[Starlink] Starlink profit growing rapidly as it faces a moment of promise and peril (Ars Technica)
Ulrich Speidel
u.speidel at auckland.ac.nz
Thu Feb 6 15:15:31 EST 2025
Just trying to get to ballpark figures here. It's well understood that
current Starlink service life is limited by technological obsolescence
rather than fuel reserves.
The $100/month is based on the cost of a fixed subscription in the
markets I've seen (US, Japan, NZ, Australia, Germany, Fiji) but yes it
varies, and there are different grades of service in many markets, too.
The fundamental question is whether it generates enough cashflow to
finance a Mars programme at a time when the launch rate is still well
above replacement rate, launch costs are still higher than they would be
with Starship in routine service, and much of the low-hanging fruit in
terms of rich rural markets have already been picked.
On 7/02/2025 12:11 am, David Lang wrote:
> just one note on the 5 year service life. The orbit they are in is
> such that a failed satellite will reenter within 5 years. That doesn't
> mean that they only have fuel for 5 years of operation
>
> Also re: revenue, many places outside the US pay less than $100/month,
> and many users in the US pay more than $100/month, so it's hard to
> come up with the average per-subscriber revenue. But I agree thta it
> makes the article revenue numbers plausable.
>
> David Lang
>
>
> On Thu, 6 Feb 2025, Ulrich Speidel via Starlink wrote:
>
>> Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2025 21:47:26 +1300
>> From: Ulrich Speidel via Starlink <starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net>
>> Reply-To: Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel at auckland.ac.nz>
>> To: starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net
>> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink profit growing rapidly as it faces a
>> moment
>> of promise and peril (Ars Technica)
>>
>> Now the interesting thing here is that with 5 million subscribers
>> paying about US$1200 a year, you'd get about 6 billion from bog
>> standard dishy end users alone. So that $8.2b is credible.
>>
>> Note this is revenue, not profit. To get there, pointing at the other
>> posts today, Starlink had to build a constellation of about 7,000
>> satellites. Even if we looked just at these 7,000 and assumed
>> incorrectly that they all got to enjoy a full service life of maybe 5
>> years, we'd be looking at 1,400 of them needing to get replaced each
>> year going forward. Assuming here 1000 kg per satellite going forward
>> (just ballpark) and US$1000/kg launch cost. So that's a US$1M
>> replacement cost per satellite (not even looking at the hardware),
>> and that's got to come out of those $8.2b. So I guess profit might be
>> closer to the $6b mark at best in that scenario, and probably nowhere
>> near that so far due to the fact that SpaceX are launching at well
>> beyond replacement rate, the launch costs of anything older than
>> Starship are higher, and the V3's will be closer to 2000 kg than 1000
>> kg. So that mightn't leave quite that much change out of the $8.2b to
>> throw at other projects. But it's certainly looking like a
>> sustainable business.
>>
>> But then Starlink are growing. I guess with Elon now being in
>> de-facto control of the FCC, they'll get what they want, but more
>> sats up there also means having to replace more eventually. So that
>> cost will go up.
>>
>> It then depends on revenue growth, and that in turn depends on:
>>
>> * capacity available to sell and
>> * markets to sell into.
>>
>> And here lies the crux: Capacity comes in two types:
>>
>> 1. Spectral capacity. That's SpaceX's ability to find a frequency to
>> serve a customer on that isn't already in use in the customer's
>> neighbourhood.
>> 2. Beam capacity: The ability to find a spare beam on a satellite that
>> can be used for that customer.
>>
>> Now the second one of these is easy to address - just launch more
>> sats and put more beams on each sat. But the second capacity is worth
>> nothing in a place where you don't have the first one, which can't be
>> increased by launching more satellites - at least not unless they're
>> different ones that allow for smaller cells and sharper beams. That's
>> a route that Starlink are trying to go down FAIK, but there's limited
>> growth potential here.
