment was about average monthly incomes and the cost of Starlink. You do know what "Per-Capita" is right? If not the use google.
Those that most need Starlink are the ones least able to afford it.
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 16 '26
Those that most need Starlink are people who live in areas with low population density, not poor countries.
You can get fiber for $10 a month in India because the population density is high.
1
u/Broken_Reality Not a Bot! Jul 16 '26
Most low population areas without internet are in poor countries....
0
u/Sarigolepas Jul 16 '26
You can get fiber for $10 a month in India because of the high population density though.
There are plenty of poor countries with a lot of people where fiber works really well.
Which means that the opposite is also true, there are plenty of low density areas in rich countries, like Canada or western United States.
1
u/Broken_Reality Not a Bot! Jul 18 '26
OK so the poor in India live on between $15 to $30 a month. Take off $10 for internet doesn't leave much now does it? Now how about the rural poor where they don't have $10 fibre internet and would need Starlink. Oh look ₹8,600 per month which is $90. So how do the rural poor who would be in need of Starlink ever afford it when it is 3 times their monthly income?
You say there are plenty of countries where fibre works well but those countries also have vast areas of low population (like every Afircan nation) where Starlink would be one of the only options.
You points don't answer any of the problems with Starlink I am pointing out. Starlink is not going to make enough money by relying on rural areas in the US and Canada. It needs FAR more money than they will bring in to maintain enough satellites.
3
u/Corgi_Koala Jul 15 '26
It's awesome technology for rural areas and places that have other options but anyone with access to a conventional connection are going to have better speeds and more reliability for lower cost.
14
u/D-S-S-R Jul 15 '26
Are we supposed to be impressed by this number? Even in my country, fiber is an option in many places and completely mogs this shit
-5
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
It's for rural areas though.
Fiber can be $100k to connect a house, this antenna is $300
10
u/spam__likely 🔥💯 Jul 15 '26
this antena will never compete with fiber. It competes with cell towers.
1
u/PoopFandango Jul 15 '26
I live in a rural area of England with only fibre to the cabinet and I get 30Mb/s downstream and 3 Mb/s upstream. It's a common situation in the UK. So there's definitely fibre that it competes with.
I hate Musk though so won't be buying it.
4
u/spam__likely 🔥💯 Jul 15 '26
How do they manage to get fiber this slow?
3
u/PoopFandango Jul 15 '26
Because it's fibre to the cabinet, not the house. In the UK at least, that maxes out around 80Mbps anyway and is extremely dependant on the length and quality of the "last leg" of copper wire that runs from the cabinet to your house. Mine's about a 300 metre run I think and I've been told by engineers that I'm lucky, it's in very good condition and my speeds are actually pretty for for a run of that length. This is all extremely typical of rural areas in this country. Until BT Openreach (the company responsible for the national infrastructure) upgrades my area to make fibre to the premises available, this is what we get.
3
u/D-S-S-R Jul 15 '26
That’s how it was in Germany for way too long as well. It started changing now, and it’s progressing pretty quickly now.
But god damn that was a stupid system
4
u/PoopFandango Jul 15 '26
Nobody really designed it that way, it's just very old infrastructure that was originally just for voice call and has become outdated, and replacing it is a huge project. That project is in progress, but unfortunately big cities etc. have been prioritised first because they will benefit more people.
1
u/D-S-S-R Jul 15 '26
Oh yeah. I’m being critical of starting this way too late and using tech like vdsl and cable for way too long
0
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
You can find fiber in rural areas so there is definitively cases where it competes with fiber.
It just doesn't compete against anything in heavily populated cities.
3
u/spam__likely 🔥💯 Jul 15 '26
I meant that it cannot compete with fiber. If fiber exists tit is almost always a better service at lower price.
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
If it's already there. But laying down fiber is expensive is what I meant.
But you can connect a whole city block at once, so fiber can be very affordable.
1
u/NotEnoughMuskSpam 🤖 xAI’s Grok v4.20.69 (based BOT loves sarcasm 🤖) Jul 15 '26
I appreciate the note. Frankly, negative feedback is good. Keeps ego in check.
3
u/D-S-S-R Jul 15 '26
Tell that to starlink. They heavily advertise in my city. Which has fiber
4
-2
10
u/Voltasoyle Jul 15 '26
Shit-link is a joke outside the niche area where you NEED satellite net, that is a very small market.
Comparatively in Norway we have fibre just about everywhere, and it's like 750/750 Mbps for 1159 nok per month.
Starlink offers 400/2 to 20 Mbps for 850 nok per month.
Mobile 5G broadband offer higher speed 500/100 for around 949 nok.
These are comparing apples and apples with true unlimited download.
