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Comment by kevinkeller | Hacker News Reader

> I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have <.1% the money to spend on such things.

India is rapidly expanding fiber internet connectivity, even in rural areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Broadband_Network

In addition, 4G/5G coverage is extensive: https://www.ookla.com/articles/india-mobile-connectivity-1h2...

See India in this 5G global coverage map: https://www.ookla.com/articles/5g-map-2026

The number of people who are not covered by above-mentioned fiber/cell network, and can afford Starlink as it is priced now, will be extremely small (likely making Starlink unviable as a profitable business).

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> The number of people who are not covered by above-mentioned fiber/cell network, and can afford Starlink as it is priced now, will be extremely small

People vastly overestimate the purchasing power in places like India. Most of the purchasing power is concentrated in the top 1% of the population and most of that 1% lives in urban areas with fiber connectivity. The bottom 90% don’t even make $1K/person/year. Even a $10/month subscription (1/5th of what it costs right now) would be 10% of the total income, which at those income levels, would never be a priority.

When I was a teenager in early post-Communist Czechia, Internet connection was also expensive. So what we did was that we pooled resources. Five or ten households had a common connection and shared it.

I don't doubt that similar schemes will be used in Africa or India.

BTW Median income in India is about $3K a year.

That's exactly what's happening. Entire villages are sharing one connection.

That is great, but it also sets the stage for actual fiber to be drawn as it is vastly cheaper to connect to an existing end user network than to build it up from scratch. When a critical mass of villages have built internal networks it will be worth drawing cable for them as well.

Lack of sufficient population density and political instability is what would stop this.

Money

> BTW Median income in India is about $3K a year

I explicitly mentioned income per person. This is household income, which obviously will be higher than individual income.

And as far as connection pooling goes, India already has 88% 4G and 80% 5G coverage in the villages. Far cheaper connections are already available that are already being leveraged in a way that you describe. The market where Starlink is appealing is much smaller.

> would be 10% of the total income, which at those income levels, would never be a priority.

People vastly underestimate the subjective importance of the Internet for people. 10-20% of the total income seems like a very realistic figure, even if it means spending some days hungry.

People vastly overestimate the subjective importance of the internet if they think people with relatively little historic exposure to and practical use for the internet would rather go hungry or have a worse marriage for their daughter to replace the erratic internet connection on their phone and cybercafe use with a high speed broadband connection in their house...

People struggling for food, water, medicine, shelter will not in any world spend 10% of their income on internet. Thinking that they will is out of touch with reality and would only be a valid chain of thought when you’ve not seen what real poverty looks like.

Global cellular operator revenue is approx $1T. They have put their toe in the water with direct-to-cellular support for starlink, and have bought spectrum to improve this. I'm sure they basically want to offer cellular to everyone in the world and get a good chunk of that $1T. Maybe they want 20% of it? Sounds crazy, but China Mobile, Verizon, and Deutsche Telecom each have 10%. Sounds it's not so wild that they can grab a big chunk, especially if they can find new customers that are not already connected.

And of course they can also continue to grow their broadband internet access business.

I suppose they will likely start putting cameras and other data sensors on the satellites so they can sell other data for mapping, positioning services, agriculture, weather, etc. The incremental cost to add this to the platform will be almost nothing compared to existing systems.

This is the right answer. They are building their own cell phone network to compete with major carriers worldwide.

No they sell a story to investors.

Right now we do not even have the antenna technology in current high end smartphones for 'easy to use, normal speed' mobile to satelite communication.

And funny enough, the more local mobile phones you would have, which want to send data to a satelite, the harder the problem gets due to interference.

With 5g we do already a lot of beam forming etc. Try beamforming into 500km space with uncoordinated random amount of mobile devices with very very little sending power and one satelite 'beamforming' its a few hundred square miles.

> to compete with major carriers worldwide.

I don't see a reason why countries with existing carriers would allow that, given the owner's stance about political meddling.

It will take years if not more to be technical capable to have modems so good that they can communicate with a starlink satelite in any reasonable 'day to day' way.

And Starlink already increased prices again.

And without Sparship and prooving that they actually can reuse it, they can't hold the price point.

Starlink satelites do not scale very well. They need v3 and even with v3 this doesn't scale efficently.

How would people be able to use internet when they are inside? Perhaps under layers and layers of concrete, think a 50 stories building

The same way they already do with DAS and WiFi routers

So that's a no.

Phone > Satellite connection cannot happen indoors directly, whereas 3-4-5g can, today, not 10 years and billions of R&D into the future

It's a no in the sense that these buildings already have poor/no service today.

