Starlink fundamental cost per GB equation (and comparison to competition)

[Robotbeat]

As promised here:

You know, you can calculate a minimum cost per GB for Starlink (and compare it to other things, like 4G/5G, cable, fiber, DSL, GSO satellite) as a function of capacity factor (which includes both the altitude of the satellite, angle to the satellite, and distribution of customers around the globe as well as inclination distribution of the satellites), launch cost per kg, hardware cost per kg, and throughput per kg.

Think I might start a new thread. Could give us some idea of whether or how Starlink can compete with various options. (Latency also being a factor that determines value.)

Cost per GB of transferred data:

((cost per kg of satellite hardware)+(cost per kg launch to operational orbit))/((Capacity factor)*(throughput per kg of satellite hardware)*(satellite lifetime))

Or, for a globally available Starlink constellation (cap factor = 25%) launched with Falcon 9 for $1000/kg with a satellite hardware cost of $1000/kg, 2.5GB/s for each 250kg satellite (0.01GB/s/kg), 6.34 year lifetime (200 million seconds):

($1000/kg+$1000/kg)/(.25*.001GB/(s*kg)*2*10^8s) in $/GB = 0.4 cents per GB.

Maybe more realistic for the early days (when only 4 percent capacity factor is feasible, and we're using the more realistic $30 million per Falcon 9 launch instead of the $15 million marginal cost) is:

($2000/kg+$2000/kg)/(.04*(17Gbps/(263kg))*4 years)  in $/GB
 =10 cents per GB.


(Note, this doesn't include the ground portion.)

BTW, Google can do this calculation for you:
($2000/kg+$2000/kg)/(.04*(17Gbps/(263kg))*4 years)  in $/GB

[Robotbeat]

Comcast per-month average user data usage is about 300GB/month. They charge on the order of $60/month. That means their user price is about $0.20/GB (although they only start enforcing a cap at 1.2TB/month, or about 5 cents per GB).

Mobile wireless data plans in the US are about $5-10/GB, but if you're lucky, some of the higher bandwidth (5G?) plans can get you down to about $1.8/GB.

DSL goes for about $35/month and enforces a cap at around 150GB/month usage, but I bet average per user usage is around half that, so let's say 50 cents per GB and 25 cents per GB respectively.

GSO satellite internet charges around $3-5/GB.

[su27k]

Interesting, your number is not that far away from Tim Farrar's estimate:

Another, even more critical consideration is that the underlying cost of data delivery over fixed networks is much, much lower than the retail price. Back in 2016, Dave Burstein noted that it cost ISPs less than 1 cent per Gbyte to deliver internet traffic, and that figure is undoubtedly lower today. That’s the more appropriate basis for comparison with the cost of delivery for Starlink (unlike Handmer’s ridiculous comparison with an obselete 14 year old submarine cable, when most domestic internet traffic doesn’t even need to go outside the US), which (using our 250-500Gbytes per orbit figure above) would have a satellite capex cost alone of 0.7-1.3 cents per Gbyte over 5 years.

[Robotbeat]

So what this tells me is that even in the early days, Starlink should *in principle* still be able to compete with everyone *in the US* other than perhaps cities with cable and fiber where there is enough competition for monthly prices to be below $60/month and where per-user data usages are high.

With Starship, they can probably get both the hardware and the launch costs MUCH lower (although might be limited into how effective they can be at shielding light pollution for how big they can make the Starlink satellites). Starship plus worldwide reach should mean they can compete handily in all but the most dense and most competitive markets, including in markets overseas where cost per GB for all these things is much lower.

If a doubling of bandwidth only requires a 50% more massive satellite, then, roughly speaking a 1 ton satellite could do 200Gbps, so:
($100/kg+$100/kg)/(.25*(200Gbps/(1000kg))*10 years) in $/GB is about 0.01 *cents* per GB. That is much cheaper than bulk data center data transfer costs, i.e. from AWS or whoever., which is about 2-15 cents per GB depending on region (ie 200-1500x as much).
(And this is ignoring improvement in throughput from general technology improvement, i.e. Moore's Law, as that can impact both ground and space roughly equally.)

[Robotbeat]

In the US, you've got to keep in mind that broadband residential internet is very high margin. These companies are near-monopolies so charge near-monopoly prices plus have a ton of overhead in customer acquisition/advertisement. This is why Starlink will be able to be extremely competitive in the US anywhere that isn't super high density.

So to respond to Tim Farrar's point, SpaceX is vertically integrated and probably will rely almost entirely on earned advertisement (i.e. media covering Starlink developments and SpaceX doings) plus word of mouth (all those space and Tesla fans!), so they can afford for their backend costs to be a significant portion of the cost their customer pays. This is especially true as SpaceX begins using lasers between satellites and installs terminals directly at data centers, avoiding having to pay any backbone interconnect fees.

A near-monopoly broadband company may be able to charge the customer 20 times what their actual backend costs are, but that doesn't mean SpaceX can't get by with charging only, say, 2-4 times or whatever and still turning a profit.

[Tomness]

I have HughesNet. I pay over $116(USD) a month locked in for 2 years. For their basic package with a data allotment of 35 GB a month with a 50 GB bonus zone from 2am -6am. Sat Internet is the only internet we can get, phone service pretty spotty for data. The only thing we have on the horizon is an Electric company Co-Op Fiber to Home and Starklink.

[Nomadd]

 I just got the latest Verizon phone deal. About $90 for 75GB high speed, but only 30GB of that is hotspot. 600k after that runs out.

[ncb1397]

DSL goes for about $35/month and enforces a cap at around 150GB/month usage, but I bet average per user usage is around half that, so let's say 50 cents per GB and 25 cents per GB respectively.

As someone on DSL, this is news to me. Just double checked the website and it says no data caps and no throttling with plans starting at $39.95 and escalating at $10.00 increments up to $69.95. They are being somewhat coy about what the platinum plan actually means currently in terms of bandwidth speed but they suggest a 500 MB video file will take 26.6 seconds which translates to ~150 mbps. This is pretty rural internet outside of any city limits.

So what this tells me is that even in the early days, Starlink should *in principle* still be able to compete with everyone *in the US* other than perhaps cities with cable and fiber where there is enough competition for monthly prices to be below $60/month and where per-user data usages are high.

I don't see it. Why would I pay $500 up front to get comparable service to the $69.95 plan that provides similar speeds and pay an extra $30 a month on top of that in perpetuity? And that was with free installation with me not having to lift a finger although I did help him route the ethernet cables around the house a few years back.

You can make all sorts of back of the envelope projections ignoring major costs like the ground segment and user equipment, but currently with service being offered, it isn't being born out in real world results.

[Tommyboy]

DSL goes for about $35/month and enforces a cap at around 150GB/month usage, but I bet average per user usage is around half that, so let's say 50 cents per GB and 25 cents per GB respectively.

As someone on DSL, this is news to me. Just double checked the website and it says no data caps and no throttling with plans starting at $39.95 and escalating at $10.00 increments up to $69.95. They are being somewhat coy about what the platinum plan actually means currently in terms of bandwidth speed but they suggest a 500 MB video file will take 26.6 seconds which translates to ~150 mbps. This is pretty rural internet outside of any city limits.

So what this tells me is that even in the early days, Starlink should *in principle* still be able to compete with everyone *in the US* other than perhaps cities with cable and fiber where there is enough competition for monthly prices to be below $60/month and where per-user data usages are high.

I don't see it. Why would I pay $500 up front to get comparable service to the $69.95 plan that provides similar speeds and pay an extra $30 a month on top of that in perpetuity? And that was with free installation with me not having to lift a finger although I did help him route the ethernet cables around the house a few years back.

You can make all sorts of back of the envelope projections ignoring major costs like the ground segment and user equipment, but currently with service being offered, it isn't being born out in real world results.

The 500 up front and 100 monthly are just the costs right now. I remember when ADSL was new (mid to end of the 90s) the prices were very similar. The costs will come down. Guaranteed.

[Robotbeat]

DSL goes for about $35/month and enforces a cap at around 150GB/month usage, but I bet average per user usage is around half that, so let's say 50 cents per GB and 25 cents per GB respectively.

As someone on DSL, this is news to me. Just double checked the website and it says no data caps and no throttling with plans starting at $39.95 and escalating at $10.00 increments up to $69.95. They are being somewhat coy about what the platinum plan actually means currently in terms of bandwidth speed but they suggest a 500 MB video file will take 26.6 seconds which translates to ~150 mbps. This is pretty rural internet outside of any city limits.

So what this tells me is that even in the early days, Starlink should *in principle* still be able to compete with everyone *in the US* other than perhaps cities with cable and fiber where there is enough competition for monthly prices to be below $60/month and where per-user data usages are high.

I don't see it. Why would I pay $500 up front to get comparable service to the $69.95 plan that provides similar speeds and pay an extra $30 a month on top of that in perpetuity? And that was with free installation with me not having to lift a finger although I did help him route the ethernet cables around the house a few years back.

You can make all sorts of back of the envelope projections ignoring major costs like the ground segment and user equipment, but currently with service being offered, it isn't being born out in real world results.

Because SpaceX doesn’t need to compete against DSL and cable *yet*. Mainly just satellite internet. After SpaceX has picked up a million customers in the US, they can start eating into the market share of everyone else, but there’s no reason to lower their prices right now. If anything, they likely will be limited by the number of terminals they can build and send out for the next year at least.

SpaceX could charge $150/month and $750 for their terminal and STILL have massive demand from people stuck on GSO satellite Internet.

