* Re: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
2021-06-30 7:30 ` David Lang
@ 2021-06-30 7:43 ` Mike Puchol
2021-06-30 7:51 ` Dave Taht
` (2 subsequent siblings)
3 siblings, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread
From: Mike Puchol @ 2021-06-30 7:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: David Lang; +Cc: Dave Taht, starlink
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I wasn’t suggesting 500k users was anywhere near break even point, but the opposite - that they need orders of magnitude to reach profitability.
Lifespan of a satellite is determined by many factors, including decay of solar panels and batteries, or radiation and thermal damage. You can design satellites to last decades, as the GSO operators do, but they become really expensive as a result. The equation becomes “how much time does a satellite spend serving paying customers before it dies”.
The financial modeling is extremely complex. As an example, do you consider a satellite serving a customer for a few minutes a day, at $100/month, as fully participant in that revenue? Or do you assign the proportional amount of revenue to the time serving (e.g. $2.50). Do you book the time satellites are over non-serviced area as a loss? Or just lost revenue opportunity? Does a gateway site become a standalone entity? Or do you have 9 antennas, and thus 9 entities, each with an independent contribution to revenue?
Using all the above as examples, not to start a discussion which would be very off-topic :-)
Best,
Mike
On Jun 30, 2021, 9:30 AM +0200, David Lang <david@lang.hm>, wrote:
> they have FCC approval for 1m customer terminals in the US, and have asked to
> increase that due to demonstrated demand (to something like 5m terminals)
>
> 500k customers is not nearly the break-even point, but that's still a lot of
> equipment deployed and supported.
>
> I suspect that they will be more limited by the number of stations they can
> build than the interest from customers. As user density increases, they will
> need to launch more satellites, but as Starship comes online, the cost to do so
> will drop significantly.
>
> the orbital life of a satellite may end up being a bit better than you think,
> they will de-orbit by themselves after about 5 years, but they do have thrusters
> that they can use to raise their orbits to extend their lives if they don't need
> the fuel for collision avoidance.
>
> David Lang
>
> On Wed, 30 Jun 2021, Mike Puchol wrote:
>
> > Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2021 09:23:02 +0200
> > From: Mike Puchol <mike@starlink.sx>
> > To: David Lang <david@lang.hm>, Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>
> > Cc: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > Subject: Re: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
> >
> > 500k customers is ~$600m in gross revenue per year. Assuming no operating costs, takes, etc., $10bn takes ~16 years to pay back. They need to add way more customers onto that investment.
> >
> > In traditional land-based telcos, it is frequent to split the backbone and customer sides, having a “TowerCo” with all the expensive infrastructure, that has a payback period of 25 years, and “CustomerCo” where payback needs to be 12-18 months. In Starlink’s case, unless they cannot increase satellite lifespan, and/or make them very cheap, the payback period is fixed at 5 years. For gateways and ground infrastructure, you can stretch it to compensate, but you cannot justify, say, a 50 year payback.
> >
> > IMHO the direct to customer side will end up being residual, high price for those who really need it, and their revenue will come from backhauling mobile and FTTH operators, airlines, cruises, and the military.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Mike
> > On Jun 30, 2021, 7:48 AM +0200, Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>, wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jun 29, 2021 at 10:24 PM David Lang <david@lang.hm> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I think that was 69k simultanious users
> > > >
> > > > dishy production cost is currently down to ~$1k/unit (I've heard that it was
> > > > ~$3k/unit for the first ones)
> > >
> > > Keep hoping they will add good, nay, great!! queue management.
> > > Software costs nothing in qty.
> > >
> > > > But the long term upside if they can pull it off is a license to print money,
> > > > I've seen speculation that it's on the order of 30B/year when fully built
> > >
> > > I think that's kind of doable.
> > >
> > > It's too bad all those users are behind a CGN and cannot talk to each
> > > other, routing calls at least from one village to another would stay
> > > on the same sat.
> > >
> > > >
> > > > David Lang
> > > >
> > > > On Tue, 29 Jun 2021, Daniel AJ Sokolov wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2021 19:00:32 -0700
> > > > > From: Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@sokolov.eu.org>
> > > > > To: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > > > Subject: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
> > > > >
> > > > > Starlink currently has 69,000 User, according to what Elon Musk said
> > > > > today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
> > > > >
> > > > > In a year, he wants to have 500,000 users.
> > > > >
> > > > > He expects having to invest 25 to 30 billion US-Dollars to fully build
> > > > > Starlink.
> > > > >
> > > > > Each Dishy costs Starlink about double the current purchase price.
> > > > > However, they want to reduce the production cost to "a few hundred
> > > > > dollars" - which is why they are working on their own factory in Texas.
