
SpaceX says Starlink internet has ‘extraordinary demand,’ - Element_
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/01/spacex-starlink-extraordinary-demand-with-nearly-700000-interested.html
======
dumbfoundded
I have a house on a farm. I only have relatively high speed internet (25mb/s)
b/c someone set up a line of sight system pointing at a mountain as a co-op.
My neighbors' house about half a kilometer away is blocked by a hill so they
can't use it. When it's cloudy, I have to use my phone as a mobile hotspot.

Coming from San Francisco, I didn't realize how many people face this reality
of poor connectivity. I don't care much about who is doing this as much as I
care that someone is doing it at all. Most people don't realize how much of an
internet access disparity exists. Especially as more education moves towards
digital, internet access is a fundamental utility.

~~~
bane
My parents still live in the house I grew up in. It's about 30 miles from the
nearest big city, a top-10 U.S. city.

\- They had dial-up until the early 2000s.

\- Then they had that terrible asymmetric satellite service where the upstream
service was _also_ dial-up. That lasted a couple of years.

\- Then they got some kind of two-way sat service. Still terrible latency, but
tolerable for the time.

\- Finally, sometime in the early 2010s _cable_ television service made its
way to their neighborhood. Television, _not_ internet.

\- About 2015 they were finally able to get cable internet, which they have
today. It's an amazing 5mb/sec up/down.

When I go there I just tether to my phone because its faster. They never got
DSL. I bet they'll never get fiber. Starlink could be a serious improvement to
them even at 2x the price they pay now.

~~~
limomium
So why can't they get Internet via a phone like you do when you go there?

~~~
Townley
Data caps and throttling make it prohibitively expensive.

I’ve done it for weeks in the past, and (what I personally consider normal
usage) burned through my monthly cap in a week, leaving me with large overage
charges that wouldn’t be sustainable long-term. I haven’t heard of a US
carrier-provided plan that’s less than several hundreds of dollars, and if
there is one it’s likely unavailable in rural areas

~~~
dwild
There's actually resellers that are made for rural areas with unlimited data.
They are quite expensive, but not several hundreds of dollars expensive. I'm
pretty sure I have seen some less expansive but here's one:
[https://unlimitedville.com/plans](https://unlimitedville.com/plans)

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dencodev
I'm in a busy city so I don't think I will have a Starlink option, but I'd
gladly pay twice as much to fund this than keep paying money to our evil
overlord Comcast.

~~~
cheez
Comcast is likely currently working on regulation to block them.

~~~
mlindner
[citation required]

Look it's one thing to hate on big corporations for existing actions, but's
entirely something else to invent conspiracy theories. In reality Comcast
isn't threatened by Starlink because Starlink market is aimed at less
populated areas so Comcast has no need to fight it. It would be completely
oversaturated by cities and cities are easy to invest in building network
infrastructure.

Now, I could imagine other satellite internet companies to fight it, but
they're much less powerful.

~~~
Wingman4l7
Comcast has repeatedly lobbied for legislation to prevent the creation of
municipal broadband providers; it's not that much of a stretch that they could
try to use regulatory capture to attack Starlink as well.

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justinclift
Wonder if it'd work for off shore sailing craft?

eg ships, yachts, and that kind of thing

Guessing the in-built motors the user terminals come with for correcting
orientation wouldn't know how to cope with waves.

So maybe need some kind of gimbal thing for added stabilisation?

~~~
nickik
It can adjust itself in principle and orient itself. But maybe the motion of
the boat might be to much.

~~~
orost
Isn't it a phased-array antenna? It can adjust itself at the speed of
electronics, without moving parts, so that should not be an issue in any
reasonable scenario if the software supports it.

A larger problem for use on sea might be that first generation Starlink sats
do not have satellite-to-satellite links, so the boat and a ground station
would have to be within range of the same satellite.