[Robotbeat]

Everyone has data caps, although nowadays they’re usually “soft” data caps where they’ll throttle you after you’ve used up 150GB or 1.2TB or whatever.

Read the fine print and look up people who test these things. If you’re pegging your 25Mbps for the entire month, I guarantee you will at LEAST be throttled if not canceled outright.

[Robotbeat]

As a comparison:
Viasat-3 is each $650m, is in GSO so it has 100% geographical capacity factor (BUT still has time of use capacity factor, maybe around 50%?), is 1Terabit/s in capacity and 15 year lifespan (but whether that’s usefully different than, say, 7-10 years depends on how fast cost of data transfer goes down).
So that’s about 1-4 cents per GB depending on how you count.

The latency is terrible, though! That might mean they have a low useful capacity factor because few people want to use it.

[Robotbeat]

There Is, however, some efficiency to be gained in terms of capacity factor in using a higher orbit. One wonders if a Starlink terminal could talk to a satellite in GSO or MEO or a Tundra orbit. SpaceX could employ a few satellites there for handling the data that is less latency sensitive, enabling them to access higher density areas if they use powerful apertures.

[ncb1397]

As a comparison:
Viasat-3 is each $650m, is in GSO so it has 100% geographical capacity factor (BUT still has time of use capacity factor, maybe around 50%?), is 1Terabit/s in capacity and 15 year lifespan (but whether that’s usefully different than, say, 7-10 years depends on how fast cost of data transfer goes down).
So that’s about 1-4 cents per GB depending on how you count.

The latency is terrible, though! That might mean they have a low useful capacity factor because few people want to use it.

Interesting, the 1-4 cents per GB for Viasat 3 and the starlink number of 10 cents per GB in the OP is consistent with a ratio that Mark Dankberg presented and that I saw recently. Those numbers were a low end of $10,000 per gbps-month for starlink and something like $~3,000 per gbps-month for ViaSat 3.

See ~7:49 in the following video


This is marketable bandwidth, so some assumptions about landing rights and that kind of thing while the GEO satellite just targets all of its capacity where it is projected to be needed and useable.

Everyone has data caps, although nowadays they’re usually “soft” data caps where they’ll throttle you after you’ve used up 150GB or 1.2TB or whatever.

Read the fine print and look up people who test these things. If you’re pegging your 25Mbps for the entire month, I guarantee you will at LEAST be throttled if not canceled outright.

I really think I don't, but I am testing it now because my curiosity has got the better of me. You are thinking about larger DSL providers like CenturyLink and Uverse. I linked their policies below.

The CenturyLink Excessive Use Policy (EUP) uses a 1.0 terabyte (TB) monthly data usage limit. This limit applies to all uploaded and downloaded data for all residential CenturyLink High Speed Internet (HSI) customers except for those excluded below.  Of the millions of CenturyLink HSI customers, very small fractions exceed the data usage limit provided with their monthly HSI plan.

CenturyLink is committed to providing an optimal Internet experience for every customer we serve. It is for this reason that CenturyLink places data usage limits on residential plans. The data usage limit applies to residential HSI. It does not apply to business-class HSI.  Residential Fiber Gigabit plans are also not subject to data usage limits. The HSI and video traffic of Prism® TV service customers is also not subject to the CenturyLink EUP.  Any residential customer receiving discounted HSI service under a program to promote broadband adoption in low-income households is also not subject to the data usage limit.

CenturyLink does not currently charge customers a fee for excessive data usage. CenturyLink will weigh variables such as network health, congestion, and the availability of customer usage data as factors when enforcing this policy. Customers who have exceeded their monthly data usage limit and are subject to EUP enforcement will be notified by CenturyLink via web notification and/or written communication.

Customers who are subject to EUP enforcement are given options to reduce their usage, subscribe to a higher-speed residential HSI plan, or migrate to an alternate business-class HSI service. Our EUP is application neutral; it only considers the total usage (bytes transferred) over a defined period of time independent of protocols, applications, or the content that is generating the excessive usage.

Customers who repeatedly exceed the EUP usage limit, and interfere with other customers' use of HSI service, are subject to the CenturyLink HSI terms of service.

For additional detail about the EUP, view the questions and answers (PDF).

https://www.centurylink.com/aboutus/legal/internet-service-disclosure/full-version.html

The 150 GB limit for DSL appears to be derived from AT&T, but they seem to be one of the strictest. Assuming the basic service is $50, the most you would pay in a month is ~$250 for overages. They also allow for actual unlimited service, just not over DSL. If you are on Uverse over DSL and you are getting overages every month, Starlink would be attractive. Assuming that overages or heavy throttling don't start to apply when they have a network under load and have to balance users against each other.
https://www.att.com/help/internet/usage.html

[Michael S]

I just got the latest Verizon phone deal. About $90 for 75GB high speed, but only 30GB of that is hotspot. 600k after that runs out.

The company I work for has the "phone over the Internet"(I must admit this is a bit beyond my knowledge). if the latency we have been hearing about can be maintained as the customer base is increased, could Starlink work as a 'reverse hotspot'? Or, is this a stupid question?

[Nomadd]

I just got the latest Verizon phone deal. About $90 for 75GB high speed, but only 30GB of that is hotspot. 600k after that runs out.

The company I work for has the "phone over the Internet"(I must admit this is a bit beyond my knowledge). if the latency we have been hearing about can be maintained as the customer base is increased, could Starlink work as a 'reverse hotspot'? Or, is this a stupid question?

You should be able to use Starlink just like any wifi phone service. The problem I was talking about would be using it for a wider phone service with a bunch of customers. There are some pretty Byzantine laws about supplying voice service as a business. Using Starlink as a telco pipe for areas already authorized for service by that telco should be simple. The hard part will be dealing with regulators who got the job by flunking out of Walmart greeter school.
 I'm pretty out of date too, and wasn't that good when I was in date, but you use to get good latency and small buffer size for voice over internet phone services by the internet provider supporting a higher class of service for your call to keep the data flow nice and smooth. It gave voice calls higher priority than people watching cute kitten videos and kept the data buffer as small as possible.
 Can't say I really know what you mean by "reverse hotspot".

[Robotbeat]

Cable providers who bundle phone service don’t have a separate phone line. They just run the phone data over their own internal network. Starlink could do the same. For TV, too, actually. No reason Starlink satellites couldn’t broadcast satellite TV.

[Robotbeat]

It’s worth noting that Viasat-3 hasn’t been launched yet and averaged over its whole lifetime, Starlink (which will upgrade several times over 15 years plus launch on the cheaper Starship) could well have a much lower cost per GB.

[Nomadd]

Cable providers who bundle phone service don’t have a separate phone line. They just run the phone data over their own internal network. Starlink could do the same. For TV, too, actually. No reason Starlink satellites couldn’t broadcast satellite TV.

I'm still wondering about the tv part. So many people stream the latest episode when they get around to it as opposed to broadcast episodes, how do they keep the system from getting clogged up by 40 million individual streaming episodes of "Backstabbing moron douchebags who say things like protein instead of food in order to appear intelligent, in some generic Survivior clone of the month"?

[Robotbeat]

They could still broadcast like a regular cable or satellite company does. That way if 1000 people in the beam are watching the Super Bowl or whatever, they don't need 1000x the bandwidth. But streaming video (like youtube) uses normal bandwidth.

I would bet that streaming video is already the majority of data usage for broadband. I have regularly wondered if it might eventually make sense to keep a nearline Netflix cache on Starlink satellites once the satellites get larger.

[Michael S]

I just got the latest Verizon phone deal. About $90 for 75GB high speed, but only 30GB of that is hotspot. 600k after that runs out.

The company I work for has the "phone over the Internet"(I must admit this is a bit beyond my knowledge). if the latency we have been hearing about can be maintained as the customer base is increased, could Starlink work as a 'reverse hotspot'? Or, is this a stupid question?

You should be able to use Starlink just like any wifi phone service. The problem I was talking about would be using it for a wider phone service with a bunch of customers. There are some pretty Byzantine laws about supplying voice service as a business. Using Starlink as a telco pipe for areas already authorized for service by that telco should be simple. The hard part will be dealing with regulators who got the job by flunking out of Walmart greeter school.
 I'm pretty out of date too, and wasn't that good when I was in date, but you use to get good latency and small buffer size for voice over internet phone services by the internet provider supporting a higher class of service for your call to keep the data flow nice and smooth. It gave voice calls higher priority than people watching cute kitten videos and kept the data buffer as small as possible.
 Can't say I really know what you mean by "reverse hotspot".

My apologies, it made sense in my head. My thought, if you can create a hotspot with your phone so you can have internet to watch cute kitten videos on your laptop; could one use a high quality internet connection (Starlink) to have a Voice Over Internet Phone, but with a cell phone within range of the wifi, anywhere on the planet?  For example, when you travel to Ecuador to scout for a new launch site southeast of Quito.

Edit: I'm starting to realize that you are talking about is a scaled up application of what I was talking about and already exists,  and that I am way behind on this subject and need to do some reading.

[rsdavis9]

They could still broadcast like a regular cable or satellite company does. That way if 1000 people in the beam are watching the Super Bowl or whatever, they don't need 1000x the bandwidth. But streaming video (like youtube) uses normal bandwidth.

I would bet that streaming video is already the majority of data usage for broadband. I have regularly wondered if it might eventually make sense to keep a nearline Netflix cache on Starlink satellites once the satellites get larger.

Yes! I have wondered the same. Currently there are caching services for the wired internet. Such as akamai. If there is a large data cache on the satellite then it would make sense for these companies to rent the space.