>>
>> And looking at the Starlink availability map, spectral capacity is
>> something they currently seem to be grappling with in quite a number
>> of places. From the Greenwich Meridian roughly east, they're "sold
>> out" in: the greater London area, Accra, Lagos, Benin City, Warri,
>> Port Harcourt, Abuja, Lusaka, Bulawayo, Harare, Maputo, Nairobi,
>> Antananarivo, Jakarta, Perth, Manila, Brisbane, Bethel, quite a lot
>> of areas south of Anchorage, spots around Fairbanks, Delta Junction,
>> Whitehorse, the Seattle-Portland corridor, Sacramento, Grande
>> Prairie, Spokane, San Diego, Missoula, Edmonton, Apache Junction,
>> Nogales, Aspen Park, Guadalajara (MX), Monterrey (MX), Mexico City,
>> Austin, Puero Escondido (MX), De Ridder, Mérida (MX), San Salvador,
>> Playa del Carmen (MX), Peterborough (CA), Tuskegee, San Jose (CR),
>> Highlands (NC), much of western Jamaica, parts of the Dominican
>> Republic, much of Puerto Rico, Iqualuit, Leticia (BR), Rincón de Los
>> Sauces, Sao Gabriel da Caochoeira, Tefé (BR), Manaus (BR), Sao Paulo
>> BR), Rio de Janeiro. It's been like this for a couple of months now,
>> so I guess it's not a problem with the Dishy supply chain.
>>
>> Read: Not much growth potential at present in and around population
>> centres where Starlink used to be available and where there isn't
>> good existing ground infrastructure.
>>
>> There used to be a lot of availability "flickering" in areas where
>> there was more demand than beam capacity - this has gone solidly to
>> "available" now where it's not "sold out". So we can assume that the
>> market there is saturated now mostly.
>>
>> There remain those countries where Starlink isn't officially
>> available yet. Some of these get roaming service, and I'm aware of at
>> least one of these where spectral capacity is uncomfortably near
>> (BTW: USAID was going to pay for a fibre cable there so China
>> wouldn't, but I guess Elon doesn't want USAID to pay for the cable so
>> China can own it. While they're waiting for it, Starlink gets seen
>> there as being unable to meet demand. It makes no sense to me.
>> Incidentally, the country has one of the largest sovereign waters in
>> the world and China is just waiting for the opportunity to get a
>> naval base there I guess - on the far side of Guam. Bye America!).
>>
>> Other countries where you can't get Starlink yet might contribute
>> another few million users - India in particular. But with Starlink
>> not being able to support particularly high user densities anywhere
>> because of the spectral constraints, we're unlikely to see billions
>> of customers there either.
>>
>> On 6/02/2025 4:53 am, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow via Starlink
>> wrote:
>>> "He wants to take food off the table of people—hard-working people."
>>> EXCERPT:
>>>
>>> Two new independent estimates of revenue from SpaceX's Starlink
>>> Internet service suggest it is rapidly growing, having nearly
>>> tripled in just two years.
>>>
>>> An updated projection from the analysts at Quilty Space estimates
>>> that the service produced $7.8 billion in revenue in 2024, with
>>> about 60 percent of that coming from consumers who subscribe to
>>> the service. Similarly, the media publication Payload estimated
>>> that Starlink generated $8.2 billion in revenue last year.
>>>
>>> These estimates indicate that Starlink produced a few hundred
>>> million dollars in free cash flow for SpaceX in 2024. However,
>>> with revenues expected to leap in 2025 to above $12 billion,
>>> Quilty Space estimates that free cash flow will grow to about $2
>>> billion. SpaceX is privately held, so its financial numbers are
>>> not public.
>>>
>>> *Growing subscribers*
>>> *
>>> *By launching thousands of satellites and developing an Internet
>>> service based in low-Earth orbit—where the proximity of satellites
>>> to the ground provides significantly faster and lower latency
>>> service than satellites in geostationary space—SpaceX has already
>>> exceeded space-based communication networks developed earlier.
>>>
>>> At the end of last year, Starlink had 4.6 million subscribers.
>>> Quilty's director of research Caleb Henry noted that the previous
>>> incumbent players, Hughes and ViaSat, had a combined 2.2 million
>>> subscribers at their peak about half a decade ago, largely in
>>> North America, with some in South America and a smattering in
>>> Europe. Starlink is expected to add another 3 million subscribers
>>> this year alone.
>>>
>>> SpaceX has other significant lines of business, including
>>> government customers, particularly the US Department of Defense,
>>> as well as maritime (75,000 vessels equipped with Starlink as well
>>> as 300 cruise ships) and aviation segments.
>>>
>>> "The key takeaway I want everybody to walk away with is, if SpaceX
>>> was building the Starlink system to pay for a Mars colony, we've
>>> got evidence that the company will generate the type of free cash
>>> flows from the business that could pay for said endeavor," said
>>> Chris Quilty, co-chief executive and president of Quilty Space...
>>>
>>> [...]
>>> https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/starlink-profit-growing-rapidly-as-it-faces-a-moment-of-promise-and-peril/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
>>> living as The Truth is True
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
--
****************************************************************
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/
****************************************************************
More information about the Starlink
mailing list