~~~
nickik
You still have to orient the whole antenna into the direction of the right
part of the sky. From then the phase antenna will be able to track the
individual satellites.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Would gyroscopic mount help, or is it too hard/expensive to make such a system
to cope with waves at sea?

~~~
yencabulator
That sounds like it'd still wobble a lot, compared to a land mount. Maybe a
later version will have beefed-up phased array controls to cope, but that'll
be much later, they have easier wins first.

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dkdk8283
I will support all alternatives to the likes of TWC and Comcast

~~~
jeffnappi
Starlink will only really be a solution for rural/remote areas. It won't be
able to supply high bandwidth at urban densities as I understand it.

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m0zg
I'm going to buy a summer house in the boonies when this becomes available
(and reliable). This will finally make it possible for me to truly "work from
anywhere", including the middle of nowhere, which is where I'd like to be in
this day and age.

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new_realist
As far as Internet numbers go, 700K signing up to receive updates isn't that
amazing.

~~~
jlaporte
SpaceX/Starlink have done effectively no marketing spend to get those leads
into their funnel. Subscriber acquisition costs (SAC) for home broadband and
TV are very high, and due to churn doesn't necessarily even translate into net
subscriber adds. Those numbers are good by any measure.

One representative example, Subscriber acquisition costs for Dish network:
"DISH TV SAC was $822 during the year ended December 31, 2019 compared to $759
during the same period in 2018, an increase of $63 or 8.3%." [1]

"We lost approximately 511,000 net DISH TV subscribers during the year ended
December 31, 2019 compared to the loss of approximately 1.125 million net DISH
TV subscribers during the same period in 2018. This decrease in net DISH TV
subscriber losses primarily resulted from a lower DISH TV churn rate and
higher gross new DISH TV subscriber activations." [1]

[1] [https://www.marketscreener.com/DISH-NETWORK-
CORPORATION-4870...](https://www.marketscreener.com/DISH-NETWORK-
CORPORATION-4870/news/DISH-NETWORK-MANAGEMENT-S-DISCUSSION-AND-ANALYSIS-OF-
FINANCIAL-CONDITION-AND-RESULTS-OF-OPERATIONS-30018399/)

~~~
justapassenger
Elon’s Twitter is very much marketing. He not only has over 30M followers, but
also each of his statements and companies get disproportional media coverage.
Marketing isn’t only buying ads.

~~~
fuzxi
jlaporte said marketing _spend_. Elon tweeting from his personal account is
free.

~~~
raducu
If Elon is the author, I'm sure that's still very expensive.

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csours
I'm curious about how bad jitter has to be to have an effect. Does it cause
problems at +/-10ms? As I understand it, the link will change from satellite
to satellite as they fly overhead

~~~
CydeWeys
An effect on what?

~~~
csours
Gaming, voip

~~~
BenjiWiebe
With voip at least, you can use a jitter buffer to get decreased jitter at the
cost of increased latency. If latency is good to start with, that's definitely
an option.

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foobiekr
I will confess that I don't get it and I would appreciate thoughts on why this
is a good idea instead of a FOMO kind of thing (and especially AWS Kuiper),

The total switching capacity of the entire __planned__ constellation is around
that in a _single_ large switch chassis or internet core router and the
individual satellites have the capacity of a beefy enterprise Wifi6 access
point; however the geographic area each will service is enormous.

What I can't figure out is: what is the market? The market for an Iridium-
style remote access is demonstrated to be tiny, there just is not the
bandwidth or capacity to target "unserved" areas for ordinary internet.

So what's left that's big? Industrial IoT? Military? Even industrial
placements (Rio Tinto, etc. mining concerns) will prefer to set up dedicated
links and regional wireless to this solution, so IIOT use case is really a
pre-development stage market, which is again small.

I even went looking for what the business press said (example: [1]). Reading
this almost makes me think the author is in on a sort of dark joke; especially
the “Fortunately, companies have new options for generating revenue from
connectivity” section appears to be written by someone with a very dark sense
of humor who is straight up trolling the reader.

[1] [https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/aerospace-and-
defense/ou...](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/aerospace-and-defense/our-
insights/large-leo-satellite-constellations-will-it-be-different-this-time)

edit: added "planned" to distinguish the long term from the immediate term
[the first batch Starlink satellites didn't even do any in-space switching at
all]..

