Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?

[David Lang <david@lang.hm>]

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Also, they didn't say that SpaceX was cutting service or stopping funding it, 
they just said that they aren't going to continue to provide the service for 
free indefinantly and are not going to keep providing lots of dishes for free 
(apparently there are around 500/month being destroyed due to combat)

David Lang

  On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, David Lang wrote:

> Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2022 12:35:20 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Lang <david@lang.hm>
> To: Larry Press <lpress@csudh.edu>
> Cc: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>, David Lang <david@lang.hm>,
>     Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?
> 
> some interesting tidbits in that article
>
> 1. 25k dishes rather than the 15k I had heard befor
> 2. they are providing full business rates rather than consumer rates
> 2a. it's interesting that they can do this with the consumer dishes, although 
> a lot of what I saw shipped were the gen1 (round) dishes, which may be better 
> than the gen 2 consumer dishes.
>
> yes, the companies who manufacture the weapons have been paid in full.
>
> I think it's worth pointing out that Starlink was never intended to be the 
> entire communications infrastructure for a country. I think it would be a 
> very interesting thing to investigate what the actual density of users and 
> data usage is (there is a graph posted, but I haven't tried to get a good 
> enough copy of it to see the units). It could confirm/refute the "starlink 
> can't scale" argument
>
> David Lang
>
> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Larry Press wrote:
>
>> SpaceX has given a more detailed statement of expenses to the Pentagon:
>> https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine/index.html
>> 
>> They have been "paid" in favorable publicity and have tested/refined things 
>> like mobile connectivity.
>> 
>> Aren't the companies that supply weapons, ammunition, etc. paid?
>> 
>> Larry
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________
>> From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> on behalf of David 
>> Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>> Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 10:28 AM
>> To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
>> Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?
>> 
>> Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m total 
>> figure
>> is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the figure that they 
>> sent
>> (separate from whatever has been purchased on the commercial side), that 
>> works
>> out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.
>> 
>> now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside Ukraine could 
>> be
>> driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming. But in his tweet 
>> he
>> also cites satellite costs, which should not be allocated as "Ukraine 
>> related"
>> costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work should 
>> be
>> either)
>> 
>> David Lang
>> 
>> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:
>> 
>>> This thread 
>>> (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUURE6WtPnA$ 
>>> )
>>> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
>>> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
>>> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
>>> not on the basic model.
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
>>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting the
>>>>> expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get out of 
>>>>> it. If
>>>>> you then claim your costs are way higher than what analysis work out, 
>>>>> eyebrows
>>>>> raise way above the hairline.
>>>> 
>>>> Uh.  Hmm.
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>