Cell phone towers and internet (mobile or fixed) require a backbone connection. Maintaining a WIRED backbone connection in the third world is, ah, challenging.SL will provide the opportunity to setup more economically viable cellphone towers and provide more Internet gateways compared to just wired connections.The same is true in rural America, Canada, etc. etc.
About the price/market tweet and discussion. The basic assumption about a worldwide price of 60$ or so is wrong imo at the very basic level. Things do cost different in different countries. For example cars are much more expensive in Germany than in other countries and I assume the same principle will be true for Starlink. While in Germany the service might cost 80$ (or Euros), the price for example in Romania might be 25$ and in England 100$.
Quote from: TorenAltair on 01/22/2020 02:09 amAbout the price/market tweet and discussion. The basic assumption about a worldwide price of 60$ or so is wrong imo at the very basic level. Things do cost different in different countries. For example cars are much more expensive in Germany than in other countries and I assume the same principle will be true for Starlink. While in Germany the service might cost 80$ (or Euros), the price for example in Romania might be 25$ and in England 100$.Internet in the US is far far far more expensive than it is here in the UK. If they price Starlink at $100, they won't get much custom at all. Thats well over twice what I pay for my fibre internet, phone line, and TV combined. Even $60 would be on the pricy side.
The numbers were just examples or placeholders to show that as with basically every product, the price is different in each country/region and the simple comparison of a fixed price worldwide to the GDP per head is not correct in my opinion.
Here we go. Astronomers doing economic analysis of Starlink assuming it will be sold worldwide for $60 USD.
Quote from: Hummy on 01/21/2020 03:31 amHere we go. Astronomers doing economic analysis of Starlink assuming it will be sold worldwide for $60 USD.The satellites will be over Africa by orbital necessity, at no additional cost, since SpaceX needs to serve the populated, affluent areas in the northern hemisphere. Therefore every dollar they can get from Africa is straight marginal profit. Prices will be set by supply and demand. The supply of bandwidth is the same everywhere on Earth (minus the poles), so for most of the southern hemisphere where the demand is low the prices will be low - I suspect much less than $60/month.
The satellites will be over Africa by orbital necessity, at no additional cost, since SpaceX needs to serve the populated, affluent areas in the northern hemisphere. Therefore every dollar they can get from Africa is straight marginal profit. Prices will be set by supply and demand. The supply of bandwidth is the same everywhere on Earth (minus the poles), so for most of the southern hemisphere where the demand is low the prices will be low - I suspect much less than $60/month.
Saw an analyses somewhere that was doubting the needed for dedicated groundstations in populated areas because the receivers themselves would also work as relays.All needed would be a handful of relay stations along the Arctic and half a dozen ships for guaranteed ocean coverage.
Quote from: Hummy on 01/21/2020 03:31 amHere we go. Astronomers doing economic analysis of Starlink assuming it will be sold worldwide for $60 USD.The satellites will be over Africa by orbital necessity, at no additional cost, since SpaceX needs to serve the populated, affluent areas in the northern hemisphere. Therefore every dollar they can get from Africa is straight marginal profit. Prices will be set by supply and demand.
The supply of bandwidth is the same everywhere on Earth (minus the poles), ..
Quote from: LouScheffer on 01/24/2020 03:18 amThe satellites will be over Africa by orbital necessity, at no additional cost, since SpaceX needs to serve the populated, affluent areas in the northern hemisphere. Therefore every dollar they can get from Africa is straight marginal profit. Prices will be set by supply and demand. The supply of bandwidth is the same everywhere on Earth (minus the poles), so for most of the southern hemisphere where the demand is low the prices will be low - I suspect much less than $60/month.Keep in mind that starting up service in Africa is not as simple as dropping in a few UFO antennas. There will be government regulatory approval needed in each country they want to operate in. They will need to setup ground relay stations being that the signal is not hoping between satellites yet. The ground relay stations will need connection agreements with one or more carrier networks to move their traffic.Also need to keep in mind the politics. As an example, Egypt may not want user terminals in their country routed through a ground station in Libya as it would prevent any national traffic filtering from being put in place. Hard to shut off Facebook when you don't control the pipe in and out of the country. In a worst case scenario, every country in that region could require a ground station and logic in the network to only allow traffic from user terminals in their country to route through the nation's ground station.
QuoteThe supply of bandwidth is the same everywhere on Earth (minus the poles), ..Is that true?Isn't the supply of bandwidth greater closer to the max of the orbital latitude (~52°) and lower around the equator?
Quote from: LouScheffer on 01/24/2020 03:18 amQuote from: Hummy on 01/21/2020 03:31 amHere we go. Astronomers doing economic analysis of Starlink assuming it will be sold worldwide for $60 USD.The satellites will be over Africa by orbital necessity, at no additional cost, since SpaceX needs to serve the populated, affluent areas in the northern hemisphere. Therefore every dollar they can get from Africa is straight marginal profit. Prices will be set by supply and demand. The supply of bandwidth is the same everywhere on Earth (minus the poles), so for most of the southern hemisphere where the demand is low the prices will be low - I suspect much less than $60/month.One reason why that tweet above was ridiculous to me is that $60 is just a bit less than what Comcast charges for cable internet in my suburban area. When Starlink begins offering regular consumer service, they will have to offer it for substantially less than $60 in the US or else they're only competing for customers already restricted to expensive satellite internet. We know that's not the intention.
Comcast has over 26 million internet subscribers right now, the majority of whom hate it with a passion.I would take the bet that at least 10% of the subscriber base would be willing to switch for a service that charged 30% more than what they are paying Comcast. That by itself represents over 2 billion dollars of gross annual revenue.
Quote from: groundbound on 01/24/2020 08:47 pmComcast has over 26 million internet subscribers right now, the majority of whom hate it with a passion.I would take the bet that at least 10% of the subscriber base would be willing to switch for a service that charged 30% more than what they are paying Comcast. That by itself represents over 2 billion dollars of gross annual revenue.And yet Comcast added a quarter million wireless subscribers in Q4 and passed 2 million total wireless subscribers milestone.