From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail.lang.hm (unknown [66.167.227.145]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ADH-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by lists.bufferbloat.net (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 948A13B29D for ; Mon, 11 Apr 2022 21:56:12 -0400 (EDT) Received: from dlang-mobile (unknown [10.2.2.69]) by mail.lang.hm (Postfix) with ESMTP id 82B4112AC4A; Mon, 11 Apr 2022 18:56:11 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2022 18:56:11 -0700 (PDT) From: David Lang To: Dave Collier-Brown cc: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <168F6AAF-7953-4498-913A-A322D184FF2B@falco.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; BOUNDARY="===============3081770701725659080==" Subject: Re: [Starlink] SpaceX ordered to explain pricing strategy X-BeenThere: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.20 Precedence: list List-Id: "Starlink has bufferbloat. Bad." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2022 01:56:12 -0000 This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. --===============3081770701725659080== Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII Larry dug up this paper, is it the one that is being referred to? https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9568932__;!!P7nkOOY!qET50RjNacuVwWboH6o-ccJn3yQcttBzx_KR4d_dd2ANtk8ddNdOkK7xNwJFuMrkde30zl-ZZCr7KQ$ lots of 'interesting' assumptions in this paper (right off the bat, that everyone is spending the same amount per satellite, which I think makes the non-starlink systems look much better than they are) I also suspect that they are over-estimating starlink costs in a fairly substantial way. They say that falcon 9 launches are going to be cheaper because it's so reliable, so insurance rates are going to be lower. I'd assume that SpaceX is not paying for insurance on the satellites (I'm sure they have insurance against damage on the ground) but even with all this, they list a NPV cost of $0.6M per starlink satellite over a 5 year period supporting 2500 subscribers @0.1/km^2 or $200/subscriber for the satellite assets with each subscriber paying $6000 over that timeframe (there are ground station costs, etc, but with 5k satellites, the satellite costs dominate) Musk has said that without Starship and the v2 starlink satellites, the finances barely work, but Starship will significantly decrease the per-satellite costs, and the v2 satellites will increase the bandwith available per sq km, and the increase in the number of satellites from ~5k to ~40k will increase the number of satellites and therefor the bandwith per sq km again. it doesn't seem such an open-and-shut case that starlink will have to increase prices dreastically to survive. They may, but it's not that obvious that they must. Also, that 25Mb/s bandwidth figure is what happens in the peak hour that everyone is using the system. If that does not suffer from bad bloat, that's actually a fairly comfortable rate, enough for several people to be streaming HD video (although for 4k video it gets tighter, but still works) When my cablemodem drops out and I fall back to 8/1 DSL, my zoom calls notice when I have other people streaming video (along with email/etc), but I'm still usually not the worst on the call. 3x that bandwidth (unbloated) would be quite comfortable for several people. David Lang --===============3081770701725659080== Content-Type: text/plain; CHARSET=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: BASE64 Content-ID: <82rpp8op-7n20-sr24-2qr5-8p7pr813rp93@ynat.uz> Content-Description: Content-Disposition: INLINE X19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX18KU3Rhcmxpbmsg bWFpbGluZyBsaXN0ClN0YXJsaW5rQGxpc3RzLmJ1ZmZlcmJsb2F0Lm5ldApodHRwczovL2xpc3Rz LmJ1ZmZlcmJsb2F0Lm5ldC9saXN0aW5mby9zdGFybGluawo= --===============3081770701725659080==--