Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

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> Once something "free" is offered, it often pushes out paid or costly options

You could say the exact same thing about the long-standing policy of providing free 911 service via terrestrial cell towers. And it still wouldn't make any sense because the revenue potential of 911 service is absolutely miniscule compared to the total size of the telecom market. Giving away 911 service isn't pushing anyone out of the telecom business. Despite being life critical, 911 service is incidental to a good overall telecom service and it makes perfect sense to make it free.

> This is all well and good while SpaceX continues to operate, but what if it goes bankrupt and the world has moved on?

There is zero chance that the Starlink network would be abandoned and stop working if SpaceX went bankrupt. Look up Iridium and Globalstar to see what would actually happen.

> Or what if Elon has another tech bro moment and decides some region doesn't deserve this service anymore?

Again, people are delusional to think that he would leave people to die on a whim. I get that he acts rashly and there's a real billionare=evil meme floating around out there right now, not to mention the politics stuff, but nothing he has ever done is even remotely close to the behavior people are postulating here.

Starlink Leo satellites are not the same as geosynchronous satellites. geosync satellites are very high up and will more or less stay there indefinitely. Starlink sats will decay from their orbit and burn up in the atmosphere after about 5 years. which means if you aren't constantly launching new sats all the time, the network will quickly degrade and completely fail within five years. in other words, there is way more than a zero percent chance that starlink is not a financially viable product long term.

Iridium is LEO and had way worse business prospects at the time of their bankruptcy, as well as far less utility in general. Still wasn't abandoned.

Ya, but also less ongoing costs. Which is why it was viable, especially after bankruptcy, since they could erase all that initial capital expenditure.

> Giving away 911 service isn't pushing anyone out of the telecom business.

Irrelevant. My claim was about a free service replacing a paid one. 911 service in the US is paid for by states and local governments, and telecoms must provide it to operate. Having a free option would create a disincentive to keep the status quo, and the paid service may be less upkept.

> There is zero chance that the Starlink network would be abandoned and stop working if SpaceX went bankrupt

Seems exceptionally naive. “Zero chance” alone is naive, there is substantial probability. But even if the satellites were kept in orbit by another owner, why would they continue to provide a free service at a cost? Even that question may be irrelevant, because non-profitable efforts would be ended by most restructurings.

> Again, people are delusional to think that he would leave people to die on a whim

Tesla’s exaggerated FSD claims are directly responsible for people’s deaths, including the Walter Huang case, where this negligence was established as a cause by plaintiff’s lawyers.

You should double-check your arguments.

You seem confused. SpaceX will provide the same free access to the same government 911 (or other local emergency system) that terrestrial carriers do. SpaceX incurs practically no incremental cost here. Starlink can't replace cell towers for normal phone coverage, so this is not replacing anything other than maybe Apple's far inferior SOS feature.

The Walter Huang case didn't "establish" anything because it didn't go to trial. It's a pretty wild stretch to blame his death on Musk. And even if one believed that they should still be able to see how making misleading statements that unintentionally contribute to one person's accident would not be remotely comparable to intentionally ignoring thousands upon thousands of people desperately calling for urgently needed help.

SpaceX is not running a 911 center. They will hand over the call to a partner operator (T-Mobile)

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