The business model that works seems to be spectrum gambling. Do the minimum amount of satellite investment for decades until someone with a real business plan comes along and has to go through you to get it.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/8e75ed31-0c72-4160-b406-1ca6aa36a...
They are completely unprofitable otherwise. Eventually even Starlink will lose money, as more and more rural regions around the world are wired for fiber.
Globally, there's a lot of places that are sparsely inhabited but too remote to warrant strong cellular connectivity. There's also a lot of "nooks and crannies" geographically that are not well served by cellular. As an example, I have a property in an area with excellent 5G coverage but my specific property is in a valley removing line of sight between me and the local tower, meaning reception is virtually nil. I can't even make a phone call. Without Starlink my only option would be to rely on a local WISP to set up some kind of repeater system that would have far lower reliability/performance and significantly higher cost.
If many others find a cheaper and more reliable path, the customer base collapses.
Even "cheaper" is quickly becoming a question mark. Starlink is offering 100mbps plans for $50-$70/mo. which in my region makes it cheaper or on par with options from cellular providers (which are capped) or options from cable/fiber providers.
Ecuador has the highest rate of cell phone ownership in the world, because they never built landlines and just went straight to wireless.
Same with electricity in many African countries -no grid, straight to local solar.
When I see comments like this it’s obvious you’re talking about West Virginia or Nevada as “rural regions around the world”
Go spend time in the Canadian arctic, the Congo, Sudan, Bolivia, Mongolia, Remote Australia and dozens and dozens more if you want to see where starlink shines and is rapidly changing the world.
The moment these people incorporate into a village, it becomes more profitable to build a fiber connection. Fiber will eventually get to Ecuador.
There are billions of potential customers.
They were all completely wrong.
This is a pretty common pattern in capital intensive businesses. It's often the case that revenue is inline with operating costs, but revenue can't really ever pay for the start up costs. That dooms the initial business, but after bankruptcy it can be viable.
Depending on circumatances, the very visible bankruptcy also helps deter other businesses from joining the market. But if the cost was high due to technology, doing the same business 10-20 years later can work out because the start up costs may be significantly less.
This is exactly what "the Internet" said about spacex when they announced Starlink. Oh, it never worked. LEO constellations were tried in the 90s, ALL of them failed. Haha, it will never work. 14k satellites, that's insane, dreams, lies, hahaha.
... and yet, they are now at ~10k satellites launched, and are serving 9+mil customers, for some unknown billions/year in revenue (should become clear in a few months when they IPO).
Read here on HN yday: they’ve $20B in revenue, but xAI is a drag.