[niwax]

I just got the latest Verizon phone deal. About $90 for 75GB high speed, but only 30GB of that is hotspot. 600k after that runs out.

The company I work for has the "phone over the Internet"(I must admit this is a bit beyond my knowledge). if the latency we have been hearing about can be maintained as the customer base is increased, could Starlink work as a 'reverse hotspot'? Or, is this a stupid question?

You should be able to use Starlink just like any wifi phone service. The problem I was talking about would be using it for a wider phone service with a bunch of customers. There are some pretty Byzantine laws about supplying voice service as a business. Using Starlink as a telco pipe for areas already authorized for service by that telco should be simple. The hard part will be dealing with regulators who got the job by flunking out of Walmart greeter school.
 I'm pretty out of date too, and wasn't that good when I was in date, but you use to get good latency and small buffer size for voice over internet phone services by the internet provider supporting a higher class of service for your call to keep the data flow nice and smooth. It gave voice calls higher priority than people watching cute kitten videos and kept the data buffer as small as possible.
 Can't say I really know what you mean by "reverse hotspot".

My apologies, it made sense in my head. My thought, if you can create a hotspot with your phone so you can have internet to watch cute kitten videos on your laptop; could one use a high quality internet connection (Starlink) to have a Voice Over Internet Phone, but with a cell phone within range of the wifi, anywhere on the planet?  For example, when you travel to Ecuador to scout for a new launch site southeast of Quito.

Edit: I'm starting to realize that you are talking about is a scaled up application of what I was talking about and already exists,  and that I am way behind on this subject and need to do some reading.

Since LTE, all voice calls are simply IP data. Voice over wifi has also been available for a long time depending on phone and provider, if you're on wifi right now chances are your calls are actually being routed over that. So it could be as simple as connecting your phone to Starlink and you'll be able to receive calls.

[RedLineTrain]

A few notes to an informative discussion:

(1) Wouldn't they be able to drive to greater than 4% capacity utilization, even in the short term?  I'm thinking about Canada and the coasts of the U.S. (the satellite doesn't have to be over land in order to serve coastal areas).  This assumes that SpaceX will get its Canadian approval shortly and that the 25-degree or lower angle above the horizon for user terminals will be approved by the FCC shortly.

(2) As SpaceX keeps mentioning in its filings, it is authorized for the v-band for gateways and user terminals, even on these early sats.  I wonder when SpaceX will get that figured out and implemented and how much mass that will add to a satellite.  That should at least triple the available bandwidth to any particular area.  Also, it appears that SpaceX can go down to 5-degrees above the horizon on the v-band.

(3) SpaceX has also applied for the e-band, adding lots of available bandwidth (at least on the gateways).  Also in the application, SpaceX asks to use the Ka-band for user terminals.  That hasn't yet been taken up by the FCC, so it could be a year or two before SpaceX gains approval.

[RedLineTrain]

The fundamental problem that I have with comparing to Viasat-3 is that it will be maybe mid-2022 before the first one is operational.  Meanwhile, Viasat's customers are suffering on an earlier version and SpaceX is pushing rapidly-improving Starlinks uphill at a furious pace.

[Robotbeat]

The fundamental problem that I have with comparing to Viasat-3 is that it will be maybe mid-2022 before the first one is operational.  Meanwhile, Viasat's customers are suffering on an earlier version and SpaceX is pushing rapidly-improving Starlinks uphill at a furious pace.

Totally agree. I think a lot of industry regulars have vastly underestimated the speed at which SpaceX has executed Starlink and this impacts their comparisons.

[Lar]

Interesting, the 1-4 cents per GB for Viasat 3 and the starlink number of 10 cents per GB in the OP is consistent with a ratio that Mark Dankberg presented and that I saw recently. Those numbers were a low end of $10,000 per gbps-month for starlink and something like $~3,000 per gbps-month for ViaSat 3.

See ~7:49 in the following video


This is marketable bandwidth, so some assumptions about landing rights and that kind of thing while the GEO satellite just targets all of its capacity where it is projected to be needed and useable.
 

In a shocking development, the head of Viasat thinks his slideware offering is better than something that already exists in limited form and will be getting better and better over time as more and better birds are lofted, but his numbers don't actually check out since latency matters.

[Robotbeat]

Don’t speak too bad about Viasat. They have booked a Falcon Heavy launch.

SpaceX benefits from competition!

[Mandella]

The fundamental problem that I have with comparing to Viasat-3 is that it will be maybe mid-2022 before the first one is operational.  Meanwhile, Viasat's customers are suffering on an earlier version and SpaceX is pushing rapidly-improving Starlinks uphill at a furious pace.

Totally agree. I think a lot of industry regulars have vastly underestimated the speed at which SpaceX has executed Starlink and this impacts their comparisons.

I know I did. No way I thought I might have limited service rolling out in my area (~33 Lat) by Jan. Even if it slips to later spring I am really impressed.

As for expense, if it works I will be saving my ViaSat bill ($165.00) plus if I can route phone over internet I will finally ditch my landline ($45.00) plus a back up 3G hotspot ($10) for a savings of $121.00 per month.

Yeah I don't mind that $500.00 up front charge.

[ncb1397]

In a shocking development, the head of Viasat thinks his slideware offering is better than something that already exists in limited form and will be getting better and better over time as more and better birds are lofted, but his numbers don't actually check out since latency matters.

Sort of. According to TestMy.net, Hughes Network Systems actually beat Starlink in raw bandwidth yesterday December 9th(on a 4 year old satellite). Viasat was close. So, not exactly a "slideware offering". Latency doesn't really matter in terms of cost per bit, which is the subject of the thread and what Dankberg was referring to.

Hughes (download December 9th): 22.7 megabits
https://testmy.net/hoststats/hughes_network_syste

Viasat (download December 9th):  14 megabits
https://testmy.net/hoststats/viasat

Starlink (download December 9th): 17.6 megabits
https://testmy.net/hoststats/spacex_starlink

Starlink still has a big advantage in upload by a factor of  ~7. And this is the first time that existing geostationary was beating starlink, who knows if that will continue or was a blip.

*a caveat is that the starlink data is dominated by a couple of users doing automated testing every hour/half hour. The other services tend to have more diversified results (naturally, having more customers currently hooked up).

edit: If you remove the data for starlink from 2 users that shall not be named (one oddly seemingly shows a throttling to 25 mbps and the other shows weird variability), you get an average of 66 megabits/second download which is much better, but still about a ~4x improvement over Viasat with far fewer customers putting load on the system.

[Hamish.Student]

Everyone has data caps, although nowadays they’re usually “soft” data caps where they’ll throttle you after you’ve used up 150GB or 1.2TB or whatever.

 
 
This is not true. 
My ISP(Aussie Broadband) has unlimited plans, and there is no mention of exceeding it in their fair use policy.  My household pretty regularly goes over a TB in a month, and ive never heard anything from them, nor had my connection shaped.
 
There are upper limits to unlimited, but in reality for people to hit them is evidence they need a higher tier connection, or purposeful abuse which violates fair use.   
Fair use != Data caps.

[Robotbeat]

The reason ISPs put restrictions in the terms of service is because the plans are unlimited and they need some other way to control data flow. So the “fair use” restrictions, as you call them, are a way to sort of cap usage without customers getting too mad...

[dlapine]

How many customers can the planned total satellite network support? How many per satellite?

Apologies if this is answered elsewhere

[Robotbeat]

How many customers can the planned total satellite network support? How many per satellite?

Apologies if this is answered elsewhere

This is hard to say as they plan to increase capacity of each satellite over time (currently 20Gbps but Starship could allow much greater capacity per satellite... 1Tbps?). The answer could be hundreds of millions. Particularly as the add inter satellite links and gain customers all over the world.

Take the total number of satellites (1000 now, climbing to over 40000?), multiply by capacity of each satellite (20Gbps now, climbing to 1Tbps?), divide by a number between 4 and 20 for the proportion of time the satellites are over customers (start at 20 and reduce to 4 over time), and divide the whole thing by the average data usage per person (may be between 1 and 10 Megabits/second... Comcast’s average is closer to 1 megabit/s, although peak speeds might be 100 or 1000Mbps).

That’s 1 million users now, each using 1Mbps average, climbing eventually to 1 billion customers using on average 10Mbps (the same as about 10 average Comcast users combined).

[Lar]

In a shocking development, the head of Viasat thinks his slideware offering is better than something that already exists in limited form and will be getting better and better over time as more and better birds are lofted, but his numbers don't actually check out since latency matters.

Sort of. According to TestMy.net, Hughes Network Systems actually beat Starlink in raw bandwidth yesterday December 9th(on a 4 year old satellite). Viasat was close. So, not exactly a "slideware offering". Latency doesn't really matter in terms of cost per bit, which is the subject of the thread and what Dankberg was referring to.

Hughes (download December 9th): 22.7 megabits
https://testmy.net/hoststats/hughes_network_syste

Viasat (download December 9th):  14 megabits
https://testmy.net/hoststats/viasat

Starlink (download December 9th): 17.6 megabits
https://testmy.net/hoststats/spacex_starlink

Starlink still has a big advantage in upload by a factor of  ~7. And this is the first time that existing geostationary was beating starlink, who knows if that will continue or was a blip.

*a caveat is that the starlink data is dominated by a couple of users doing automated testing every hour/half hour. The other services tend to have more diversified results (naturally, having more customers currently hooked up).

edit: If you remove the data for starlink from 2 users that shall not be named (one oddly seemingly shows a throttling to 25 mbps and the other shows weird variability), you get an average of 66 megabits/second download which is much better, but still about a ~4x improvement over Viasat with far fewer customers putting load on the system.

