And then there's the SpaceX space based global internet service coming soon to an orbit near you. They are predicting over 20 billion in revenue by 2025 if I recall correctly.
https://www.cringely.com/2018/04/06/the-space-race-is-over-a...
https://www.cringely.com/2018/04/06/the-space-race-is-over-a...
I'm a big fan of SpaceX, I'd prefer they stick to flying tourists and satellites. Railroads and airplanes got their start giving joyrides, why not do the same with space.
However this approach only makes financial sense for SpaceX because of it's much cheaper access to space so it's not surprising that "no one else in the industry" thinks it's a good idea. It's not a good idea for them.
Instead they plan on using the BFR for that. I don't know what happens with that deposit that was made. Chances are it rolls over into getting whoever it was a flight on the BFR to the moon.
Basically like treating the satellite as backhaul for small cells, and also having the customer BE the small cell. No fiber laying or city government permits or telephone pole work or anything.
Maybe there are good technical solutions to this that I don't know about, but I'm inclined to believe that a satellite could communicate more efficiently with a handful of high-throughput ground stations at once than it could hundreds or thousands of smaller ground stations that are continually connecting and disconnecting as they gain or lose line-of-sight. That's a lot of control messages to deal with.
The funny thing is, 5 years ago you could have said: "I'm in the space launch industry, and no one I know thinks those reusable rockets are a good idea. The rest of the world is eking out every last bit of performance, and they are going to sacrifice payload capacity for this?"
The established industry does not always know the best way forward.
I'm not saying that you're wrong, I'm saying you have no way of knowing whether you're wrong or not. Maybe something changed, something that will seem obvious in hindsight, and that makes all the difference in the world. As others said - the fact that SpaceX can launch those satellites much cheaper than anybody ever could, historically, may be the thing that changes the whole equation. Or maybe not - we'll see... but just because you are in the industry, that doesn't make it any more likely that you're right about this.
So Spacex just won a client for a long time, and that too at the cost of investors money..
In other words, and elaborate Pyramid scheme...
But what if their target market (at least for the beginning) were under-served rural areas? There are lots of villages and small towns in industrialised countries where the highest speed you can currently get is in the low single-digit MBit/s. Loads of people currently have no good internet access options but could afford SpaceX's service (based on what's publicly known about it, the estimates I've seen are that it will likely cost something between $50 and $100 per month). It would also be extremely interesting to businesses in such areas (Germany has quite a few of these, for example).
I think there might just be enough potential customers in sparsely populated areas to make this a profitable service. They can also provide backhaul for cell phone services in such areas.
Oh, and if they can get it working on ships (small sailing yachts, pleasure cruises, and commercial shipping could all profit from this) and airplanes, that might be another nice market to capture.
Heck, it's not even certain to be direct-to-consumer. Starlink makes for a really nice backhaul system, which could be really handy to feed a bunch of smaller terrestrial cells, for example.
But the most important thing will be the cost of the recieving equipment. That will determine if it is affordable for domestic use or just in commercial or industrial applications.