SpaceX is offering Starlink as a service to beta customers.
An email was sent to some of the people who signed up for SpaceX Starlink notifications.
The Starlink network has about 888 satellites in low Earth orbit out of over 4,000 SpaceX satellites in the first phase deployment.
Expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mbps to 150Mbps and latency from 20ms to 40ms over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system. There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all.
As we launch more satellites, install more ground stations, and improve our networking software, data speed, latency, and uptime will improve dramatically. For latency, we expect to achieve 16ms to 19ms by summer 2021.
The Starlink phased-array user terminal, which is more advanced than what’s in fighter jets, plus mounting tripod and Wi-Fi router, costs $499 and the monthly subscription costs $99.
SpaceX releases Starlink App to begin offering Internet service for $99 a monthhttps://t.co/uXbzOz0jm9
— Tesmanian.com (@Tesmanian_com) October 27, 2020
Starlink satellites will use their on-board propulsion system to deorbit over the course of a few months. In the unlikely event the propulsion system becomes inoperable, the satellites will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere within 1-5 years, significantly less than the hundreds or thousands of years required at higher altitudes.
SOURCES- Starlink
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
I think this is why they are going at the $99 price point. Many in major cities on fiber/cable can get this speed and better for half the price. But, starlink does not want to be flooded by city users. They want to go after those outside the service of fiber/cable. And, at $99, it is around the price of Hughesnet and current SAT services with better performance.
I suppose as they add more Sat's the system gets faster and faster. Though, I do wonder if the next massive solar flare will wipe out the entire system.
My understanding of Chinese practices is that they aren't putting in the effort to make a water tight seal around the entire country. They just make it hard enough, risky enough, tough enough, that only 1% or so of the population get around the barriers.
That's enough to keep the population under control, and that final 1% were not going to toe the line anyway.
If starlink antennae are US$500, plus they are not that concealable, and are detectable, and illegal… that will keep numbers below what the CCP are able to tolerate.
Though… their degree of tolerance has been dropping a lot in the last few years.
I live in a rich Detroit suburb. Until 5 years ago, the only provider in my area was Comcast. 100 USD for a 100 Mbit connection and the price kept going up year over year (started out at 60 USD). The connection was extremely unstable (was not able to watch videos without interruptions because the connection kept failing). Their lines were just crap. Their customer service was outsourced to India and crap also. 2015, WOW got into the market and they are better, but they too have kept raising prices year over year and their connection is not ideal either (though leaps and bounds better than Comcast's). 5 years ago, I would have definitely taken Starlink over Comcast and if WOW pisses me off enough in the future, I might still make the switch.
Agree with Andrew and Zorg. I live in rural area. Pay $70 US per month and struggle to get 5Mbs DL. Additionally, the reliability of the service leaves much to be desired. I am definitely willing to pay 100/month + cost of receiver (better have some kind of insurance from lightning strikes etc for that price though) to get 10x better speed. Availability in the 31 N latitude area can't come fast enough for me.
Unfortunately, Tesla is now producing in China.
Probably, not a profitable idea to irritate the Chinese government.
What frequencies are used by Starlink downlinks? Maybe it can be jammed without knocking out some other important things.
Well, the solution is pretty easy from Chinas perspective: ban the sales of the receivers. Problem solved.
I do hope that Elon will not cooperate with chinese sensure.. To many companies are all too happy to comply with dictatorships if there is some money involved…
A big question for SpaceX/Starlink – what will they do over China, Eqypt, North Korea, etc? Block service? Go along with the local government and downlink only to a government controlled internet node?
Possibly those wireless ISPs could make a business offering lower bandwidth but cheaper service, using Starlink for connection, paying a premium price to Starlink. They keep the data rate low, but increase the data cap to a level that allows more use of video streaming with no price increase to their customers.
That would relieve SpaceX from the major expense of marketing to acquire those customers. It keeps demand low enough that Starlink can perhaps service over a thousand customers per satellite.
Also, during the early phase of Starlink (when service occasionally drops) the wireless ISPs could keep a microwave link open to a site far enough away that when there are no satellites over one, the other might pick up the slack.
Think about how many customers can be supported by one satellite. That is the number of people that can be supported in that cell. Urban areas would have far too high density to work. The ideal scenario for satellite internet business model is a uniform density globe (okay, higher density near equator where satellite density will be higher) so that satellites have a high utilization factor. As it is, these satellites will spend a large percentage of their time hanging out over the massive southern oceans with no one to serve. That limits the ability to keep adding more satellites to shrink the cell size. And they can't have too many customers in any given cell without degrading service. This is why it is aimed as a somewhat premium option for urban areas but a great value prop for rural/remote areas.
The only way to offer cheaper service would be to cap speeds. Maybe a $50, 50 Mbps will come eventually. But they need to keep pricing high enough to not swamp their cells in dense areas, or just refuse customers when they have too many in a given area.
This is why, if anything, blimps might actually make sense for dense areas since they can loiter over them, unlike satellites.
The pricing will probably be strategically set to filter out urban customers that already have access to equivalent service for less as the network can't support those users anyway, at least not yet. The revenue maximizing move is to target those that pay a lot for bad service or have no option at all and are willing to pay.
Well, only if you are linking up 802.11b AP's. Most the portable electronics world has moved on to 802.11n or greater for faster than 54Mbps. But most people realistically don't have greater than 100Mbps home internet (even if they are sporting FIOS fiber or DOCSIS 3.0+ cable), so linking Starlink to a modern wifi AP means it is better than conventional urban/suburban wired internet. That, and it might realistically have more upload bandwidth as well.
I feel bad for those rural long range wifi ISP's though, since they are always constrainded by their backhaul bottlenecks. We knew Starlink would beat HughesNet satellite internet for deep rural users, but the suburban edge folks often were using local wifi ISP's using daisychained microwave backhaul from tall towers. Starlink could potentially kill off those local ISP cooperatives.
Ahem- “North Koreans”, very different from North Korea (for the time being).
North korea would be happy.
I dont think they are after only this small market. If i was launching hubdres satellites a month, îd hope to get the large market of ans smaller cities. Thats where 80% of the internet market is. And they wont get that at that price.
Custommers not linked by fiber optics represent only a small percentage of the internet market
They aren't going after urban and suburban users that can get optical fiber to their homes anyway.
They are after all those users that aren't near a connected place for a significant amount of time.
Farms, connected facilities, airplanes, boats, self driving cars, homes on the range. The list is long.
But you can use it for your home too, but most likely they will be using some kind of intermediary step, like ground repeaters for those users.
That may be competitive in the states, but they won't find many customers in Europe with that pricing. I pay £24 for the same speeds.
150MBps > the 54MBps bandwidth of everyone's wifi.
In other words just as fast as wifi over cable/fiber.