Latency matters, a lot. You are just bound and determined to always put the most negative spin on everything related to SpaceX, aren't you? And a partly deployed network compared against one that's been in place for a while isn't a fair comparison either.

I'm comfortable with my characterization of Viasat's new plan as "slideware"

[Robotbeat]

Not to mention, ncb's figures are *extremely* cherry-picked (whether he did that intentionally or unintentionally is unclear... but I doubt he would've said anything if he had picked a day to check that site when Starlink was clearly superior). The average capacity of Starlink on those same exact links is 40.6Mbps down (10.5Mbps up). Hughes' average is ~17.6Mbps down (1.4Mbps up). Viasat average looks to be about 12Mbps (1.5Mbps up).

Starlink average download speed is over twice Hughes and over thrice Viasat and upload speed (relevant to all the video chat we're doing nowadays because of COVID) shows an even bigger disparity of more than a factor of 7 better than either Hughes and Viasat.

And Starlink is still in early Beta, and this is ignoring the massive latency advantage.

And am I cherrypicking? Nope! If you want to avoid cherrypicking, you use averages and the most complete data possible, not just that of a single day.

[ncb1397]

And Starlink is still in early Beta, and this is ignoring the massive latency advantage.

Exactly, you have to rate capacity as #users x average speed, not just the average speed. Being in Beta, the number of users for Starlink is relatively low. For instance, on that website, there were only 19 unique connections on the download side for Starlink on January 21st. There were 69 for Viasat and 446 for HughesNet. This is what you would expect given SpaceX has referenced thousands of invites being sent out repeatedly compared to the 1.6 million Hughes subscribers and .6 million US Viasat subscribers.

You are comparing a couple of 3 year+ old satellites being hammered with 100s of thousands of users compared to hundreds of  brand new satellites being hammers by thousands of users. In that regard, the 3x  advantage Starlink is seing in download over Viasat, isn't necessarily that impressive and could disappear under load. We will see, but the trend over time has been somewhat negative.

[envy887]

In a shocking development, the head of Viasat thinks his slideware offering is better than something that already exists in limited form and will be getting better and better over time as more and better birds are lofted, but his numbers don't actually check out since latency matters.

Sort of. According to TestMy.net, Hughes Network Systems actually beat Starlink in raw bandwidth yesterday December 9th(on a 4 year old satellite). Viasat was close. So, not exactly a "slideware offering". Latency doesn't really matter in terms of cost per bit, which is the subject of the thread and what Dankberg was referring to.

Cost is only half the equation in profit. You have to get someone to pay for that bit, and people will pay more for low latency bits.

[dlapine]

And Starlink is still in early Beta, and this is ignoring the massive latency advantage.

Exactly, you have to rate capacity as #users x average speed, not just the average speed. Being in Beta, the number of users for Starlink is relatively low. For instance, on that website, there were only 19 unique connections on the download side for Starlink on January 21st. There were 69 for Viasat and 446 for HughesNet. This is what you would expect given SpaceX has referenced thousands of invites being sent out repeatedly compared to the 1.6 million Hughes subscribers and .6 million US Viasat subscribers.

You are comparing a couple of 3 year+ old satellites being hammered with 100s of thousands of users compared to hundreds of  brand new satellites being hammers by thousands of users. In that regard, the 3x  advantage Starlink is seing in download over Viasat, isn't necessarily that impressive and could disappear under load. We will see, but the trend over time has been somewhat negative.

Do you have latency comparisons as well? Yes, I know that it's an unfair comparison, but it's just as useful to collect that data, as latency is also important, and often overlooked aspect of networking. Also, do you have data for uploads and not just downloads for comparison and tracking.

[Robotbeat]

And Starlink is still in early Beta, and this is ignoring the massive latency advantage.

Exactly, you have to rate capacity as #users x average speed, not just the average speed. Being in Beta, the number of users for Starlink is relatively low. For instance, on that website, there were only 19 unique connections on the download side for Starlink on January 21st. There were 69 for Viasat and 446 for HughesNet. This is what you would expect given SpaceX has referenced thousands of invites being sent out repeatedly compared to the 1.6 million Hughes subscribers and .6 million US Viasat subscribers.

You are comparing a couple of 3 year+ old satellites being hammered with 100s of thousands of users compared to hundreds of  brand new satellites being hammers by thousands of users. In that regard, the 3x  advantage Starlink is seing in download over Viasat, isn't necessarily that impressive and could disappear under load. We will see, but the trend over time has been somewhat negative.

Wow, you just don't quit, do you? I showed how you cherrypicked the data (conveniently skipping over the averages staring you right in the face), and you make up some other new line of argument without acknowledging what you did. And for your information, the long-term trend is essentially flat for Starlink, neither increasing nor decreasing. Enough with the disingenuous arguments that you keep attempting and then abandoning (without acknowledgement) when they're shown to be full of crap. If you want anyone on this site to consider you engaging in good faith, you're going to have to acknowledge when you're proven wrong.

[Robotbeat]

And Starlink is still in early Beta, and this is ignoring the massive latency advantage.

Exactly, you have to rate capacity as #users x average speed, not just the average speed. Being in Beta, the number of users for Starlink is relatively low. For instance, on that website, there were only 19 unique connections on the download side for Starlink on January 21st. There were 69 for Viasat and 446 for HughesNet. This is what you would expect given SpaceX has referenced thousands of invites being sent out repeatedly compared to the 1.6 million Hughes subscribers and .6 million US Viasat subscribers.

You are comparing a couple of 3 year+ old satellites being hammered with 100s of thousands of users compared to hundreds of  brand new satellites being hammers by thousands of users. In that regard, the 3x  advantage Starlink is seing in download over Viasat, isn't necessarily that impressive and could disappear under load. We will see, but the trend over time has been somewhat negative.

Do you have latency comparisons as well? Yes, I know that it's an unfair comparison, but it's just as useful to collect that data, as latency is also important, and often overlooked aspect of networking. Also, do you have data for uploads and not just downloads for comparison and tracking.

It's a COMPLETELY fair comparison, and according to the CTO of Cloudfare (big content delivery network provider), it's improving over time. https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=48297.msg2181535#msg2181535

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

And Starlink is still in early Beta, and this is ignoring the massive latency advantage.

Exactly, you have to rate capacity as #users x average speed, not just the average speed. Being in Beta, the number of users for Starlink is relatively low. For instance, on that website, there were only 19 unique connections on the download side for Starlink on January 21st. There were 69 for Viasat and 446 for HughesNet. This is what you would expect given SpaceX has referenced thousands of invites being sent out repeatedly compared to the 1.6 million Hughes subscribers and .6 million US Viasat subscribers.

You are comparing a couple of 3 year+ old satellites being hammered with 100s of thousands of users compared to hundreds of  brand new satellites being hammers by thousands of users. In that regard, the 3x  advantage Starlink is seing in download over Viasat, isn't necessarily that impressive and could disappear under load. We will see, but the trend over time has been somewhat negative.

Do you have latency comparisons as well? Yes, I know that it's an unfair comparison, but it's just as useful to collect that data, as latency is also important, and often overlooked aspect of networking. Also, do you have data for uploads and not just downloads for comparison and tracking.

It's a COMPLETELY fair comparison, and according to the CTO of Cloudfare (big content delivery network provider), it's improving over time. https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=48297.msg2181535#msg2181535

Every month an average of ~100 sats are added to the constellation. Right now that is ~ a 10% capability increase every month. This month 130. Next month Feb 180 or even possibly 240! So improvement is expected. But the real item here is that because the system is global with a global set of users the analysis has to be based on the global picture and not just the US picture when determining capability. As more landing licencing is given in more countries. The average of usage over a period measured in days of for any single sat can be reasonably calculated with a user density map for the Earth. SpaceX could do the calculation but doubtful that anyone else would have the complete database to be able to make the calculation. Sampling may work but is subject to accurate weighting calculations for each area of each county. Such that all calculations are no better than a guess that are definitely not accurate and may be very far off the actual.

[ncb1397]

And Starlink is still in early Beta, and this is ignoring the massive latency advantage.

Exactly, you have to rate capacity as #users x average speed, not just the average speed. Being in Beta, the number of users for Starlink is relatively low. For instance, on that website, there were only 19 unique connections on the download side for Starlink on January 21st. There were 69 for Viasat and 446 for HughesNet. This is what you would expect given SpaceX has referenced thousands of invites being sent out repeatedly compared to the 1.6 million Hughes subscribers and .6 million US Viasat subscribers.

You are comparing a couple of 3 year+ old satellites being hammered with 100s of thousands of users compared to hundreds of  brand new satellites being hammers by thousands of users. In that regard, the 3x  advantage Starlink is seing in download over Viasat, isn't necessarily that impressive and could disappear under load. We will see, but the trend over time has been somewhat negative.

Wow, you just don't quit, do you? I showed how you cherrypicked the data (conveniently skipping over the averages staring you right in the face)

You didn't discover anything. I described the situation including past dates.

Starlink still has a big advantage in upload by a factor of  ~7. And this is the first time that existing geostationary was beating starlink, who knows if that will continue or was a blip.

That is a direct statement that Starlink was winning at every single point with the exception of what I pointed out since the Beta started.

And for your information, the long-term trend is essentially flat for Starlink, neither increasing nor decreasing.

