[Starlink] 69,000 Users

Wed Jun 30 03:43:50 EDT 2021

I wasn’t suggesting 500k users was anywhere near break even point, but the opposite - that they need orders of magnitude to reach profitability.

Lifespan of a satellite is determined by many factors, including decay of solar panels and batteries, or radiation and thermal damage. You can design satellites to last decades, as the GSO operators do, but they become really expensive as a result. The equation becomes “how much time does a satellite spend serving paying customers before it dies”.

The financial modeling is extremely complex. As an example, do you consider a satellite serving a customer for a few minutes a day, at $100/month, as fully participant in that revenue? Or do you assign the proportional amount of revenue to the time serving (e.g. $2.50). Do you book the time satellites are over non-serviced area as a loss? Or just lost revenue opportunity? Does a gateway site become a standalone entity? Or do you have 9 antennas, and thus 9 entities, each with an independent contribution to revenue?

Using all the above as examples, not to start a discussion which would be very off-topic :-)

Best,

Mike
On Jun 30, 2021, 9:30 AM +0200, David Lang <david at lang.hm>, wrote:
> they have FCC approval for 1m customer terminals in the US, and have asked to
> increase that due to demonstrated demand (to something like 5m terminals)
>
> 500k customers is not nearly the break-even point, but that's still a lot of
> equipment deployed and supported.
>
> I suspect that they will be more limited by the number of stations they can
> build than the interest from customers. As user density increases, they will
> need to launch more satellites, but as Starship comes online, the cost to do so
> will drop significantly.
>
> the orbital life of a satellite may end up being a bit better than you think,
> they will de-orbit by themselves after about 5 years, but they do have thrusters
> that they can use to raise their orbits to extend their lives if they don't need
> the fuel for collision avoidance.
>
> David Lang
>
> On Wed, 30 Jun 2021, Mike Puchol wrote:
>
> > Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2021 09:23:02 +0200
> > From: Mike Puchol <mike at starlink.sx>
> > To: David Lang <david at lang.hm>, Dave Taht <dave.taht at gmail.com>
> > Cc: starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net
> > Subject: Re: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
> >
> > 500k customers is ~$600m in gross revenue per year. Assuming no operating costs, takes, etc., $10bn takes ~16 years to pay back. They need to add way more customers onto that investment.
> >
> > In traditional land-based telcos, it is frequent to split the backbone and customer sides, having a “TowerCo” with all the expensive infrastructure, that has a payback period of 25 years, and “CustomerCo” where payback needs to be 12-18 months. In Starlink’s case, unless they cannot increase satellite lifespan, and/or make them very cheap, the payback period is fixed at 5 years. For gateways and ground infrastructure, you can stretch it to compensate, but you cannot justify, say, a 50 year payback.
> >
> > IMHO the direct to customer side will end up being residual, high price for those who really need it, and their revenue will come from backhauling mobile and FTTH operators, airlines, cruises, and the military.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Mike
> > On Jun 30, 2021, 7:48 AM +0200, Dave Taht <dave.taht at gmail.com>, wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jun 29, 2021 at 10:24 PM David Lang <david at lang.hm> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I think that was 69k simultanious users
> > > >
> > > > dishy production cost is currently down to ~$1k/unit (I've heard that it was
> > > > ~$3k/unit for the first ones)
> > >
> > > Keep hoping they will add good, nay, great!! queue management.
> > > Software costs nothing in qty.
> > >
> > > > But the long term upside if they can pull it off is a license to print money,
> > > > I've seen speculation that it's on the order of 30B/year when fully built
> > >
> > > I think that's kind of doable.
> > >
> > > It's too bad all those users are behind a CGN and cannot talk to each
> > > other, routing calls at least from one village to another would stay
> > > on the same sat.
> > >
> > > >
> > > > David Lang
> > > >
> > > > On Tue, 29 Jun 2021, Daniel AJ Sokolov wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2021 19:00:32 -0700
> > > > > From: Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel at sokolov.eu.org>
> > > > > To: starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > > > Subject: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
> > > > >
> > > > > Starlink currently has 69,000 User, according to what Elon Musk said
> > > > > today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
> > > > >
> > > > > In a year, he wants to have 500,000 users.
> > > > >
> > > > > He expects having to invest 25 to 30 billion US-Dollars to fully build
> > > > > Starlink.
> > > > >
> > > > > Each Dishy costs Starlink about double the current purchase price.
> > > > > However, they want to reduce the production cost to "a few hundred
> > > > > dollars" - which is why they are working on their own factory in Texas.
> > > > >
> > > > > FYI
> > > > > Daniel
> > > > >
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