[Starlink] SpaceX no longer taking losses to produce Starlink satellite antennas, a key step to improving profitability

[Ulrich Speidel]

The differential pricing is a pretty obvious attempt to manage user 
density in the cells as they add capacity in the sky. Growing pains.

In NZ, they sold at NZ$199 at one point if you were "rural" and NZ$729 
if you were "urban", except that their definitions of "rural" included 
the built-up CBD of a few cities with population into the 100's of 
thousands, and "urban" included lifestyle block areas away from the big 
cities. A better definition would have been:

  * "urban" if truly urban and surrounded by sufficient geeks to drive
    density up (look at central Tokyo where user density seems to have
    gone through the roof!)
  * "urban" if in rural areas that attract a lot of lifestylers and in
    which no fibre is on offer
  * "rural" if in urban areas devoid of sufficient numbers of geeks
  * "rural" if truly out in the sticks

But they keep changing that in quite a nimble fashion and rural and 
urban pricing seems to have started to converge somewhat.

Starlink's hardware pricing is only one lever, subscription is another, 
and that's reflected in their pricing where service is involved that 
goes beyond the standard stationary dishy setup. In areas that have 
fibre, they're not competitive - they'd need to be US$50 / month or less 
to even get a serious foot in the door there. Everywhere else, they are 
selling well as long as the locals can afford it. So quite how they will 
manage user density once everyone's bought a cheap dishy will be 
interesting - can they grow capacity faster than user base? Quite what 
that means for rural fibre expansion also remains to be seen. Where 
available, fibre offers vastly better uplink rates, lower latency, and - 
at present - lower ongoing pricing.

On 14/09/2023 5:52 am, Inemesit Affia via Starlink wrote:
> That's quite strange. They sell equipment at different prices 
> everywhere. So what's this price? I assume $500 to $750 but could it 
> be even cheaper?
>
> Amazon said thier target is $400
>
> On Wed, Sep 13, 2023, 6:05 PM the keyboard of geoff goodfellow via 
> Starlink <starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
>       * SpaceX is no longer absorbing the cost of the Starlink
>         antennas that it sells with its satellite internet service, a
>         company executive said on Wednesday.
>       * “We were subsidizing terminals but we’ve been iterating on our
>         terminal production so much that we’re no longer subsidizing
>         terminals, which is a good place to be,” Jonathan Hofeller,
>         SpaceX vice president of Starlink and commercial sales, said
>         during a panel at the World Satellite Business Week conference.
>
>     [...]
>     https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/13/spacex-no-longer-taking-losses-to-produce-starlink-satellite-antennas.html
>     <https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/13/spacex-no-longer-taking-losses-to-produce-starlink-satellite-antennas.html>
>
>     -- 
>     Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
>     living as The Truth is True
>
-- 

****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel at auckland.ac.nz  
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
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