<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Is the language carefully chosen to imply it can provide data links for classified satellites?<br class=""><div class="">
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<div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Jun 18, 2023, at 10:21 PM, David Fernández via Starlink <<a href="mailto:starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net" class="">starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div class="">I followed the link below about Starshield<br class="">(<a href="https://www.spacex.com/starshield" class="">https://www.spacex.com/starshield</a>) and it says:<br class=""><br class="">- Interoperability: Starlink's inter-satellite laser communications<br class="">terminal, which is the only communications laser operating at scale in<br class="">orbit today, can be integrated onto partner satellites to enable<br class="">incorporation into the Starshield network.<br class=""><br class="">Besides that the EDRS is out there also, at a reduced scale, ok<br class="">(<a href="https://www.esa.int/Applications/Connectivity_and_Secure_Communications/Relay_system_speeds_vital_data_flow_with_75_000_links" class="">https://www.esa.int/Applications/Connectivity_and_Secure_Communications/Relay_system_speeds_vital_data_flow_with_75_000_links</a>),<br class="">I was wondering about how the integration of partner satellites into<br class="">the Starshield network will work, besides hosting the ISL payload.<br class=""><br class="">Regards,<br class=""><br class="">David<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2023 17:08:59 -0600<br class="">From: Dave Taht <<a href="mailto:dave.taht@gmail.com" class="">dave.taht@gmail.com</a>><br class="">To: Tom Beecher <<a href="mailto:beecher@beecher.cc" class="">beecher@beecher.cc</a>><br class="">Cc: Michael Thomas <<a href="mailto:mike@mtcc.com" class="">mike@mtcc.com</a>>, <a href="mailto:nanog@nanog.org" class="">nanog@nanog.org</a>, Dave Taht via<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Starlink <<a href="mailto:starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net" class="">starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net</a>><br class="">Subject: Re: [Starlink] FCC Chair Rosenworcel Proposes to Investigate<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Impact<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>of Data Caps<br class="">Message-ID:<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><<a href="mailto:CAA93jw76nX9wzhBUVFdGOuZH=PMNpzNjzy0nMGyE1E1EYbsdbw@mail.gmail.com" class="">CAA93jw76nX9wzhBUVFdGOuZH=PMNpzNjzy0nMGyE1E1EYbsdbw@mail.gmail.com</a>><br class="">Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"<br class=""><br class="">I am happy to see the conversation about starlink escaping over here,<br class="">because it is increasingly a game-changing technology (I also run the<br class="">starlink mailing list, cc´d)...<br class=""><br class="">On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 3:56 PM Tom Beecher <<a href="mailto:beecher@beecher.cc" class="">beecher@beecher.cc</a>> wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class="">As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the<br class="">real economics.<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote><br class="">There is a whole other cluster on the drawing boards, called<br class="">Starshield, which you can read about here:<br class=""><a href="https://www.spacex.com/starshield/" class="">https://www.spacex.com/starshield/</a><br class=""><br class="">The current "retail"economics are limited to US allies as a result of<br class="">the ukraine war showing how important information and bandwidth are to<br class="">modern warfare. There are also political implications to downlinks in<br class="">each country.<br class=""><br class="">I imagine, for example, that India is holding off on licensing until<br class="">Musk gets them a tesla factory.<br class=""><br class="">Multiple other countries are making a huge investment into retaining<br class="">control of the "spacewaves", so there´s that also.<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they<br class="">still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the<br class="">mean time.<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">Throttling demand is not how I would put it. Each cell has a limited<br class="">capacity, so starlink has been running promotions to get more<br class="">subscribers into more rural cells where the capacity exists.<br class=""><br class="">I have kvetched elsewhere about how poorly starlink manages bandwidth<br class="">and bufferbloat currently, but they are largely better than modern day<br class="">5G and DSL, so...<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""> Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more<br class="">expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes?<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">The original cost/dish was about 2k, so they were selling those at<br class="">well below the install price, with a ROI of about 12 months, given<br class="">that figure. I imagine with mass manufacturing the cost/dish has come<br class="">down substantially, and they also charge a realistic price on the<br class="">business quality dish of $2500. It would not surprise me if the basic<br class="">dishy essentially cost less than 500 to manufacture nowadays.<br class=""><br class="">The default wifi router, which many replace, cannot be more than 50<br class="">dollars on the BOM.<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly<br class="">just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck<br class="">roll.<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">There is no truck roll. They have gone to amazing extants in - put the<br class="">dish in a clear area, power it up, you are on.<br class=""><br class="">Establishing infrastructure, like downlinks, connected near fiber in<br class="">civilization does have a large cost, takes time, and is also subject<br class="">to government regulation.<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class="">- Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a month,<br class="">that's $165M in revenue,<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">Creating A 2B dollar/year business in 4 years is quite impressive. A<br class="">reasonable projection would be 10m subs in 4 more years, e.g.<br class="">10B/year. That aint' chicken scratch. In fact, I think it funds<br class="">humanity´s expansion into the solar system quite handily.<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">- A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to 60<br class="">Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats<br class="">in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume<br class="">the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff,<br class="">they aren't launching an external paying customer.)