The best fit line for the website's average daily download speeds since the Beta started is negative. See below. I didn't say that it was "sharply negative". I described it as "somewhat negative". A factual statement with a proper adjective. Being confronted with simple facts should not engender a negative response. Maybe this is information that is not representative of what is actually happening in the wild? That is certainly possible, but as a description of the specific data made available here, it is where the evidence points.

[Robotbeat]

And Starlink is still in early Beta, and this is ignoring the massive latency advantage.

Exactly, you have to rate capacity as #users x average speed, not just the average speed. Being in Beta, the number of users for Starlink is relatively low. For instance, on that website, there were only 19 unique connections on the download side for Starlink on January 21st. There were 69 for Viasat and 446 for HughesNet. This is what you would expect given SpaceX has referenced thousands of invites being sent out repeatedly compared to the 1.6 million Hughes subscribers and .6 million US Viasat subscribers.

You are comparing a couple of 3 year+ old satellites being hammered with 100s of thousands of users compared to hundreds of  brand new satellites being hammers by thousands of users. In that regard, the 3x  advantage Starlink is seing in download over Viasat, isn't necessarily that impressive and could disappear under load. We will see, but the trend over time has been somewhat negative.

Wow, you just don't quit, do you? I showed how you cherrypicked the data (conveniently skipping over the averages staring you right in the face)

You didn't discover anything. I described the situation including past dates.

Starlink still has a big advantage in upload by a factor of  ~7. And this is the first time that existing geostationary was beating starlink, who knows if that will continue or was a blip.

That is a direct statement that Starlink was winning at every single point with the exception of what I pointed out since the Beta started.

And for your information, the long-term trend is essentially flat for Starlink, neither increasing nor decreasing.

The best fit line for the website's average daily download speeds since the Beta started is negative. See below. I didn't say that it was "sharply negative". I described it as "somewhat negative". A factual statement with a proper adjective. Being confronted with simple facts should not engender a negative response. Maybe this is information that is not representative of what is actually happening in the wild? That is certainly possible, but as a description of the specific data made available here, it is where the evidence points.

So again, you cherry-pick by not using the full available data. Speeds before your graph started were lower than they are now.

Don't hide behind "I'm showing simple facts" when you have been and continue to cherry-pick data to fit your narrative!

"the data is noisy because the service is early, so therefore I'll wait to post until the point in time when the random variations end up fitting my narrative" is cherrypicking. It's statistically the same thing as lying, bro. Quit gaslighting us.

I attached a graph of the *full* (not cherry-picked) data set the website you gave uses. A fitted line shows a positive slope. Essentially flat, but if you have to assign a slope to it, the slope is positive.

Just admit you were proven wrong and save some of your dignity.

[dlapine]

Latency data is not readily available from the site ncb1397 used, but they do include upload as well as download data.

The current 7 month averages (jun20 to Jan 21) from the testmynet site are, as of today (Jan 22 2021):

Starlink 40.6 Mbs down / 10.5 Mbs up
Viasat 12 Mbs down / 1.5 Mbs up
Hughes 17.6 Mbs down / 1.4 MBs up

Peak average measured speeds: (same time frame)
Starlink  98 Mbs down / 20.2 Mbs up
Viasat 56.2 Mbs down / 1.5 Mbs up
Hughes 31.1 Mbs down / 2 Mbs up

This as reported by the site directly is readily available.

Anyone have pricing specifics to go with this?

[dlapine]

That data does appear to be US only. 

It will be interesting to see what the averages look like by this July as that's a presumed 1500 sat operational time frame.

[ncb1397]

Anyone have pricing specifics to go with this?

ARPU for the last reported quarter for Viasat was slightly over $100. Hughes is like $98.50. Starlink is $99 in the US, the equivalent of $101.26 in Canada and $114.93 in the UK.

[ZachF]

As a comparison:
Viasat-3 is each $650m, is in GSO so it has 100% geographical capacity factor (BUT still has time of use capacity factor, maybe around 50%?), is 1Terabit/s in capacity and 15 year lifespan (but whether that’s usefully different than, say, 7-10 years depends on how fast cost of data transfer goes down).
So that’s about 1-4 cents per GB depending on how you count.

The latency is terrible, though! That might mean they have a low useful capacity factor because few people want to use it.

Interesting thread.

Something to think about...The cost declines in data transfer front loads the total income a sat could generate to its first years.

The growth in satellite throughput per kg seems to be in the area of 15-18 percent per year, so the value of a gigabit of capacity likely declines by a similar amount annually.  Back when ipstar6/Thaicom-4 launched ~15yrs ago its ~40GBPs was a significant  portion of world satellite throughput, now it's equaled by two 260kg Starlink sats, or ~1/50th of Viasat 3.

If the value of throughput declines by 15 percent per year, that means that at the end of a 15 year lifespan for a satellite like Viasat 3, the value of its capacity will have dropped by a factor of 10.

A 15 percent annual decline also puts the total life income of a 15 year satellite at the equivalent of 6 years of worth of first year income.

(edited for spelling/grammar, that's what I get for using my phone...)

[matthewkantar]

As a comparison:
Viasat-3 is each $650m, is in GSO so it has 100% geographical capacity factor (BUT still has time of use capacity factor, maybe around 50%?), is 1Terabit/s in capacity and 15 year lifespan (but whether that’s usefully different than, say, 7-10 years depends on how fast cost of data transfer goes down).
So that’s about 1-4 cents per GB depending on how you count.

The latency is terrible, though! That might mean they have a low useful capacity factor because few people want to use it.

Interesting thread.

Something to think about...The cost declines in data transfer front loads the total income a sat could generate to its first years.

The growth in satellite throughput per kg seems to be in the area of 15-18 percent per year, so the value of a gigabit of capacity likely declines by a similar amount annually.  Back when ipstar6/Thaicom launched ~15yrs ago its 40GBPs was a significant  portion of world satellite throughput,  now it equaled by two 260kg Starlink sats, or 1/50th of Viasat 3.

If the value of throughput declines by 15 percent per year, that means that at the end of a 15 year lifespan for a satellite like Viasat 3, the value of its capacity will has dropped by a factor of 10.

A 15 percent decline also puts the total life income of a 15 year satellite at the equivalent of 6 years of first year income.

Launch costs are dropping too, though in a choppier manner.

SpaceX didn't come up with five year life spans for the on orbit gear out of thin air. I am sure they ran the numbers and found the sweet spot.

[ncb1397]

Don't hide behind "I'm showing simple facts" when you have been and continue to cherry-pick data to fit your narrative!

"the data is noisy because the service is early, so therefore I'll wait to post until the point in time when the random variations end up fitting my narrative" is cherrypicking. It's statistically the same thing as lying, bro. Quit gaslighting us.

I attached a graph of the *full* (not cherry-picked) data set the website you gave uses. A fitted line shows a positive slope. Essentially flat, but if you have to assign a slope to it, the slope is positive.

Just admit you were proven wrong and save some of your dignity.

Your chart is sort of weird. X-axis is year(but goes back to 2017). Data points also are evenly spaced when early data was sparse  (many days had no reported average daily download speeds). Anyways, the trends are bifurcated into two distinct phases of deployment. To illustrate....

[Robotbeat]

Don't hide behind "I'm showing simple facts" when you have been and continue to cherry-pick data to fit your narrative!

"the data is noisy because the service is early, so therefore I'll wait to post until the point in time when the random variations end up fitting my narrative" is cherrypicking. It's statistically the same thing as lying, bro. Quit gaslighting us.

I attached a graph of the *full* (not cherry-picked) data set the website you gave uses. A fitted line shows a positive slope. Essentially flat, but if you have to assign a slope to it, the slope is positive.

Just admit you were proven wrong and save some of your dignity.

Your chart is sort of weird. X-axis is year(but goes back to 2017). Data points also are evenly spaced when early data was sparse  (many days had no reported average daily download speeds). Anyways, the trends are bifurcated into two distinct phases of deployment. To illustrate....

Whatever you want to use to justify your cherry-picking. I just extracted the data from the graph image and plotted it within any massaging.

[ncb1397]

Don't hide behind "I'm showing simple facts" when you have been and continue to cherry-pick data to fit your narrative!

"the data is noisy because the service is early, so therefore I'll wait to post until the point in time when the random variations end up fitting my narrative" is cherrypicking. It's statistically the same thing as lying, bro. Quit gaslighting us.

I attached a graph of the *full* (not cherry-picked) data set the website you gave uses. A fitted line shows a positive slope. Essentially flat, but if you have to assign a slope to it, the slope is positive.

Just admit you were proven wrong and save some of your dignity.

Your chart is sort of weird. X-axis is year(but goes back to 2017). Data points also are evenly spaced when early data was sparse  (many days had no reported average daily download speeds). Anyways, the trends are bifurcated into two distinct phases of deployment. To illustrate....

Whatever you want to use to justify your cherry-picking. I just extracted the data from the graph image and plotted it within any massaging.

All it is is applying the principles of time-series segmentation.

It is often the case that a time-series can be represented as a sequence of discrete segments of finite length. For example, the trajectory of a stock market could be partitioned into regions that lie in between important world events...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-series_segmentation

It is equivalent to plotting global average temperatures and segmenting the data based on the industrial revolution (~1750-1800). If pre-industrial temperatures were decreasing, that doesn't mean the current trendline is flat.

[Robotbeat]

“Time series segmentation” is another way of cherrypicking. Pick the right segment with noisy data and you can make it say whatever you want.