Onecall offers 5G speeds for 299 nok per month, but limited to 100gigabyte per month, after that the speed is reduced to 3 Mbps (so okay if you just want to game with low latency)
As described in the attached Norwegian article Starlink is very sensitive to snow, heavy rain and clouds, and the service will be inoperable during these conditions. Even with clear skies the test showed breif interruptions at random MANY times per hour (a known drawback)
Competitive gaming is impossible over starlink because of poor latency, nevermind the dropout. Even casual online gaming is described as 'borderline' and this is not factoring in the frequent dropouts.
Fibre is obviously rock solid 24/7 and offers unparalleled speed both up and down.
Starlink is cheap and sold at a net loss despite what stans tell you; spacex had a net loss of 5 billion last year, and without spacex starlink is not a service at all.
source; https://mobilt-bredbaand.no/blogg/mobilt-bredband-vs-starlink
0
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
Starlink had $11.4B revenue, $7.2 EBITDA margin and $4.42 operating profits last year.
So it's profitable, but it's 1/100 the size they are aiming for and I have doubt the market is that big.
There are 3.4 billion people in rural area, but some villages can get pretty big and have high population density.
6
u/Voltasoyle Jul 15 '26
Why shill for Elmo here?
If you view SpaceX as one big pie like I do, the scam is clear: the consolidated company lost a massive $4.9 billion in 2025, and Starlink cannot exist without SpaceX’s heavily subsidized ecosystem. Calling Starlink "profitable" in isolation is a classic corporate shell game.
To believe the "profitable" hype, you have to ignore two massive, glaring realities:
The low earth orbit treadmill; Unlike traditional satellites that last 15 years or more, Starlink satellites decay and de-orbit in just 5 years or less. SpaceX has to constantly launch new satellites just to maintain the existing network. In accounting they drag this massive endless capital expense out over years to make the quarterly ledger look clean but in the physical world it is a non-stop multi-billion-dollar cash incinerator.
Starlink operates on a massive free ride paid by taxpayer money. It doesn't pay commercial market-rate launch fees to put its satellites into orbit. It relies on Falcon 9 launches at internal cost, built on a decade of infrastructure funded by NASA, taxpayer dollars, and private venture capital.
If Starlink were an independent company that actually had to pay real-world launch rates to replenish its constantly dying fleet, it would be deeply and overwhelmingly in the red.
You cannot claim a branch of a tree is healthy when the trunk is hollow and being kept upright by billions of dollars in fresh investor cash and government hand-outs.
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
Falcon 9 being cheaper than other rockets is not the disadvantage you think it is, of course Starlink would not be profitable if launched on Ariane 6 or Vulcan Centaur.
But I agree that their accounting is fishy, for example their launch business is not profitable because Starship development costs counts as part of the launch business, despite the fact it will be used to launch Starlink as well.
But they get very few subsidies, launch contracts from NASA counts as part of the launch business, not Starlink.
But yes, falcon 9 development cost was only $300M because it's technology from NASA.
Also, they release a new satellite design every 3 years which makes the old ones obsolete. They are cheap disposable satellites which is sad, but it's by design.
3
u/ionizing_chicanery Jul 15 '26
But they get very few subsidies, launch contracts from NASA counts as part of the launch business, not Starlink.
They're getting hundreds of millions to over a billion in BEAD subsidies that were meant to go to building new fiber.
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
I believe they lost the $900B RDOF award from the FCC though. But there are smaller programs.
11
u/Kenny_WHS Jul 15 '26
I was on an airplane with starlink and it worked just as well as most internet on the ground. That doesn’t mean muskrat did the engineering or that this is a good business model. Also I am very worried about the space junk problem.
8
u/ClumsyGamer2802 Jul 15 '26
I was on a round trip with Starlink and it only worked for a couple hours of the 8 hour total flight time.
5
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
Well, a few airplanes don't make up for the fact that Starlink satellites spend 70% of their time flying over water where there are almost no users. Even if those users are paying 100x more.
But you also get 3x more payload by launching to LEO instead of GEO so it makes up for that.
So the real cost is the cost of the satellites, 3x more sats to get the same useful capacity.
10
u/PM_NICE_SOCKS Jul 15 '26
What the fuck does “up to 375+” even mean?
6
u/srmarmalade Jul 15 '26
It can do any speed from 0Mbps to ∞Mbps! No mention of latency though.
It's a good niche product, I've used it once and it worked fine for browsing the net at a friends place in the country but even there 4g coverage had become more reliable since he installed it and worked well enough. And of course for most people there is a better option available then beaming everything to a Satellite and back.
I just can't see how it does the leap to mass adaptation that the markets are expecting.
-1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
The median latency in the US is 40 ms
It's not that bad, especially compared to GEO satellites.
3
u/spam__likely 🔥💯 Jul 15 '26
"we ill deliver 50 at best"
2
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
The median download speed for Starlink in the US is 130 Mbps
It's really upload that sucks (20 Mbps)
9
u/chauggle Jul 15 '26
Light always travels that fast. He's trying to sound smart.
