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Comment by shaklee3 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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