> > > > >
> > > > > FYI
> > > > > Daniel
> > > > >
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Starlink mailing list
> > > > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> > > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Starlink mailing list
> > > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Latest Podcast:
> > > https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6791014284936785920/
> > >
> > > Dave Täht CTO, TekLibre, LLC
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Starlink mailing list
> > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread* Re: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
2021-06-30 7:30 ` David Lang
2021-06-30 7:43 ` Mike Puchol
@ 2021-06-30 7:51 ` Dave Taht
2021-06-30 9:57 ` Mikael Abrahamsson
2021-06-30 23:33 ` Daniel AJ Sokolov
3 siblings, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread
From: Dave Taht @ 2021-06-30 7:51 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: David Lang; +Cc: Mike Puchol, starlink
While I agree that big money is in backhaul...
My take on how to turn a per-user profit was easy. Just increase the user density and user side always offer the lowest latency possible from LEO.
I would hate to be quoted on this out of context, but 50Mbit ought to be enough for everyone. Web traffic in particular is almost entirely bound by RTT [1]. There’s a lot of studies showing this. I keep looking for the key google one with no luck….
You can’t use up 50Mbit in your typical 3sec web page load before it ends.
Designing a network for speedtest is silly. (admittedly convincing the world that speedtest is the worlds most misleading benchmark is hard)
Designing a new network for real applications like voip, videoconferencing, email, chat, and 4k video streaming is much easier if you always retain consistently low latency.
Many the headaches and hassle in scheduling a bunch of spot beams go away if you just target real applications, with good queue management, and a deep knowledge of how our network protocols actually work.
There’s plenty that could be done at the l2 layer to increase density also. "Music is the space between the notes” - said Debussy
[1] With *really good queue management* at the head end, and an e2e approach to improving the browsers, we (teklibre) long ago proved how to improve PLT enormously at large RTTs.
> On Jun 30, 2021, at 12:30 AM, David Lang <david@lang.hm> wrote:
>
> they have FCC approval for 1m customer terminals in the US, and have asked to increase that due to demonstrated demand (to something like 5m terminals)
>
> 500k customers is not nearly the break-even point, but that's still a lot of equipment deployed and supported.
>
> I suspect that they will be more limited by the number of stations they can build than the interest from customers. As user density increases, they will need to launch more satellites, but as Starship comes online, the cost to do so will drop significantly.
>
> the orbital life of a satellite may end up being a bit better than you think, they will de-orbit by themselves after about 5 years, but they do have thrusters that they can use to raise their orbits to extend their lives if they don't need the fuel for collision avoidance.
>
> David Lang
>
> On Wed, 30 Jun 2021, Mike Puchol wrote:
>
>> Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2021 09:23:02 +0200
>> From: Mike Puchol <mike@starlink.sx>
>> To: David Lang <david@lang.hm>, Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>
>> Cc: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> Subject: Re: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
>> 500k customers is ~$600m in gross revenue per year. Assuming no operating costs, takes, etc., $10bn takes ~16 years to pay back. They need to add way more customers onto that investment.
>>
>> In traditional land-based telcos, it is frequent to split the backbone and customer sides, having a “TowerCo” with all the expensive infrastructure, that has a payback period of 25 years, and “CustomerCo” where payback needs to be 12-18 months. In Starlink’s case, unless they cannot increase satellite lifespan, and/or make them very cheap, the payback period is fixed at 5 years. For gateways and ground infrastructure, you can stretch it to compensate, but you cannot justify, say, a 50 year payback.
>>
>> IMHO the direct to customer side will end up being residual, high price for those who really need it, and their revenue will come from backhauling mobile and FTTH operators, airlines, cruises, and the military.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Mike
>> On Jun 30, 2021, 7:48 AM +0200, Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>, wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jun 29, 2021 at 10:24 PM David Lang <david@lang.hm> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I think that was 69k simultanious users
>>>>
>>>> dishy production cost is currently down to ~$1k/unit (I've heard that it was
>>>> ~$3k/unit for the first ones)
>>>
>>> Keep hoping they will add good, nay, great!! queue management.
>>> Software costs nothing in qty.
>>>
>>>> But the long term upside if they can pull it off is a license to print money,
>>>> I've seen speculation that it's on the order of 30B/year when fully built
>>>
>>> I think that's kind of doable.
>>>
>>> It's too bad all those users are behind a CGN and cannot talk to each
>>> other, routing calls at least from one village to another would stay
>>> on the same sat.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> David Lang
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, 29 Jun 2021, Daniel AJ Sokolov wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2021 19:00:32 -0700
>>>>> From: Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@sokolov.eu.org>
>>>>> To: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>> Subject: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
>>>>>
>>>>> Starlink currently has 69,000 User, according to what Elon Musk said
>>>>> today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
>>>>>
>>>>> In a year, he wants to have 500,000 users.
