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Comment by JohnTHaller | Hacker News Reader

They left out T-Mobile Home Internet from the comparison. It's a more than viable option if you're in the right location. You'll usually see faster speeds (about double) and lower latency (closer to standard broadband) than Starlink based on my analysis of a half-dozen recent reviews. It's also much cheaper, $0 up front and $60/mo vs Starlink's $499 up front and $99 a month. Starlink, of course, covers much more remote areas than T-Mobile Home Internet will.

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IIRC, the method of beamforming utilized by their satellites limits ground station density. This is not really an issue at the moment as they are not targeting dense areas.

Once they are 'out of beta', I expect either starlink themselves or a 3rd party to start offering 4g/5g service backed primarily by a ground uplink station. This would allow wireless sharing of one ground station in dense areas. I would imagine that there are many situations where being able to install a cell data station without the need for a physical internet connection would be cheap and effective.

Honestly I'm far more interested on Starlink's impact in the developing / unfree world than in access in rural areas in the US. Not that the latter isn't worth fixing, but it's a more gradual shift there rather than a paradigm shift.

What do you mean by "unfree world"? Is it America's pariahs or something?

I think anywhere with significant censorship, such as mainland china.

Anywhere without free internet access.

Flying some drones or planes every now and then will find most users of unapproved satellite terminals. Satellite internet won't save the world from censorship.

Why would China allow star link to operate in China without following Chinese laws? I don’t see Elon shipping clandestine transmitters to the people of Xinjiang, not if he wants any legitimate customers in China.

Really, star link is a business, they want paying customers-that means complying with local laws.

Besides, censorship is not a uniquely Chinese policy, America seems to be exporting more of it lately.

At least in MN I've consistently had friends and family in VERY rural areas have much faster internet options than I do in a metro suburb.

I suspect it's just much cheaper to run fiber in those areas where there's not many approaches or right of way issues to deal with

I concur that humanitarian aspect of Starlink is by far the most exciting, but fail to see how ability to have a stable fast speed connection anywhere is not a paradigm shift. Especially when you combine it with recent remote work transition.

Specifically if you wanted to start a company or even open an office either your business opportunities were limited to local area or you were locked into places with existing fiber connections. This means high paying work was also concentrated in places with existing fiber connections. I am hoping mega constellations will level economic landscape via increased geographic availability of high paying jobs.

You'd be surprised. I have relatives who live ten minutes from a McDonald's and still have no option for internet besides satellite with a bandwidth cap of a few gigabytes a month. They can't enjoy Netflix, YouTube, or Disney Plus. Their kids can't buy digital download video games. When Starlink drops their base station price a bit and I talk them into it it will be absolutely transformative for them.

I don't mean to suggest this won't affect them but... kids in rural Africa being able to connect to the internet for school / college / business is a lot more interesting to me than people in the rural US being able to consume a different form of television.

My nephew spent half of last year working from a take-home packet because he couldn't do Zoom class. It's not as different as you think.

In many more densly-settled rural areas like mine, outside Redmond WA, not even DSL is an option because Frontier refuses to add more DSL hookup hardware. T-mobile doesn't offer 5-g Internet in my area either. So I'm forced to use ordinary (Verizon) 4G hotspots for Internet.

It would need to get a lot cheaper. $500 setup and $100 per month is not even close to something someone can afford in this regions and those few that can already have internet access.

The actual dish costs like $2000 to $3000, and does not include the cost of rocket launches to get all of those satellites up there.

The $100 per month doesn't seem like it'd be sufficient to keep ~6000 satellites in orbit either (they're orbiting so low, that they'll need to constantly "boost" themselves to stay in their orbit ring).

So they're losing money per dish, and seemingly losing money per satellite launch, and I have my doubts that even 1-million customers at $100 / month or $1200 / year would be sufficient to keep their infrastructure costs (an ISP with only $1.2 Billion/year costs serving a million customers? Even without satellite launches, satellite development, that seems like a tall order. The ground-based infrastructure costs alone are already going to be costly... its not like bandwidth is free even if you're on the ground)

Presumably other satellites and space deliveries offset the cost per launch - and how many service years per satellite? How much are they paying their noc and customer service people, in addition to ground engineering and interconnects to ground stations? I'm guessing they've run the numbers and expect to make money.

Hugesnet has 3 Satellites not 30k like starlink has planned.

> I'm guessing they've run the numbers and expect to make money.

No one really does that in today's economy. Most businesses these days aren't about achieving profits, but are instead about first achieving dominance... and then hoping you achieve profits afterwards.

That's why we keep seeing companies like "Moviepass" pop up.

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