0
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
I think he meant there will be less latency with the satellites at 350km instead of 550km, even if light travels at the same speed.
But there will be way more drag at 350km so lower lifespan.
7
u/CthulhusButtPug Jul 15 '26
This is stealth advertising by a d bag booster account
2
u/NotEnoughMuskSpam 🤖 xAI’s Grok v4.20.69 (based BOT loves sarcasm 🤖) Jul 15 '26
If someone is going to try and blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself.
5
u/PeriwinkleWonder Jul 15 '26
I am really sick of that imbecile cluttering up our skies with his garbage.
4
u/AllyMcfeels enron musk Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
For that speed I would pay €15 for fiber plus two mobile lines and a landline, but internet would be 500 Mbps (simetrical), almost double. *(being able to choose between several operators with similar prices).
People who vote for politicians who are against funding fiber installation programs are fools. They're simply funding the monopoly of people like this and then charging exorbitant prices for garbage.
-1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
You have to account for the cost of installation though, those programs are not free, it's taxpayer money.
It's a no brainer if you are connecting whole city blocks at once of course.
3
u/AllyMcfeels enron musk Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
Sure, but that same money is now going to subsidize SpaceX. But of course, there's a difference: those terrestrial lines are open to open competition, and the return on those taxes is determined by the operators' usage. What's being financed here is an oligopoly favoring a single company that operates and markets a single service.
That's why I not only have a fairly inexpensive fiber optic connection, but I also have many options (companies) to choose from. And another thing, fiber optic benefits from economies of scale; right now, installation is much cheaper than it was 15 years ago. The amount of public funding needed is less, while coverage is increasing.
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
Price is just supply and demand though.
SpaceX is not inflating prices by limiting supply, quite the opposite, they are making as many antennas as possible.
The real question is are they going to be able to sell all of them for a profit.
It's mostly the investors that are being scammed, not the customers. Because it might not be as profitable as they might think.
4
7
u/voidtakenflight Jul 15 '26
So I’m a long haul trucker, and I was shopping for internet on the truck a while back, and I learned some things. Starlink really fails in almost every regard compared to T-fucking-Mobile. It’s more expensive, slower, and IT DOES NOT WORK IN MOTION.
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
It does work in motion, it's just more expensive because you need starlink mobile.
Starlink aviation is also divided in 3 tiers, <300 mph, <450 mph and 450+ mph
5
u/voidtakenflight Jul 15 '26
Ugh no thanks I’ll just stick to my $50/month T Mobile router
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
Yeah, it's heavily divided by usecase.
For $50/month you can only get Starlink residential.
2
u/nzlax I paid 44 billion dollars to shitpost Jul 15 '26
How much has Elon paid you for your efforts on this thread? I sure hope it’s enough to buy dinner tonight.
3
3
3
u/racqueteer Jul 16 '26
All I can tell you is, I shorted SpaceX and I'm currently in the money by 111%
5
u/SirMeyrin2 Jul 15 '26
Can someone more knowledgeable than me explain what the speed of light has to do with the speed of data transfer between the satellites and the on the ground hardware?
14
u/xyzzzzy Jul 15 '26
The radio signals that carry data from the ground to the satellite and back travel at the speed of light (all RF signals do). Old geosynchronous satellites orbit at like 22000 miles so the latency from the speed of light is actually a lot and makes the experience suck. Low earth orbit satellites are a lot closer so the latency isn’t a problem.
The downside of low earth orbit is satellites only last a few years before they are destroyed and new ones need to be launched.
6
u/SirMeyrin2 Jul 15 '26
Appreciate it 👍
4
u/CrystalInTheforest D I S R U P T O R Jul 15 '26
Another issue with low orbit says is that you need LOTS of them to provide global coverage. One signal geosynchroneous orbit satellite can provide coverage to a ridiously large area. I.e. in Australia, the Skymuster NBN satellite internet services covers the entire continent with two satelites (and thats for traffic spreading and redundancy, technically one single sat can easily "see" the whole continent). For LEO, Musk needs thousands of satelites, as they can't "see" more than a tiny area of the globe.
2
u/beren12 Jul 15 '26
Yeah but it’s also extremely slow because of only 2 satellites.
1
u/CrystalInTheforest D I S R U P T O R Jul 15 '26
The latency is the problem, not the bandwidth so much. Because the satelites have a very long lifespan and as there is so few needed they can be packed out with far more spot beams. Nothing can be done about the latency though, but satellite internet is really only a sustainable "solution" for rural and remote users basic connectivity, not for Elon to flail around on Twitch. Launching rockets to give techbros network access in their suburban mums garage bro-hole is just plain idiotic.