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

Speed tests are a little bit disingenuous. Because they test the speed between you and the speed test server. This server is at some datacenter somewhere as is definitely not the exact same physical server every time the test is run. Differences in the data load paths within the datacenter as well as the total throughput load the data center is seeing can skew results. Also the data load on the Internet backbones between the speed test datacenter and the Starlink Gateway also may weigh in on lowering sometimes the values. As is also there is no guarantee with SpaceX putting in more Gateways for any speed test run at any one time uses the same Gateway.

And then along with all of this is the fact that the Starlink network is constantly changing with more subscribers more sats and more gateways. Any trends seen in the speed test results may be an artifact of any one of the many items that can affect the data speed between any specific user and any specific datacenter as well as the the specific hardware server within the datacenter. It is about as close to random as can be achieved. What is to be looked for is large magnitude changes that persist over significant amount of time a year or more of a factor of 2 or more. This would then show whether SpaceX is ahead or behind the curve on supply vs demand for data by its subscribers. A near flat average shows everything is proceeding exceedingly well.

ADDED: I hate auto spell checker correction.

[Robotbeat]

Yup.

If you just look at the data, the spread is all over the place. I don't think it's reasonable to say with confidence it's going up or down in any real sense.

If you want to be critical of Starlink, point out the large spread of speeds in the graph (i.e. that speeds change a lot between tries), not a miniscule slope (which is positive, BTW) in what looks like almost totally random data (because even with truly random data with a flat distribution, there will be some slope until your sample size approaches infinitiy).

[macpacheco]

I work in telecom, I work for small ISPs and PSTN companies.
We can't come up with a reasonable cost per GB because not even SpaceX knows the right assumptions to come up with such a number.
The reality is datacom / internet is a high upfront investment and high ongoing margins segment.
One of my customers has thousands of miles of fiber rolled, including around 300 miles of a state wide fiber ring.

Back to Starlink. Let's make a mental exercise to understand how complicated it is:
the world has 149 million km² of land.
Let's say Starlink ends up with exactly one customer per 10 km² of land, spread out evenly across the world.
around 10 million users. Each paying US$ 100/mo. US$ 1 billion/mo revenue.
10m users / 30k satellites = 333 users / satellite
But as most of the world's surface is water, let's make it 1000 users / satellite.
Can Starlink handle 1000 users/satellite with 100Mbps broadband service ? Let's assume an average of 10Mbps of bandwidth demand per user, or 10Gbps per satellite.
Sounds very reasonable. Except in the real world there will be very few customers in the middle of the Sahara/Amazon rain forest. And lots of customers in rural north America / Europe.
Perhaps 10Mbps / user average is too much.
If users clump too much there might be 100Gbps of transfer demand on some satellites in congested areas and next to zero in remote ones.
In essence that's how one would model Starlink's business.
The benefit is such a model might work even with limited ISL capability. My assumption is there will eventually be a Starlink V2 satellite that will be bigger/heavier/far more powerful that will only be launched with Starship. Say still 60 satellites per launch but 1 ton satelites (4x heavier than now). Perhaps 4x the solar panel power to handle lots of laser links and a beefier RF capability.
From that standpoint the current constellation is just a major beta compared to what it will be.
But if you follow my numbers you will understand why it won't be possible for Starlink to actually compete with comcast/warner cable anywhere they have fiber or even where its copper only but they have faster than say 50Mbps service. I mean actually hurt their business. Starlink could steal a few percentage of the customers, but it would quickly saturate the satellite coverage in the area.
Let's think about the extended Boston area. If you are inside the route 128 ring, there is fiber. Starlink pretty much can't compete there. Once outside the 128 ring, fiber coverage is spotty, I have a few friends/former co-workers that complain (a lot) that they can't get 100Mbps service there, at all.
Starlink has the potential to make inroads there. But I should assume they can't service more than around 10k customers in the area. An area that has several million people that has internet service available, but might have good use for 100Mbps speeds. It is a very high tech area, lots of employees actually VPN to work full time now. The company I used to work for (half a billion/year in sales, a company that competes with Oracle/MySQL/...) just had a company wide pool where 70+% of the employees would prefer to stay full time telecommute even after the pandemic is gone. I assume that profile is the norm.
However it could be possible that just the people that live in the rural zone of Mass/NH/CT/RI/ME might be 50k people.
There will be clumps of high demand area all over North America/Europe.
I see starlink having a few million users already as a sure thing, even with a US$ 100/mo price tag and US$ 500 install cost.

Of course all of that is just an educated guesstimate analysis. Mostly just thinking out loud, although I'm in the business.
But keep one thing in mind. SpaceX must have around 50% margins on gross revenue vs fixed monthly costs. Even considering the cost to keep refreshing the constellation over time. No sane telecom company would work for less.

Oh and forget about Starlink broadcasting TV. That's not what the system was designed to do. That's what GEO satellites are perfect at. 2 second TV delay isn't a big deal, mostly impossible to perceive. Of course lots and lots and lots of Starlink customers will stream video, including realtime TV, but TV service shouldn't be a primary announced capability as that would reduce how many customers/area they can serve.

I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out 10Mbps / user for 100Mbps service is too much. Its very typical with very high speed internet for 50:1 over subscription ratios. Internet consumption tends to be bursty. I have 300/300 GPON service, in the start I downloaded up to 2TB/month, but then it settled down to a point where that 300Mbps is mostly a way to download faster, but 100Mbps would serve me equally as well.

Just some food for thought by someone that actually works with Internet all day long.
Oh, one of my non ISP customers just obtained cheap broadband 600/300Mbps for US$ 50/mo in a city with <200k people. Brazil's internet landscape is much, much, much more competitive than USA, we just don't have that ability of the big guys suing the little guys to oblivion. I have 6 fiber internet alternatives right where I live. And most ISPs already offer affordable service with at least 100/50Mbps speeds, some reaching 300/150Mbps speeds.

This was enabled by a pool of little ISPs that founded a backhaul coop Forte Telecom. They offering 100Gbps back hauls from here to São Paulo (1100km away the main internet hub of South America). Something like that was simply unthinkable.
The ISP I work for just activated (under a week ago) a 100Gbps back haul with traditional carrier.

Even with all of that, I'm certain Brazil has at least a million people in the rural area that has no access to land based internet that can afford US$ 100/month and need quality internet with at least 50Mbps, mostly owners of rural property.

So don't obsess about Starlink offering service in sub urban areas. That's not going to be the bread and butter. It will be rural/edge of sub urban areas. Keeping the monthly fee high enough will be required to avoid a demand level they might not be able to handle until V2 starlink is broadly built out.

Okay, enough rambling. 

[Robotbeat]

It helps not to have to dig cables in the ground, even in suburban areas. So even if your backhaul is cheaper with fiber (which depends on a lot of assumptions that may not last too long), your last mile will remain fairly expensive with cable in the suburbs.

And Starlink can compete just by buying a hungrier business. They overcome the inherent cost difference by operating a lot more lean. Comcast isn’t known for its efficiency.

In the urban core with multistory buildings, though, I kind of agree that Starlink won’t be more than a niche competitor.

[Nomadd]

Comcast isn’t known for its efficiency.

That made me laugh. Comcast is known for spending about 20% of their revenue (and that's being charitable) on the system and blowing the rest on acquisitions, stupid investments and hiring everybody they know for rarely show jobs. If they'd reinvested their incoming cash into developing and expanding the system, they could have made the old Ma Bell look like minor league players.

[r8ix]

In the urban core with multistory buildings, though, I kind of agree that Starlink won’t be more than a niche competitor.

We don't (yet) have real competition among ISPs in the US, generally, but my last apartment in central Russia (2017) I had 120Mbs symmetrical fiber for about $7/month ($3 in June, July, and August). I also had at least 17 providers I could choose from…
Similar situation with cell service, too.
Most of the US is served by function monopolies or duopolies when it comes to internet service, and Starlink will be very welcome as an additional option.

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

In the urban core with multistory buildings, though, I kind of agree that Starlink won’t be more than a niche competitor.

We don't (yet) have real competition among ISPs in the US, generally, but my last apartment in central Russia (2017) I had 120Mbs symmetrical fiber for about $7/month ($3 in June, July, and August). I also had at least 17 providers I could choose from…
Similar situation with cell service, too.
Most of the US is served by function monopolies or duopolies when it comes to internet service, and Starlink will be very welcome as an additional option.

An addition to the lack of ISP competition is the traditional control over permits and right of way leases in the US. These are controlled by the Local government. A lot of times a provider obtains a exclusive lease for Telephone or Cable TV service to be strung or buried in the right of ways. Either of the 2 lease holders can provide Internet. As in my location the Telephone provider AT&T and the Cable TV provider Mediacom. It is mostly a case of existing long term leases and a slow continuous technology evolution of both from wired transmission to fiber transmission so that now both offer 1Gbps Internet. For another provider to come into the are they would have to somehow obtain the permits and leases as well as string the fiber/cable. The permit and long term leasing processes are slow and are a major road block for competitors to put in service in an area. Basically for a long time it has been effectively local government controlled monopolies for telephone or Cable TV services. But such has not long ago disappeared and what remains is high up front cost barrier to other providers from offering service. It is mainly because in the US the providers own all of their infrastructure they use to provide service instead of leasing a data capability over a state owned infrastructure. In the second provider model to be a ISP provider just requires the connection to the state owned infrastructure and a connection to the Internet backbone by your data center with your DNS and etc servers exist.

[r8ix]

In the urban core with multistory buildings, though, I kind of agree that Starlink won’t be more than a niche competitor.

