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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

What a terrible take.

There is a huge market even just in the US for Starlink. The worldwide market for people who need internet access in remote places is positively gigantic.

Additionally, Starlink could be hugely profitable if they exclusively sold access to ships and aircraft. You'll never be able to run fiber to those.

They can indeed reasonably charge $99/month to many many millions worldwide who don't have any options for low latency, high speed internet access. You vastly underestimate the need for the service.

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On the one hand you have a technology product that’s only relevant to rural consumers. Nine out of ten people have cable already.

On the other hand your margins are amazing because all you do is fly little boxes over everyone’s heads launched with government subsidized rockets. No linemen or plant-hire or contractors to sap your profits.

The biggest threat would be commoditized terrestrial wifi / 5G. The more cell service competition there is, the smaller the market for satellite, until it’s only applicable to 1% of the population (and the poorest 1% at that.)

> Nine out of ten people have cable already.

More like 8.2 out of ten. Either way the remainder is still a pretty decent market. And that's just talking about people in the USA. About 75% of Starlink subscribers are outside the USA.

> and the poorest 1% at that

Not by a lot. People who live in remote areas in the USA tend to have much less money overall, but they tend to spend much less money overall, leading to a similar amount of buying power. Someone who lives remote is more likely to own their home outright or have a relatively small mortgage. Their socio-economic status can appear numerically depressed because the numbers generally don't account for non-monetary consumption. (You got paid a salary and bought salmon from the supermarket. Remote dude fishes for salmon in a local stream. You both traded your time for salmon, but remote dude's salmon is invisible to GDP statistics.)

And furthermore, for them, Starlink would be budgeted for like an essential service rather than a luxury convenience.

> Starlink would be budgeted for like an essential service

As someone who has lived and worked remotely for the bulk of time since 1960 or so, it's not essential ipso facto; myself and most of the people I know have somehow managed to survive sans this supposedly essential service for 60 odd years (since 1935 in my fathers case, he's not dead yet).

Its more compelling use case is a relatively cheap way to integrate vehicle GIS data across four to ten thousand hectares or so (ten thousand to twenty five thousand acres) for farming, mining, exploration, etc.

Globally, its not especially attractive for non civil applications (military use, etc) as it creates a reliance that can have a plug pulled at the worst moments.

You are correct that it's not something any military can/should rely on for any future conflicts.

That doesn't make it useless though. Ukraine certainly finds Starlink attractive for military use. Despite all the misleading headlines and de-contextualised quotes, SpaceX has been reliably on Ukraine's side of the conflict and has been an essential communications fabric for both military and civilian.

Just throwing it out there, Im a Verizon customer in the Tri-State Area and I frequently lose service on the train or bus on my way to the city. It's more than just a 'rural issue'. I looked into getting a StarLink plan for my commute until I realized logistically, at best, I'm a freak sitting next to the window with a satellite dish on the train.

No it’s not.

I flew from Zürich to Bangalore via Qatar and both flights had starlink.

There are many many uses for it, besides rural homes.

Yeah i'm no fan of Elon but starlink is actually quite useful. It solves a real problem - I need network access anywhere on the globe, for any reason, at any time. they can easily charge what they wish for that (military, air travel, desert tourists etc.)

> Nine out of ten people have cable already.

What on Earth are you talking about?!? Half the people on Earth don’t have any sort of internet access at all.

> government subsidized rockets

The Starlink launches are not subsidized in any way. Now it’s clear you are either totally uninformed, or actively trolling.

> The biggest threat would be commoditized terrestrial wifi / 5G. The more cell service competition there is, the smaller the market for satellite

This is actually one of their biggest market opportunities. How do you think the backhaul for 5G towers works in extremely remote locations?

Like I said, terrible take.

Most of the areas without good internet barely take home $100/m and a lot of them take home less than that.

If you hooked up every single cargo ship on the planet to starlink, you'd only add around 100k connections and average wages on most of those vessels is $5-8/hr (very few US/EU sailors these days) for a handful of people which tells you how much businesses actually care about their workers who do dangerous jobs.

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