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Comment by ilrwbwrkhv | Hacker News Reader

i think the price should be around 35 dollars per month

For a ~$10 billion constellation with an individual satellite lifespan of 5 years, the system would need to average ~$170 million per month for something resembling break-even. Current US satellite internet adoption is at 6.7% percent; push that up to 10% so I have some number to work with when accounting for market penetration and the rest of the world, and you’re looking at 32.5 million users, which sets an absolute price floor of $5.25 a month. Give it margins that actually make this remotely profitable and $20 a month for service wouldn't be unrealistic; the upfront costs of the uplink would probably still kill you though.

Edit: Did some more research on competitors. It seems ViaSat currently has 1.1 billion invested in its 2 active GEOs, plus whatever’s currently going in their next generation constellation. Their bargain bin plan goes for $70 a month (fun fact, they too pull the 3 month deal BS landline ISPs do) up to $200 a month. Since it only has a single real competitor it probably services 3% of the US population, so with their midplan of $150 a month over 9.75 million users into a satellite constellation with a lifespan of 8 years they are charging in the neighborhood of %12,700 over their satellite breakeven (1.46 billion month revenue over 11.46 million per month payback).

Bringing that over to a $10 billion constellation with much more premium internet, yikes.

Current US satellite internet adoption is at 6.7% percent

Current US satellite adoption doesn't matter in this case because the new product would not suck. Satellite internet is not a viable competitor today for the various reasons others have stated here. Starlink however would compete directly with my DSL service and since I (and pretty much everyone else) hate our telco, the sky is the limit as they say.

That's completely wrong. It's 100% not going to compete with DSL. It will be used by enterprise, or people who pay $100+/more to offset equipment costs. The reason satellite internet costs so much is equipment cost.

Someone could have made the same argument against mobile phones, saying that they wouldn't compete with landlines because of the increased handset costs.

Not even close. Mobile phones actually had numerous advantages over landlines. You could travel with them, have apps, long distance was far cheaper, etc. The writing was on the wall for landlines very early on, and everyone saw it coming. It would be like predicting today that streaming won't take over over the air programming for TV. It wasn't that much more expensive than a landline when all was said and done.

SpaceX has very little, if any advantage over decent DSL, especially since mid-range DSL will be $30/month with no equipment to invest in.

I agree with you but on second thoughts, maybe that's okay if it pays for itself over time? I pay my ISP ₹3K a month. I wouldn't mind buying SpaceX's router for say ₹30K if my bill drops to ₹1K a month.

I don't think they'll be able to sell in India. ISRO and the government are typically not friendly to other countries providing services like this.

I'm sure something can be worked out with an Indian partner company letting the government block sites it doesn't want and spying on us, like existing ISPs do.

It didn't work out for Facebook, so I'm not sure it will. SpaceX isn't trying to connect people below they poverty line, so unless they convince India that the rich need it, I can't see it happening.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-...

Starlink wouldn't be in violation of net neutrality, so the comparison with Free Basics isn't the right one.

It will take off if it's better bang for the buck at any market segment. That can be Rs. 100 a month or Rs.2000 a month. If it's better than the alternatives people can get at that price, they'll use it.

More context:

https://www.televisionpost.com/dosisro-initiating-efforts-to...

FB was net neutrality, but they want to keep as much as possible, including all communications, with their own technology.

You completely forgot the ground cpe equipment cost. That will be a substantial adder.

I was also wondering about this — will it be significantly costlier than a commodity fiber / cable/ VDSL router? If it's going to cost say $500, far fewer people around the world will be able to afford one.

The lowest estimate I've seen for the cpe cost is around $1000. I think it will be closer to $2-3K.

Ouch.

That's viable for consumers only if it's shared, like by providing an open Wifi access point to everyone around it, or via Ethernet in an apartment or a small village.

At the beginning, it will be nowhere near that. The price of the receiving antenna alone will be in the range of $10k-$1k. So for the first phase they are mostly interested in providing backhaul for remote cell towers and the like, and service for the odd people living in the sticks who are willing to pay through the nose for the ability to have both great internet and live in the middle of nowhere.

Then, once the antennas are in proper mass production and cheap enough, they have an investment of a couple of $B worth of satellites to pay for. So long as they can provide something no other ISP can (low-latency access in the middle of nowhere), I very much doubt their prices will be lower than those ISPs.

$29 (or less) for 1Gbps would probably give American ISP executives night sweats.

I live in Bolivia, South America, the impact a global ISP would have cannot be overstated, in developing countries internet prices are still extremely expensive, up until a month ago I was paying around USD 60 for 10Mbps, and that was the best price I could find in my city, the second largest in the country.

And that's slightly better than what's available in Kansas, 30 minutes from the nearest Walmart, i.e. no large nearby cities.

I live less than 100 km outside the third largest city in the United States (Chicago), and I pay $100USD per month for 5/20 terrestrial wireless (my only option other than satellite.)

Yep, same here (Brazil).

I suppose SpaceX plans to start with us-only offerings. I also suppose it will take a while until it reaches developing countries.

Does anyone have a better take on this?

The satellites are not stationary, but go around the earth. This means that to get good coverage in the US, they actually have to provide good coverage everywhere near the same latitudes (on both sides of the equator). Since the satellites in the southern hemisphere will have nothing better to do and have less demand, they are probably going to start rolling out service everywhere they can at the same time.

Most of Brazil is actually a bit out of luck in that it's too near the equator, so satellite density overhead will not be that great anywhere but the very southernmost areas until there are lot of the birds in the sky, so you won't have service immediately. But places like Chile and Argentina will have great access pretty quickly.

However, as a caveat to that the receiving antennas will be expensive at the start and SpaceX still has to negotiate access to spectrum in every country separately, and in poorer countries this will most likely have to be paid for, so that will hike the prices up.

Frequencies aren’t free, spacex will need to buy the rights for each country separately and that costs serious money. Unless they somehow don’t have to do that for whatever reason...

Well, I mean if you have network orbiting up there anyway so you can probably make a business case that the frequency is worth it in most cases. But its probably complicated regulatory process in each country.

The satellites will be everywhere, so not having offerings outside the US seems like it would be leaving money on the table. I could imagine it might take them awhile just to manage the logistics of selling a product in many countries, though. Maybe they'll partner with established companies for that part?

I was hoping for $1 or less that opens the world up to unblocked high speed internet. Imagine the signal that is not blocked by any national firewalls

The satellites alone are expected to cost at least 10 billion USD [1]. Add in the antenna on the ground and it seems exceedingly unlikely that this will go for $1 a month.

[1] - https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/05/block-5-spacex-incre...

after hearing this news i've invested in the Vanguard adult diaper ETF.

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