We don't (yet) have real competition among ISPs in the US, generally, but my last apartment in central Russia (2017) I had 120Mbs symmetrical fiber for about $7/month ($3 in June, July, and August). I also had at least 17 providers I could choose from…
Similar situation with cell service, too.
Most of the US is served by function monopolies or duopolies when it comes to internet service, and Starlink will be very welcome as an additional option.

An addition to the lack of ISP competition is the traditional control over permits and right of way leases in the US. These are controlled by the Local government. A lot of times a provider obtains a exclusive lease for Telephone or Cable TV service to be strung or buried in the right of ways. Either of the 2 lease holders can provide Internet. As in my location the Telephone provider AT&T and the Cable TV provider Mediacom. It is mostly a case of existing long term leases and a slow continuous technology evolution of both from wired transmission to fiber transmission so that now both offer 1Gbps Internet. For another provider to come into the are they would have to somehow obtain the permits and leases as well as string the fiber/cable. The permit and long term leasing processes are slow and are a major road block for competitors to put in service in an area. Basically for a long time it has been effectively local government controlled monopolies for telephone or Cable TV services. But such has not long ago disappeared and what remains is high up front cost barrier to other providers from offering service. It is mainly because in the US the providers own all of their infrastructure they use to provide service instead of leasing a data capability over a state owned infrastructure. In the second provider model to be a ISP provider just requires the connection to the state owned infrastructure and a connection to the Internet backbone by your data center with your DNS and etc servers exist.

Yes, in economics, it's known as the "last mile problem", and is the justification for regulatory control over delivery of utilities and similar services. Turns out, however, that it mostly traces back to some sponsored research from ~150 years ago, that a company used to argue for being given the local monopoly. It became accepted wisdom, and has rarely been challenged since.

Technology has given us some workarounds, so now in many places we have tv providers that offer phone service and vice versa. Hence duopolies instead of monopolies. Adding Starlink to that mix will be a big improvement, and force some of these companies to get off their butts and start improving their offerings. Cable companies, e.g., have some of the worst customer service in the country, according to surveys of such things.

[ccdengr]

Technology has given us some workarounds...

That must explain why cellular telephone companies, which have few or no monopolistic advantages, are so greatly beloved by their customers. 

[macpacheco]

It helps not to have to dig cables in the ground, even in suburban areas. So even if your backhaul is cheaper with fiber (which depends on a lot of assumptions that may not last too long), your last mile will remain fairly expensive with cable in the suburbs.

And Starlink can compete just by buying a hungrier business. They overcome the inherent cost difference by operating a lot more lean. Comcast isn’t known for its efficiency.

In the urban core with multistory buildings, though, I kind of agree that Starlink won’t be more than a niche competitor.

Unless Starlink can handle 100k users in the same location Starlink simply won't have the spectrum to make a dent in Comcast/Time Warner/Verizon/CenturyLink business.
I understand and relate to your hatred of such companies and understand how you want (at all costs) to believe Starlink will change it. But it's simply unrealistic.
At the same time they will still be able to handle a few customers everywhere such customers has a clean view of the sky. So the few that want to vote with their wallets should be able to get Starlink anywhere that doesn't look like Manhattan/downtown LA/Chicago.
The world has ~7 billion people, call it ~2 billion homes/businesses, a mere 0.1% is 2 million customers. And I'm certain they will service closer to 1% than 0.1%. They will succeed by a wide margin. But they simply can't beat the virtually unlimited spectrum fiber optics can deliver.
The big telcos roll 144 or 288 strand fiber for their long haul routes. Today a DWDM system can easily get 2Tbps per pair of strands, or 144Tbps per fiber cable. And this will keep growing. I think in a decade or two we should be able to get 1000Tbps per fiber cable with a 100GE signal on each lambda.
We're approaching the point where the Internet simply don't need to get faster. 80% of the content come from local caches (Google, Netflix, Facebook, Akamai, ...) and with fiber already rolled out there's little in the way of delivering Gbps to everybody as competition intensifies.
What can demand more bandwidth than 4K 3D video ? It's proven 8K simply doesn't produce better viewing experience, unless you're standing at a 80" TV. And even 100Mbps is fast enough for a few 4K 3D streams.

[Robotbeat]

Spatial multiplexing is key. If there are ~60,000 satellites in orbit at 500km altitude, there will be about 100 satellites in the sky at any one time above any point (more if orbits are optimized). That means 100x frequency reuse. Plus the ability to increase gain on both ends using bigger (and/or higher frequency) phased arrays. Yes, I do think one satellite will be able to service more than 1000 people at a time, so I don’t doubt that SpaceX could eventually serve 100,000 customers in a single area.

[matthewkantar]

If it profitable to serve scattered people, it will be profitable to serve concentrated people. The limit is how much space there is in orbit. There is lots and lots and lots of space in orbit.

[Asteroza]

They could still broadcast like a regular cable or satellite company does. That way if 1000 people in the beam are watching the Super Bowl or whatever, they don't need 1000x the bandwidth. But streaming video (like youtube) uses normal bandwidth.

I would bet that streaming video is already the majority of data usage for broadband. I have regularly wondered if it might eventually make sense to keep a nearline Netflix cache on Starlink satellites once the satellites get larger.

Livestreams would then need to be something multicast-like, and that adds a lot of headaches... Designing for that edge case seems rough.

[Barley]

If it profitable to serve scattered people, it will be profitable to serve concentrated people. The limit is how much space there is in orbit. There is lots and lots and lots of space in orbit.

Not so.  The limits are economic.

If you have unserved customers in the least dense region adding capacity allows you to server a great many additional customers all over the world.  If the only unserved customers are in the most dense regions adding the same capacity only gains a few new customers.   At some point it becomes uneconomic to add global capacity to server concentrated people, leave that market to local providers.

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

If it profitable to serve scattered people, it will be profitable to serve concentrated people. The limit is how much space there is in orbit. There is lots and lots and lots of space in orbit.

Not so.  The limits are economic.

If you have unserved customers in the least dense region adding capacity allows you to server a great many additional customers all over the world.  If the only unserved customers are in the most dense regions adding the same capacity only gains a few new customers.   At some point it becomes uneconomic to add global capacity to server concentrated people, leave that market to local providers.

Here is a simple solution for high density population areas. Use of high bandwidth (the 10Gbps mentioned by SpaceX) to serve a complete building. The result is a mini ISP just for the building operated by a maintenance company that used to do installation and maintenance/repair for regular cable providers. A single 10Gpbs UT on the roof could serve a few hundred actual users at 100Mbps access each. The mini ISP operator collects funds from his subscribers in the building(s) and the difference between the costs, manpower, hardware, and the Starlink 10Gbps UT subscription becomes his company's profit. SpaceX (Starlink) would only deal with the mini ISP operator.

Such that for a metropolitan city may have only a few hundred 10Gpbs UTs but could serve 10's of thousands end users. Most of the problem in efficient use of bandwidth in a free air system is the contention between the number of UT's in the beam spot. The more UT's the lower the efficiency once max efficiency has been reached. This is a sweet spot of some value of UT density per sat channel. That either side the efficiency of usage of the available bandwidth falls off.

NOTE many buildings already operate similar to this way with cable providers.

[envy887]

If it profitable to serve scattered people, it will be profitable to serve concentrated people. The limit is how much space there is in orbit. There is lots and lots and lots of space in orbit.

Not so.  The limits are economic.

If you have unserved customers in the least dense region adding capacity allows you to server a great many additional customers all over the world.  If the only unserved customers are in the most dense regions adding the same capacity only gains a few new customers.   At some point it becomes uneconomic to add global capacity to server concentrated people, leave that market to local providers.

There's a point where the marginal cost of adding capacity is not worthwhile, but it's likely well above the point of average density saturation because there are widely separated dense areas all over the world. The same additional capacity can increase service density in New York, London, Rio, and Sydney, all at the same time.

[AC in NC]

And just to note, the reason the situation ended up as it did has a lot to do with the fact that American municipalities generally have horrible revenue problems.

That is pretty off-topic and the error is magnified by the fact that very little of your characterization of American municipalities is accurate.  Want me telling you how Finnish municipalities work?

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

Currently Starlink is using I believe 64QAM which allows the sending of 6 bits of data per Hz of frequency used. Thereby for a 1Gbps data channel it uses 167MHz of frequency. By increasing to 256QAM (adding 2 more bits) you gain an additional 33% of data speed per Hz. So for each channel jumps to 1.333Gbps data rate without the need for more frequency use. But the downside is that the antennas need more gain, 33% more, to recover the signal margin because of the increase in data causing a need for better signal resolution to be able to read those now less significant differences in signal level representing the data.

The other problem is that this change is not compatible with existing UT's and would have to wait for it's general use for the old UT's to be replaced. The new ones would be able to handle either the old 64QAM or the 256QAM. If SpaceX was smart they could have added a contingency in the UT's design only needing a software upgrade to enable 256QAM in the existing UT's which would eat into the signal margins increasing the lost packets occurrence.

A new UT design with 6DB more antenna gain would enable going to as high as 4096QAM or 12 bits per HZ. This increases the data rate to 2Gbps per channel for the same frequency usage of a channel or instead of 100 UT connectes per channel 200 UT connections per channel that 20Gbps sat increases to a 40Gbps sat without hardly any volume or mass changes. Also to increase the signal margins the sats would almost double the phased array diameters. This does 2 things increases the Gain both for transmit and receive while also enabling spots half the diameter illumination of the Earth surface, meaning a need to produce as many as 4 individual spots per same area. So now instead of a 40Gbps sat it is a 160Gbps sat. Multiply by 100 sats in the sky and any one point sees an increase of 2X but a larger area sees a bandwidth increase of number of simultaneous UT connections by a factor 8X. So a large area urban spread could support 8X the number of UT's it now can support. raising the possibility of 100,000 to a value of 800,000 UT connections!!!!!!