<br class=""></blockquote><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">- The reported price per sat is $250k.<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">There are multiple sat types, the mini v2 (which can only be flown on<br class="">the falcon 9, is rumored to cost about that much)<br class=""><br class="">Starship had had a much larger, much more highly capable sat designed<br class="">for it, but it is running a few years behind schedule. The hope for<br class="">that was that launch costs would decline even further.<br class=""><br class="">Also OPEX - running this network - is probably a substantial cost. I<br class="">have lost track of the number of downlink stations established (over<br class="">200 now) but I would guess those are about 1m per.<br class=""><br class="">There is a really amazing site that looks at this stuff called starlink.sx.<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class="">Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital<br class="">buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for<br class="">sats.<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">The present day capacity, even if they were to do no more launches, is<br class="">still underused. Roughly half the USA has no starlink service yet,<br class="">multiple countries have been slow to license, and nearly all of Africa<br class="">remains uncovered. Maritime and air are big sources of new business. I<br class="">try to stress it is where people are but infrastructure isn´t is<br class="">where starlink really shines,<br class=""><br class="">and that very little bandwidth is required for things like email and chat.<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class="">- The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K<br class="">cluster, that's 1200 a year.<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">Where did you see that? So far as I can tell, the failure rate,<br class="">exclusive of one launch lost to solar expansion, is trending towards<br class="">zero. Also, maneuvering thrust (documented somewhere) has been quite<br class="">under expectations, in terms of operating fuel they could use the<br class="">existing sats for far, far longer than the intended 5 year operational<br class="">lifetime, in this regard.<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class="">That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats.<br class="">Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there.<br class=""><br class=""> So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And that's<br class="">just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs<br class="">of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff ,<br class="">R&D, etc .<br class=""><br class="">Numbers kinda speak for themselves here.<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he<br class="">does have big ambitions.<br class=""></blockquote><br class=""><br class="">Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math.<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class=""><br class="">On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class="">Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner<br class="">rather than later?<br class=""></blockquote><br class=""><br class="">Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for<br class="">those services to completely replace terrestrial only service.<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote><br class="">I agree they will not replace terrestrial service, but maritime,<br class="">roaming, airplanes, and rural are big enough markets.<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class="">Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only niche? I<br class="">mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he<br class="">does have big ambitions.<br class=""><br class="">From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the incumbents.<br class="">I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.<br class=""><br class="">As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the<br class="">real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling<br class="">demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense<br class="">to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe<br class="">that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can<br class="">see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just<br class="">software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.<br class=""><br class="">Mike<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class=""><br class="">On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class=""><br class="">On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">Mark,<br class=""><br class="">In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options.<br class="">Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage.<br class="">Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US<br class="">(and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is<br class="">no service.<br class=""><br class="">As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a<br class="">focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3<br class="">take rate.<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets<br class="">is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that,<br class="">since there is only so much money and resources to go around.<br class=""><br class="">What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the<br class="">opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are<br class="">capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low<br class="">hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative<br class="">provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread.<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote>Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner<br class="">rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if<br class="">they do they could compete with their caps.<br class=""><br class="">Mike<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><br class=""><br class="">--<br class="">Podcast:<br class="">https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7058793910227111937/<br class="">Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos<br class=""></blockquote>_______________________________________________<br class="">Starlink mailing list<br class=""><a href="mailto:Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net" class="">Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net</a><br class="">https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink<br class=""></div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></body></html>