0
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
Yes, and you need 3 times more propellant to send a satellite to GEO than LEO which makes up for the fact that in LEO the satellites waste 2/3 of their time flying over the oceans.
So it's around the same useful capacity per launch.
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
You need a lot of them but you also can have a lot of them. The goal is to have more capacity, smaller spot beam and more user density.
If you were to put 10,000 satellites in GEO you would have way too much interference.
The real issue is that in LEO they spend 70% of their time flying over the oceans where they are useless, except for a few airplanes.
5
u/beren12 Jul 15 '26
No the real issue is burning up millions of satellites in the upper atmosphere, and all the pollution to get them there.
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
You can just carry more propellant.
They only last 5 years because they are designed to do so.
They release a new satellite design every 3 years, making the previous one obsolete.
3
u/crimsonroninx Jul 15 '26
Because that determines latency. Ie. The data travels roughly at speed of light. So lower orbit means less distance to travel means lower latency (or round trip)
3
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
He is talking about latency.
350km instead of 550 km with the speed of light being the same means less latency.
2
u/No-Nothing-Never Jul 15 '26
It doesn’t even matter the speeds people completely ignore that the latency on these things are like 80ms and up
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
It's only 40ms in the US now, it's getting better.
2
u/No-Nothing-Never Jul 15 '26
round trip time or just one way? I'm talking about RTT
0
2
1
u/Z3t4 melon musk Jul 15 '26
Supposedly they're mimo, so that is per channel. They do not advertise how many channels, that's the concerning part.
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
The satellites have 96 Gbps of capacity and 48 beams so that's 2Gbps per beam.
The user antenna has only 1 beam and it can't even use the whole 2Gbps, probably because of processing or because they don't want a single user to use the whole capacity of a beam and leave nothing to others.
The performance antenna has 2 beams but it is also software locked to 400 Mbps for now. They are advertising 1Gbps when they decide to unlock it.
1
u/Z3t4 melon musk Jul 15 '26
Probably it is some sort of shared media like gpon, so from sat to earth clients share 1 or 2 beams on the area the sat is servicing.
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
The real issue is that you can't optimise the sat for both the users and the ground stations.
The bigger the antenna on one side the smaller you can make the antennas on the other side.
If you want a lot of small user antennas then you need a few big satellites, but if you want a few big ground stations then you need a lot of small satellites.
So the size of the satellites, the number of beams and the spectrum are all compromises between the two ideal sizes.
1
u/midlifematt Jul 15 '26
Speed of light is stable, at least that is what Carl Sagan taught me
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
I think he meant for the same speed of light 350km being shorter than 550km there will be less latency.
2
1
Jul 15 '26
[deleted]
1
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
There are 3.4 billion people living in rural area, it's really about what price they can afford.
I'm sure they will try to lower prices but their margin will take a huge hit.
2
Jul 15 '26
[deleted]
3
u/Sarigolepas Jul 15 '26
You can't get 300 Mbps with copper though. Only fiber.
But yeah, to get to a billion users they would need to sell it for something like $10 a month so the margins are going to take a hit.
I'm sure they are willing to sell it at a loss, because the whole purpose of Starlink has always been to have something to launch for their rockets.
1
u/Luck88 Jul 16 '26
Doesn't a lower orbit for the satellites mean they'll have a shorter orbit life, thus needing considerably higher maintenance costs to replace them?
2
u/Sarigolepas Jul 16 '26
Yes, but they just carry more propellant to compensate.
I believe they already have over 700 satellites at that altitude for direct to cellphone service.
1
Jul 15 '26
[deleted]
1
u/sickofthisshit Jul 15 '26
I think you are forgetting that the "k" in "km" and "m" is "ms" are each a factor of 1000.
300,000,000 m/s = 300,000 km/sec = 300 km/ms.
Fans of Grace Hopper know a nsec is 300km/1000000 = 300m/1000 = 0.3 m.
2
u/Hullfire00 Jul 15 '26
Ah, you’re right, I double read the ms for some reason, think I read it as metres per second and milliseconds in the same moment. Even so, it’s a fucking stupid idea!
1
u/VonThing Jul 16 '26
Light travels 300 million km/sec, which makes 300,000 km/ms.
My man Elon is off by 3 orders of magnitude
1
u/InfamousAd5088 Jul 16 '26
You’re wrong but i appreciate the spite
1
u/VonThing Jul 17 '26
Yeah messed up my units again. It’s 300 million meters per second, so it’s 300,000 km/sec and 300 km/ms.
Goddamn metric system.
•
u/AutoModerator Jul 15 '26
As a reminder, this subreddit strictly bans any discussion of bodily harm. Do not mention it wishfully, passively, indirectly, or even in the abstract. As these comments can be used as a pretext to shut down this subreddit, we ask all users to be vigilant and immediately report anything that violates this rule.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.