It’s a pretty low margin business, tho, generally.

Starlink is currently partnering with United Airlines for Wi-Fi coverage, so that's one thing.

Qatar just announced it's gate-to-gate and free on their aircraft.

Wifi on Delta has worked spectacularly well (not sarcastic) for like 10 years now.

It's been broken/unavailable on maybe 6 of my flights out of hundreds.

Additionally, India is currently banning starlink for national security reasons.

This isn't true

Starlink accounted for 69% of SpaceX revenue pre-merger and is speculated to be already profitable including launch costs.

And this is all before they launch a phone or something, or replace global fiber interconnect with a lower latency space-based alternative, replace all forms of space based telecommunications (TV, Satellite Radio, etc). Starlink is a $1T+ business without even getting creative.

For context, that revenue was $18.67 billion in 2025, with a net loss of $4.94 billion.

And we must remember that 6G is in the final stages of development, which has peak speeds of 1 Tbps.

6G will have worse physical penetration than 5G, which makes it worthless in rural areas where 5G is already severely inhibited by tree leaves.

> in rural areas where 5G is already severely inhibited by tree leaves.

This is not a problem in Africa and India.

You need an /s or a /jk or people will take you seriously.

https://www.google.de/maps/place/Nairobi,+Kenya/@-1.2745409,...

I didn't mean to say there were no trees or leaves in those places, because of course they have massive tropical and subtropical forests.

In most of the world, if a some leaves are in the way, it's quite simple to remove the leaves.

It's not that simple. Yes, newer standards push for higher frequencies to get more bandwidth, but 5G for example also uses the old sub GHz bands with excellent range and penetration.

Starlink by itself does not have a net loss.

Will sending bits to space and back really be faster than fiber? How?

With positive thinking and maximum upside ?

Lightspeed in air is close to c_vacuum. Light speed in fiber is roughly 2/3 c_vacuum. So for transatlantic it might be faster.

Let’s see if we can bring the cost of hollow core fiber down, it would be faster transatlantic even

Often the bigger difference is just that fiber never goes in a straight line, even if it’s going to the right city. All that pesky geography gets in the way and makes the path longer.

As far as I can tell it almost exclusively follows the existing roads in Europe. Probably an easier way to secure rights in one go like rails used to be for telco lines.

Pipelines, Sewer systems, rail too.

Geography and property lines, twin banes of every infrastructure builder.

And because getting heavy plant up through a mountain range to dig trenches etc is a pain in the arse. It’s easier to do it along a main road.

If you were smart about it then you wouldn’t go up in the mountains in the first place. To get the lowest possible latency you want a straight shot, so obviously you should just bore your way through at the level of the plains on either side.

Unless you're trying to do something like high frequency stock trading, this does not really matter. Most of the added latency is added in the hops themselves, as packets are being classified and routed. Your generic Internet user won't be able to see any difference.

You need to take error into account, too. Can atmospheric conditions corrupt the transmission (this is not a rhetorical question, I actually don't know)? If so then your latency and bandwidth will both suffer.

EDIT: also, in the very likely case that the packet is not addressed to the satellite itself, routing comes into play. In the best-case scenario where the satellite is somehow able to transmit the packet directly to its destination the distance it travels is actually doubled. If the packet instead gets transmitted from the satellite to a base-station which then routes it through fiber-optics then there's no point in trying to argue that the satellite connection is the faster of the two even if that is true.

It will definitely be faster when someone drops an anchor on the undersea cable.

Given the size of the ocean (ie, there's so many other places that a ship can drop anchor other than right on a cable), I would assume this would be intentional sabotage any time it happens.

Exactly…lately they were dragging anchor by „accident” with a ship „totally not associated” with the country that was accused.

Starlink made a $4 bn profit last year, and is apparently growing 30% YoY.

Starlink isn't billed for the cost of launches.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/06/29/spacex-secret-laun...

Interesting. I didn't realize that.

It's not true.

It's billed at cost. Not at price.

From Space X prospectus:

For launches of our Starlink satellites, the Company does not recognize any inter-segment revenue, rather those launch costs are capitalized in satellites in Property, plant, and equipment, net. We allocate a significant amount of launch capacity to our Connectivity segment, and expect to allocate a significant amount to our AI segment in the future. Our Space segment revenue only reflects our customer launches and customer activities.

For launches dedicated to deploying our Starlink satellites, we capitalize the associated costs within our Connectivity segment and depreciate them over time, and we do not recognize revenue for those launches in our Space segment.

There's no dispute there with what I said.

The launch cost for Starlink is in the connectivity segment. It has to go somewhere on your balance sheet and you can't magic it away.

