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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 7/02/2025 4:29 am, Dave Taht wrote:<br>
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<pre wrap="" class="moz-quote-pre">On Thu, Feb 6, 2025 at 12:47 AM Ulrich Speidel via Starlink
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net"><starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net></a> wrote:
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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,
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As best as I remember from something a few years ago, the fuel
usage was far, far below expectations, something like 3% over 3 years.
So aside from the lowest orbits perhaps, starlink does not need to retire
a satellite in under 5 years, except for upgrades.</pre>
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Indeed. As I've mentioned, the main reason why satellites get
de-orbited is technological obsolescence (few beams, no ISLs, low
EIRP, ...).<br>
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<pre wrap="" class="moz-quote-pre">we'd be looking at 1,400 of them needing to get replaced each year going forward.
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They are presently launching 22 sats every other day. call it 4000/yr.</pre>
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Yep. So this means that a bigger chunk of the current revenue goes
towards growth rather than a somewhat unrelated Mars programme, I
guess.<br>
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So assuming the same launch cadence, call it 21k sats in orbit before
they can grow no more.
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<pre wrap="" class="moz-quote-pre">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.
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This seems to assume each launch is 22m. I have no idea what the
second stage costs at this point...</pre>
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Yep, I left that out deliberately.<br>
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<pre wrap="" class="moz-quote-pre">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.
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Actually connecting to the internet costs money too, and each ground
station is probably 1m+, and there are all sorts of other costs in
manufacturing and network support.</pre>
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I left that out, too.<br>
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What happens next at the NTIA is anyone´s guess.</pre>
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Indeed.<br>
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It then depends on revenue growth, and that in turn depends on:
capacity available to sell and
markets to sell into.
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Some very large countries like India, are dragging their feet. </pre>
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Indeed they do. Now India have been quite innovative in their urban
areas in terms of connectivity, but quite whether the rural areas
will be able to afford a great amount of Starlink subscriptions is
the big question. Concentrated populations aren't as much of a
customer potential - either there's already better local
connectivity available, or you hit spectral capacity quickly.<br>
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<pre wrap="" class="moz-quote-pre">I do
wonder what will happen in onterio, where they just uncanceled a
100m starlink contract (
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/ontario-cancels-starlink-contract-latest-canadian-tariffs-protest-2025-02-03/">https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/ontario-cancels-starlink-contract-latest-canadian-tariffs-protest-2025-02-03/</a>)
and are trying to put 2.5B into another sat system. Once the furor
dies down over there, I have no idea what will happen.</pre>
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I think you'll see a lot of people thinking about a Plan B at the
moment. That's what you do when your former best friend suddenly
becomes the source of a lot of problems.<br>
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In general I expect most future growth for starlink to be in rural
throughout the world, and their initial estimates were for 30m users
worldwide, which I think is quite achievable in 5-7 years.</pre>
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Now there's "rich rural" and "poor rural". Much of "rich rural"
around the world already has Starlink, and "poor rural" won't be
able to afford Starlink unless it's heavily discounted. So perhaps
not such a great source of cashflow either.<br>
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That´s a really great list. However, in terms of square footage quite small.</pre>
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That's the whole point: These are where you have concentrated
underserved populations, but Starlink can't serve them. That leaves
only the rural underserved - and quite how many there are that can
actually contribute significantly to Starlink cashflow is what I'm
asking myself.<br>
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30m is more than enough for a highly profitable entity.</pre>
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<p>Yep, I mean they'd be profitable now if they ceased growing right
away and just maintained status quo. But will 30m users generate
enough cash flow to go to Mars?<span style="white-space: pre-wrap">
</span></p>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel
School of Computer Science
Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
The University of Auckland
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz">u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/">http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/</a>
****************************************************************
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