It does seem a little odd when SpaceX have Starlink, surely these two are each other’s main competition.
Starlink is their main competition, not SpaceX.
This just seems practical and in everyone’s best interest. SpaceX get another recurring paying customer, OneWeb get their sats up.
This is more common than you’d think when companies are large enough to have products in so many different categories.
As an example: Amazon runs Prime Video, but also hosts the infrastructure for Netflix, which to my knowledge Netflix has always been happy with despite relying on a direct competitor for their service.
For OneWeb, they just don't have other options anymore.
https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-responds-leaked-email-war...
I don't think satellite internet is promising even once the constellation is up there, but that's another matter.
P.S. The expression is "cash cow".
But sure, buy into Musk pretending it’s desperate to try to motivate his workforce. The SpaceX Steamroller continues apace.
It is currently a money pit. It is a simple fact that right now it requires huge expenses in launches, R&D, and subsidized terminals and makes practically no revenue. SpaceX has itself stated in internal communications that their current satellites and current launch systems are not viable.
I don't believe it ever will make any money—cellular networks do the same job better—but it definitely won't make any money in the next few years.
>But sure, buy into Musk pretending it’s desperate to try to motivate his workforce.
So it is your opinion that he was lying to his employees to coerce them into working overtime over the holidays out of fear of losing their jobs? I fail to see how that's an improvement. Either the situation is legitimately desperate or the work environment is abusive.
Yes, you’re commenting on the Musk email to motivate starship.
> I don't believe it ever will make any money—cellular networks do the same job better
No they don’t, because they don’t exist with good coverage in most of the geographic US. I live ~30 miles from a major city and my internet options are terrible cell backed plans that have gnarly data caps and poor throughput.
Your viewpoint is understandable but it’s completely out of touch with the reality of what exists today. I’m on the starlink waitlist and $100/mo for uncapped 50mbps in my location has absolutely no competition from the cell networks, terrestrial wireless, nor geo stationary providers.
> So it is your opinion that he was lying to his employees to coerce them into working overtime over the holidays out of fear of losing their jobs? I fail to see how that's an improvement. Either the situation is legitimately desperate or the work environment is abusive.
Yes, it’s likely the latter. Starship didn’t exist when starlink was started. The numbers didn’t change.
The whole of the UK is, after all, slightly smaller than Oregon.
You have it backwards. The U.S. is the outlier. All similarly wealthy countries have better coverage.
This isn’t a “fact.” “It” is the “satellite internet industry.” Viasat, just one such company, has billions in annual revenue and even manages to turn a profit. Starlink is far better positioned. Uses the industry-leading reusable launch vehicle workhorse which has a factor of 10 lower costs than traditional launch companies, with similar cost advantages for the satellite hardware.
Starship is a a factor of 10 or more better than that. Starlink is also entering the in-flight connectivity and the business/enterprise connectivity markets which are much higher margin.
Starlink already has 250,000 residential and business subscribers (worth around half a billion in annual revenue, including current prices, Starlink Business revenue, terminal sales, and special contracts), and they haven’t even filled out there first constellation yet. In 5-10 years, they will have millions of subscribers and billions in revenue. Potentially, tens of millions of subscribers and tens of billions in revenue, just like many other broadband internet providers.
If local ISP's can eke out a living on that sort of revenue stream, I don't see why a global satellite network and launch infrastructure can't.
/s
If you have a competitive advantage in launching, why limit your exploitation of that? Worst case, you find out that your satellite engineers were coasting off that advantage. Best case, you make money proving they aren't.
Plus you're now antitrust-proof, if that's ever a thing again.
Also spaceX launched iridium next gen satellites as well.
OneWeb (and iridium) will just operate in their own markets .
Iridium for example could work in different devices than starlink as they are not LEO and do not need the complex phased array setup starlink needs
Phased Array does help in improving signal strength(and bandwidth) by focusing on the orbital plane only, however I thought since Iridium uses L-Band(1-2GHz) and SpaceX uses Ku-Band(12-14Ghz), there is additional dish size required anyway and also rain fade issues meant higher strength is required in Ku to operate well.
I also wonder if this will end up helping OneWeb. I can't imagine using Soyuz 2.1 rockets is cheaper than paying for reusable Falcon 9's.
However that was always a long shot, Russia collaborates deeply on the Indian space and missile programs. The cryogenic 4th stage is still a Russian engine on GSLV, ISRO won’t likely risk that partnership as America has always refused any tech because of dual concerns, and ISRO also is not very expandable on launch capacity so it would not be easy even if they wanted to.
They can't simply build 6 extra rockets in a few years.
They wouldn't be very keen either way, as ISRO's primary objective is their research missions while there is some drive to have commercial operations it is not that important to them.
However it was also possible that Bharti (and U.K. government ) could have pulled enough strings to get ISRO to agree, so won't have been that surprised if they had partnered.
Selling shovels is a great strategy, even if you own a gold mine.
They are competing for customers but, at least last I checked, they weren't putting a ton of bandwidth into orbit (compared to existing land based stuff). Maybe they'll both end up just selling as much as they can produce.
The limiting factor will be spectrum allocations. You only have so much bandwidth per area, giving an advantage to those that either have more directional antennas or more spectrum available.
Satellite internet has the opposite problem. If it ends up winning it will be a testament to dysfunctional governments around the world.