The physics of it mean you basically have to be constantly launching new satellites to replace the 5 year old ones de orbiting. Further, it will also be disadvantaged to anything closer with ability to choose a cable medium. All this adds up to the most expensive infrastructure that exclusively targets very low population density areas and/or areas too poor to afford good Internet. The people that could afford to sustain this can afford to move somewhere with a bit more infrastructure or at least within reach of a terrestrial tower and have an even better result.
That’s the main problem, yes. Starlink is not going to be useful to anybody living in a city. There’s no need for expensive, low-grade Internet when you can for a fraction of the price just get physical connection. I mean … your apartment building is not going anywhere anytime soon, right? So that’s 60% of your prospective market gone. (The people who travel and want to use it, and the weirdos who orally service Kaptain Ketamine, are a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of the market size Starlink needs to pay for operations so they can be ignored for analysis.)
So about 40% of the planet lives in rural areas, and that’s the only market of any size that’s going to be a credible one for Starlink. The people who live on the edges of that already have technology available to connect. My uncle, living way off in the boondocks near Vanderhoof, for example, has a direct microwave link. He’s not going to be using Starlink; it’s literally an order of magnitude more costly than what he’s got. Similarly most of mainland China (well in excess of 80%) has 5G coverage with 100% coverage due by the end of the 2025. That’s a sizable chunk of that rural market gone too! So cut away that 40% to … let’s be generous and say 20%. (I’d actually guess closer to 15%.) That’s who’s left for needing a Starlink-like service.
But that’s not the only problem …
Oopsie! It turns out that worldwide about 10% of the world’s money rests in rural areas. (In the USA it’s actually closer to 8.5%, but let’s be generous again. It won’t matter.) The very people who would be the target market for Starlink can’t afford Starlink. So even if all of the 40% rural inhabitants around the world had to use Starlink, most of them wouldn’t because it’s too expensive. And Starlink’s prices aren’t dropping; they’re doing the opposite.
In the mean time, as shown in China, the alternatives aren’t sitting there idle. While Starlink balloons its operational costs and maintenance costs, other countries are also spreading 5G coverage, or microwave relay coverage, or fibre networks, or, or, or. They’re going to cut into Starlink’s revenue either by taking customers away or forcing prices down.
The physics of it mean you basically have to be constantly launching new satellites to replace the 5 year old ones de orbiting.
I mean…so what if the birds only last 5-7 years? My only real concern is that they’re not made with environmentally damaging materials. Let them fall over the South Pacific and be atomized on the way down. It really depends on how cheaply you can launch them. All infrastructure has a finite life span. 5-7 years is lower than most terrestrial infrastructure, but this is all a function of launch costs. If those can be made cheap enough, the concept is perfectly viable.
The physics of it mean you basically have to be constantly launching new satellites to replace the 5 year old ones de orbiting. Further, it will also be disadvantaged to anything closer with ability to choose a cable medium. All this adds up to the most expensive infrastructure that exclusively targets very low population density areas and/or areas too poor to afford good Internet. The people that could afford to sustain this can afford to move somewhere with a bit more infrastructure or at least within reach of a terrestrial tower and have an even better result.
That’s the main problem, yes. Starlink is not going to be useful to anybody living in a city. There’s no need for expensive, low-grade Internet when you can for a fraction of the price just get physical connection. I mean … your apartment building is not going anywhere anytime soon, right? So that’s 60% of your prospective market gone. (The people who travel and want to use it, and the weirdos who orally service Kaptain Ketamine, are a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of the market size Starlink needs to pay for operations so they can be ignored for analysis.)
So about 40% of the planet lives in rural areas, and that’s the only market of any size that’s going to be a credible one for Starlink. The people who live on the edges of that already have technology available to connect. My uncle, living way off in the boondocks near Vanderhoof, for example, has a direct microwave link. He’s not going to be using Starlink; it’s literally an order of magnitude more costly than what he’s got. Similarly most of mainland China (well in excess of 80%) has 5G coverage with 100% coverage due by the end of the 2025. That’s a sizable chunk of that rural market gone too! So cut away that 40% to … let’s be generous and say 20%. (I’d actually guess closer to 15%.) That’s who’s left for needing a Starlink-like service.
But that’s not the only problem …
Oopsie! It turns out that worldwide about 10% of the world’s money rests in rural areas. (In the USA it’s actually closer to 8.5%, but let’s be generous again. It won’t matter.) The very people who would be the target market for Starlink can’t afford Starlink. So even if all of the 40% rural inhabitants around the world had to use Starlink, most of them wouldn’t because it’s too expensive. And Starlink’s prices aren’t dropping; they’re doing the opposite.
In the mean time, as shown in China, the alternatives aren’t sitting there idle. While Starlink balloons its operational costs and maintenance costs, other countries are also spreading 5G coverage, or microwave relay coverage, or fibre networks, or, or, or. They’re going to cut into Starlink’s revenue either by taking customers away or forcing prices down.
Starlink is not a viable business.
I mean…so what if the birds only last 5-7 years? My only real concern is that they’re not made with environmentally damaging materials. Let them fall over the South Pacific and be atomized on the way down. It really depends on how cheaply you can launch them. All infrastructure has a finite life span. 5-7 years is lower than most terrestrial infrastructure, but this is all a function of launch costs. If those can be made cheap enough, the concept is perfectly viable.