Added: NOTE in this scenario all you need for that 10Gbps connection capability is a connection with 5 simultaneous sats. 2Gbps per channel*5sats=10Gbps. A Gateway could then with 20 sats have a data rate of a minimum of 40Gbps. It would not be surprising to see Gateways increase to be able to handle as much as 200Gbps connections into the Internet. Now add V band and that 160Gbps sat increases to a 320Gbps sat and Gateways increase easily to as much as 400Gbps. Becasue of movement and because of frequency channels overlap the Gateways could go as high as 600Gbps. Which also means that for a temporary remote military base with a Gateway installation comprised of several trailers could have a multiple of 180Gbps (30 connections to 20 Sats using Ku, Ka and V bands with 2Gbps per channel with a 50% frequency spot area overlap usage) each of data connectivity to anywhere else in the world.

Added in order to get back to where this ties to the thread is that with little cost difference for either sats or UT's (advancing tech giving more capability for same costs.This is the electronics and mass of the electronics as well as the power efficiencies. The cost per bit to the users could easily drop from it's current to 1/2 to as much as 1/8 while the data rate available to a customer rises by 2X to 8X (from 100Mbps to 200 to 800Mbps) effectively becoming close to a Gigabit connection for practically all users. Only fiber direct to house would have a possibility to offer higher bit rates. Coax runs into a lot of problems when upping the signal levels on the coax to greatly increase (by a factor 10 a 20DB signal increase) such as a lot of RFI generated which the FCC would never allow.

[Barley]

Currently Starlink is using I believe 64QAM which allows the sending of 6 bits of data per Hz of frequency used.

...

A new UT design with 6DB more antenna gain would enable going to as high as 4096QAM or 12 bits per HZ.

There is a difference in signal strength depending on the angle of the satellite to the zenith.  The difference between a satellite 25 degrees above the horizon and a satellite at the zenith will be at least 10dB (more than double the path length, plus cosine effect at the UT and possibly at the satellite).  If they are using QAM64 at the 25 degree limit the same RF hardware should have the margin to support QAM4096 (or better) near the zenith.

This suggest
1) Variable encoding would be useful.  If this is implemented then:
2) As the constellation grows all links should be closer to vertical in rural areas.  So it might be possible to switch encoding without changing the RF hardware.  Also capacity could grow super-linearly with the number of satellites.
3) In very dense areas you gain less than expected from being able to use all satellites in view as those close to the horizon have worse single strength and bandwidth.

It would surprise me if the UTs and satellites did not already have some flexibility in encoding.  Most of the encoders I have seen support multiple encodings (it's in software, even if it's software burned into an ASIC.)  Whether they can change encodings without resetting the device may be a different matter.  Whether QAM64 is the best or worst supported would be unknown.

[vsatman]

Currently Starlink is using I believe 64QAM which allows the sending of 6 bits of data per Hz of frequency used.

64QAM is in theory (modulator capabilities). In reality, this is most likely only on the line in Ka band between the satellite and the gateway. For the line in Ku between the satellite and the terminal, SNR measurements (signal to noise ratio Eb / No) show about 10 dB. That is, it is 8PSK and 3 bits / Hertz.

[envy887]

Currently Starlink is using I believe 64QAM which allows the sending of 6 bits of data per Hz of frequency used.

...

A new UT design with 6DB more antenna gain would enable going to as high as 4096QAM or 12 bits per HZ.

There is a difference in signal strength depending on the angle of the satellite to the zenith.  The difference between a satellite 25 degrees above the horizon and a satellite at the zenith will be at least 10dB (more than double the path length, plus cosine effect at the UT and possibly at the satellite).  If they are using QAM64 at the 25 degree limit the same RF hardware should have the margin to support QAM4096 (or better) near the zenith.

This suggest
1) Variable encoding would be useful.  If this is implemented then:
2) As the constellation grows all links should be closer to vertical in rural areas.  So it might be possible to switch encoding without changing the RF hardware.  Also capacity could grow super-linearly with the number of satellites.
3) In very dense areas you gain less than expected from being able to use all satellites in view as those close to the horizon have worse single strength and bandwidth.

It would surprise me if the UTs and satellites did not already have some flexibility in encoding.  Most of the encoders I have seen support multiple encodings (it's in software, even if it's software burned into an ASIC.)  Whether they can change encodings without resetting the device may be a different matter.  Whether QAM64 is the best or worst supported would be unknown.

This effect is partly mitigated by running the off-boresight and high slant angle beams at higher power, per the FCC filing.

[RedLineTrain]

If it profitable to serve scattered people, it will be profitable to serve concentrated people. The limit is how much space there is in orbit. There is lots and lots and lots of space in orbit.

This is related to the argument that Viasat is making.  In a podcast today, Dankberg stated that the limit is how much space there is in LEO and that scaling in LEO will be hampered because of the potential creation of orbital debris.

This seems like a weak argument, especially in self-cleaning LEO below 650 km.  SpaceX thinks that it can scale to at least 35,000 satellites, if the FCC will let it.  And the large majority of those satellites will be in inclinations that can serve the most profitable concentrations in the US and Europe (33°, 38°, 43°, 46°, and 53° in the proposed second constellation) with many beams.

In any event, SpaceX is placing a sophisticated phased array antenna in every home that they service.  Those can probably communicate with GEO or MEO satellites, if SpaceX were to wish to do that for some reason.

Discussion starts at 31:43, with the meat of the discussion at 38:30.

[Asteroza]

If it profitable to serve scattered people, it will be profitable to serve concentrated people. The limit is how much space there is in orbit. There is lots and lots and lots of space in orbit.

This is related to the argument that Viasat is making.  In a podcast today, Dankberg stated that the limit is how much space there is in LEO and that scaling in LEO will be hampered because of the potential creation of orbital debris.

The fundamental upper limit of sats is the arc second angle resolution of the phased array antennas (primarily user terminal) to differentiate sats in the same plane for the same frequencies (well maybe not just same plane but generally in field of view). As I understand it, this is ostensibly the reasoning behind GEO "slots" so your antenna can reasonably not receive signals from other sats. Anyone with experience twisting a home satellite TV dish to find a sat will sorta understand. It's an angular resolution issue so while GEO slots have a fair amount of spacing between individual slots/sats, lower orbits would have tighter spacing (but the actual number of slots per plane doesn't change since the resolution angle is probably fixed). If a sat doesn't overlap frequency-wise, it could in theory co-occupy a given slot position, but that includes all frequencies (internet/payload as well telemetry and control).

But that sorta is derived from parabolic antenna design and pointing, in that off-axis signals greater than a specific offset angle won't collect at the antenna focus/horn so effectively get passively ignored. How does that work with a fixed phased array which sees a much wider "view", as it doesn't have a physical form of off-axis filter? Anybody with RF knowledge care to expand on that?

[dondar]

If it profitable to serve scattered people, it will be profitable to serve concentrated people. The limit is how much space there is in orbit. There is lots and lots and lots of space in orbit.

This is related to the argument that Viasat is making.  In a podcast today, Dankberg stated that the limit is how much space there is in LEO and that scaling in LEO will be hampered because of the potential creation of orbital debris.

The fundamental upper limit of sats is the arc second angle resolution of the phased array antennas (primarily user terminal) to differentiate sats in the same plane for the same frequencies (well maybe not just same plane but generally in field of view). As I understand it, this is ostensibly the reasoning behind GEO "slots" so your antenna can reasonably not receive signals from other sats. Anyone with experience twisting a home satellite TV dish to find a sat will sorta understand. It's an angular resolution issue so while GEO slots have a fair amount of spacing between individual slots/sats, lower orbits would have tighter spacing (but the actual number of slots per plane doesn't change since the resolution angle is probably fixed). If a sat doesn't overlap frequency-wise, it could in theory co-occupy a given slot position, but that includes all frequencies (internet/payload as well telemetry and control).

But that sorta is derived from parabolic antenna design and pointing, in that off-axis signals greater than a specific offset angle won't collect at the antenna focus/horn so effectively get passively ignored. How does that work with a fixed phased array which sees a much wider "view", as it doesn't have a physical form of off-axis filter? Anybody with RF knowledge care to expand on that?

You are talking about antenna directivity. Phase array does the same signal search you had to do physically, but "digitally", generally the system knows were to look so it does the signal acquisition reasonably quickly.

Because you use multiple antennas (see array) signal encoding is of critical importance and the choice of MIMO determines the level of directivity. (some arrays have also programmable selectivity which add choices).
 You can trade level of directivity (and the resistance to noise) for the useful bandwidth. Fully developed active arrays provide choices unthinkable otherwise. (see MIMO theory if curious). But the practical physical limitations remain, and you still have to point antenna generally in the direction of your source. (something like +-60 * for most commercially available systems).

TLDR: You can mitigate signal interference coming from closely positioned satellites or dishies using specific encoding choices which will lead to loss of bandwidth.

[vsatman]

It's an angular resolution issue so while GEO slots have a fair amount of spacing between individual slots/sats,

 How does that work with a fixed phased array which sees a much wider "view", as it doesn't have a physical form of off-axis filter? Anybody with RF knowledge care to expand on that?

Minimal distance between sats on GEO  is 2 degrees...

Starlink user terminal  has half power beamwidth  from 2,8 degrees (in boresight ) to 4,5 degr (at slant)