If you manufacture cement and you also sell premixed concrete in another division it's a similar thing. Or any other company that sells both raw material and finished product.

Here they are saying it's in the connectivity segment costs instead of them buying it at retail. That's all there is.

That's how analysts can estimate launch costs ~$20MM and $600k for satellites as opposed to the idea that launch is $0 for Starlink and the cost is hidden in the space segment.

Yeah but it doesn't become a Trillion dollar business if they don't solve the Starlink Satelite v3 issue.

They need Starship to be able to send v3 up, without v3 it doesn't scale well enough.

Starship still hasn't proven it can actually bring up the relevant payload high enough and they need it to be reusable otherwise costs will increase.

And they already exist and only have 10 Million customers. They need to get countries on their side like India but these countries are not stupid. Elon Musk showed them very clearly what he can do like his statements he did when Ukraine war started.

We’ll how that prediction turns out…

My informed opinion says that you are wildly wrong.

(Also don’t forget the Starlink related military contracts that SpaceX has.)

> My informed opinion

Well, my informed (I guess? it's first hand) opinion says exactly what the PC said. And no the plan has been underfoot for so long that it really pretty much has nothing to do with the current regime even though I am sure like any regime they'd say they did it from the scratch.

I'd say we are getting really great at getting broadband to everyone than giving enough bread and education and healthcare to everyone :D (ignore the smiley, this sucks)

We already have Starlink. Starlink only has 10 Million customers.

Starlink increased prices just a fwe weeks ago.

So whats stoping the future starlink explosion?

> what[']s stop[p]ing the future Starlink explosion?

Constellation numbers are still below the Kessler syndrome threshold?

Starlink is going to be panopticon surveillance satellites long term - I hope I'm wrong.

Space Bears have been saying this for quite a while, we live in megalopolis which already are covered very efficiently and we are only becoming more urban. Of course their voice was drowned because rockets are essentially giant penises piercing the atmosphere and hence the intersection of nerds getting excited for the sake of technical prowness and rich guys who don't get laid who seem to be nowadays at the helm of the intelligentia didn't want to hear none of that.

On top of that add the reusability stunt streamed in 4k making them extrapolate a not well defined pivotal leap for ROI....and there you have it , it's the Apollo sinkhole all over again with money being lit on fire an essentially no quality of life ROI for society.

At least the Apollo mission got us the ability to deliver nukes to Moscow in 30 minutes or less. This will be a total sinkhole.

All the while we are held hostage by a Nation with consumption rates which are a thenth of ours and we still have the audacity to reject nuclear fission because it's "dangerous"

Automated cargo ships. Traveling to automated ports.

The 5 wage slaves on current ocean giants aren't even a rounding error on any calculation.

The wage isn’t the problem, it’s the regulations.

... would there really not be regulations on giant unmanned ships? That seems concerning, though I could certainly understand international / maritime law having a gap.

I give coastal piracy about 3-weeks to figure out how to commandeer unmanned cargo ships. I bet they’d be ecstatic.

taps head

cant' steer without a helm

you think they won't figure out how to hotwire the steer-by-wire controls?

Now, allow me to introduce you to the ID verification. Insert your biometric passport to proceed. /j

You think current sea pirates are deterred by an unarmed crew of 5?

No cardboard, no cardboard derivatives, no cellotape.

Never going to happen in your lifetime.

Salt water, is nasty, it gets everywhere, the environment on boats is damp. Ships are complicated and require constant effort to keep running.

Any sort of "automation" you build in is subject to those same environmental conditions, and wont last long.

Crews on those ships are spending nearly all their time maintaining them.

Many flag and port states already allow One Man Bridge Operation (OMBO) in many circumstances. This means there's basically on person on the bridge, and maybe one other person down in the engine room keeping an eye on a floating city block moving through the water at 15 knots

This idea that putting $500m+ of assets in the water, but thinking that even one person on the boat is too many has got to be one of the silliest things in modern capitalism (obviously the crown goes to orbital AI data centers).

The same bosses will pay multiple security guards, in addition to staff, to guard <$10m in goods at a Walmart. But when 50x the goods are in the ocean, suddenly the staff is the limiter?

Yeah, autonomous shipping makes sense for naval/coastguard drones but not much else. Shipping companies can pay most of the staff Filipino wages, and they run around doing all sorts of maintenance tasks, not just navigation and contro.

Now the crew will be very pleased if they get a Starlink connection rather than the ridiculously small crew connectivity allowance Inmarsat et al will give them, but that all depends on shipping companies not having to pay premium prices for maritime connectivity.

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