~~~
jeffnappi
Can you point me to your source on the planned constellation total switching
bandwidth? I haven't read about that anywhere.

I have read that they don't expect to be able to provide high levels of
service in dense urban areas. Which does make me question the business
model...

I think you nailed it that the military and government will be a big customer.
Iridium has ~1300ms+ latency and very low data rates, very high costs and the
government is their largest customer from what I understand.

Airlines are another likely market that would be a significant amount of
business (post-covid19).

If Starlink can compete against Iridium and the other existing satellite
providers on price, they could at a minimum take most of that business.

~~~
foobiekr
Per satellite max bandwitdh, per SpaceX, at commercialization will be a max of
17gbps [1, sorry for the lame source but it's what I could find at the
moment].

Depending on how they're measuring that, the actual throughout could be
substantially less than that. Given that their FCC filing was 20gbps per
satellite, I think that's the raw, uncorrected bit rate, not the corrected
bitrate which will be lower.

A coworker and I did a back-of-envelope guess based on their power budget
(switching capacity in bandwidth and pps and power are basically directly
tied, ditto capacity and spectrum) and that's about what we arrived at as
their upper bound (imho, not even half of that will be achievable). Note that
this is a double-counted metric (bps total is bps_in+bps_out) for actual
traffic volume.

So let's go with that.

The current SpaceX fantasy business model is to build out a constellation of
30,000 satellites, but near term not even close to that. Being very generous,
let's credit them with an incredible 10k satellites, pretend they are not
power constrained and use the full 20gbps allotted to them, and you get a
total of 200k gbps total capacity for the constellation, uncorrected, assuming
ample power, or on a good day 125Tbps for real data.

Using a somewhat older core switch, the Juniper QFX10016, can do line rate
switching for 480 100GE ports; 48Tbps in a single 21RU chassis from 2017. [2]
These are commonly deployed in pops. The next generation will be doing that
for 400GE ports in the same form factor, 192Tbps. A Cisco 8818, which is
shipping right now, does 260Tbps per chassis in a 33RU form factor.

The point is, anyone claiming we could serve even a large metro with a single
one of these switches, let alone planet earth, would be laughed at, yet here
we are. A given nation-scale network will have hundreds of routers with these
kinds of capacities.

I also don't think Starlink will get anywhere near the estimates I'm using
here.

[1] [https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-
upgrade-...](https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-upgrade-more-
bandwidth-more-beams/)

[2] [https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/release-
independ...](https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/release-
independent/junos/topics/topic-map/qfx10016-system-overview.html#power-
supplies)

[3]
[https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/routers/80...](https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/routers/8000-series-
routers/datasheet-c78-742571.html)

edit: moved the [2] to the right place. edit damage.

~~~
jeffnappi
Thanks for the data points :)

I think something to consider here is that there is an iterative development
process taking place with the satellites. Given the stated lifespan of the
satellites is 3-4 years, they likely expect to see additional innovation over
time and are gambling that the network will be improved over time, and may one
day actually be capable of serving urban areas.

This seems like a wise approach and appears to work well for both SpaceX and
Tesla.

The most viable use case in the near term is clearly to serve remote and rural
areas which is admittedly a small market. There is a chance you might see
governments subsidize service to rural areas that are underserved. I also
imagine there will be a number of marine and aviation customers - though
that's likely even smaller than the rural market.

But yeah, I'm not one of the people who will claim it will serve urban markets
any time soon... That's rediculous - as rediculous as saying Tesla will
achieve level 5 autonomous driving this decade

~~~
foobiekr
I don't think the iterative nature actually helps SpaceX. Whatever use case
they're targeting, and like I said, I don't know, and would like to know,
isn't likely to be made more viable by bandwidth that changes substantially by
the hour, and the total cost of getting a satellite into orbit makes
generational turnover doubly challenging.

I just do not get the business model. It makes no sense for commercial
internet access, even in rural areas. I think perhaps temporary access in
undeveloped areas, where the total capex is lower than that needed for a
temporary LTE deployment, for example, might be it, but that is not a big
market.

~~~
jeffnappi
I guess we'll see if they can pull a rabbit out of a hat. A lot of folks
didn't think battery electric cars were going to be possible either. And...
Landing freaking rockets on barges in the ocean? I'm no fan boy, but I'm also
not going to be a naysayer on this one.

Starlink lets SpaceX make use of cores with long launch records that others
may not be willing to risk their payloads on, and SpaceX can also use those
launches to test other risky maneuvers. So... Perhaps there's some other value
in Starlink that we're not privy to.

------
voisin
> In addition to getting the satellites in orbit, SpaceX will need to build a
> vast system of ground stations and affordable user terminals if it is going
> to connect consumers directly to its network.

Why are ground stations required? I thought you were connecting from your dish
to the satellite and therefore could be anywhere with a view of the sky.

~~~
Laremere
There is currently no satellite to satellite communication with the first
iteration of the technology. This means you need ground stations to receive
the traffic coming from the user terminals. This can either hooked up directly
to the internet backbone (ideal), or bounce to another satellite closer to the
backbone connection.

Basically, user computer <\--> user wifi or router <\--> user terminal <\-->
satellite <\--> ground station <\--> fiber <\--> peering to other internet
providers.

~~~
voisin
Thank you!

------
chaostheory
I know Wyoming law enforcement rely on apps that can function in a
disconnected environment since I heard network coverage through out many parts
of the state is really poor. This would also help a lot of park rangers.

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trashcan
I would love to have this as a backup internet option. I live in a town that
has Google Fiber (literally 50 feet away from me), but I don't have access.
I'm oncall and cannot be without internet at almost any time, and my internet
goes down much more than I'm comfortable with. I hope Starlink is an option
soon!

~~~
mycall
Can you not use mobile hotspot/tether internet as a backup option?

~~~
trashcan
That is what I currently do. I use >~1TB a month in bandwidth though, so it
isn't practical to tether everything so I end up only tethering my laptop and
even that is still pretty expensive on Google Fi ($10/gb until I am
throttled).

Fortunately my internet has only had problems maybe 4 or 5 times in the last
year. It just feels irresponsible of me to rely on data that eventually gets
throttled to be almost unusable when I need it for my job. Maybe I will get a
backup AT&T internet connection and expense it at some point :(.

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RobLach
I'd wait till I see the price.

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onetimemanytime
5 million times, say, $50 means $250 Million a month or 3 billion a year. Not
sure if they can get people to switch from optic cable to satellite and while
the world is large, very few outside rich countries can afford to pay $50 a
month.

Nice side business

~~~
noahtallen
> Not sure if they can get people to switch from optic cable to satellite

I think the market for this often would not even have a cable option. They’re
stuck on old DSL at like 6mbps down or less for $90/mo with bundled landline,
or if they’re lucky, the cable company ran a line by their house. If starlink
was offering just 20mbps down for $50, everyone I know in the country would
switch immediately. I definitely don’t think starlink will compete with city
fiber or cable connections. Heck, mine is $30 for 250mbps down. No way
satellite is going to compete with that.

In the city, and even small countryside cities, this isn’t a big deal, but
rural communities don’t have choice or speed, at least in the US! That’s not a
big market on a small scale, but added up across the US, it would be a lot of
people.

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0xdeadb00f
Having a single company, SpaceX mind you, in charge of something like this
seems dangerous to me.

~~~
tuatoru
There's nothing stopping others from doing the same thing, and indeed others
are planning to. SpaceX is leading the pack, but eventually there will be
competition.

------
downrightmike
I want it.

~~~
thrwaway69
spoiled consumer.

------
Rakshith
considering comcast owns the democrats, they will likely push their agendas if
biden wins and gets these guys.

~~~
TomMarius
Once it's up in space it doesn't seem impossible to move the Starlink HQ
outside the USA.