>>>>>
>>>>> He expects having to invest 25 to 30 billion US-Dollars to fully build
>>>>> Starlink.
>>>>>
>>>>> Each Dishy costs Starlink about double the current purchase price.
>>>>> However, they want to reduce the production cost to "a few hundred
>>>>> dollars" - which is why they are working on their own factory in Texas.
>>>>>
>>>>> FYI
>>>>> Daniel
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Latest Podcast:
>>> https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6791014284936785920/
>>>
>>> Dave Täht CTO, TekLibre, LLC
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
2021-06-30 7:30 ` David Lang
2021-06-30 7:43 ` Mike Puchol
2021-06-30 7:51 ` Dave Taht
@ 2021-06-30 9:57 ` Mikael Abrahamsson
2021-06-30 14:24 ` Dave Taht
2021-06-30 23:33 ` Daniel AJ Sokolov
3 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread
From: Mikael Abrahamsson @ 2021-06-30 9:57 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: David Lang; +Cc: Mike Puchol, starlink
On Wed, 30 Jun 2021, David Lang wrote:
> I suspect that they will be more limited by the number of stations they
> can build than the interest from customers. As user density increases,
> they will need to launch more satellites, but as Starship comes online,
> the cost to do so will drop significantly.
My opinion here is that it's a bw game. with 1M customers doing a few
megabits/s each, that's significant amount of bw capacity needed. Even
with tens of thousands of satellites (each significant cost to build and
launch), I still don't really see how they'll handle many millions of
customers.
Terrestrial mobile networks still haven't really come around to unlimited
data that actually works, so we'll see how well Starlink can do this.
There was a power outage affecting around 50k households yesterday, I
presume most peoples' residential connections/wifis stopped working, and
they all went mobile. This rendered the local mobile networks basically
unusable, people reported 10s RTT on some of the packets that were
actually delivered.
5G base stations today are in the gigabits/s magnitude of total air
capacity, even if they have similar for the satellites it's going to be
problematic to keep up. I think they'll have to keep charging a premium
price, higher than today, or implement data cap.
--
Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
2021-06-30 9:57 ` Mikael Abrahamsson
@ 2021-06-30 14:24 ` Dave Taht
2021-06-30 18:33 ` Mikael Abrahamsson
0 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread
From: Dave Taht @ 2021-06-30 14:24 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Mikael Abrahamsson; +Cc: David Lang, starlink
> On Jun 30, 2021, at 2:57 AM, Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike@swm.pp.se> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 30 Jun 2021, David Lang wrote:
>
>> I suspect that they will be more limited by the number of stations they can build than the interest from customers. As user density increases, they will need to launch more satellites, but as Starship comes online, the cost to do so will drop significantly.
>
> My opinion here is that it's a bw game. with 1M customers doing a few megabits/s each, that's significant amount of bw capacity needed. Even with tens of thousands of satellites (each significant cost to build and launch), I still don't really see how they'll handle many millions of customers.
>
> Terrestrial mobile networks still haven't really come around to unlimited data that actually works, so we'll see how well Starlink can do this.
>
Terrestrial mobile networks still haven’t implemented fq and aqm technologies.
> There was a power outage affecting around 50k households yesterday, I presume most peoples' residential connections/wifis stopped working, and they all went mobile. This rendered the local mobile networks basically unusable, people reported 10s RTT on some of the packets that were actually delivered.
Link?
At 250+ms most our protocols start sending more packets, compounding this problem.
Admittedly an outage of this size is probably not something that can be handled with pure fq+aqm, as it would basically look more like a syn flood attack!
> 5G base stations today are in the gigabits/s magnitude of total air capacity, even if they have similar for the satellites it's going to be problematic to keep up. I think they'll have to keep charging a premium price, higher than today, or implement data cap.
I don’t think data caps are needed. fairness is needed.
I would prefer a solution that just billed for usage over a minimum.
>
> --
> Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
2021-06-30 14:24 ` Dave Taht
@ 2021-06-30 18:33 ` Mikael Abrahamsson
2021-06-30 20:40 ` Dick Roy
0 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread
From: Mikael Abrahamsson @ 2021-06-30 18:33 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Dave Taht; +Cc: David Lang, starlink
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On Wed, 30 Jun 2021, Dave Taht wrote:
> I don’t think data caps are needed. fairness is needed.
LTE has pretty good airtime fairness (but FIFO per customer). Still
doesn't work very well when there isn't enough airtime to satisfy demand.
> I would prefer a solution that just billed for usage over a minimum.
Well, data caps is similar to this. People generally don't like to get
billed automatically upon higher usage, thus data caps can be used and
people will have to go to some self-service page and "pay more" if they're
over the cap, to get a higher cap.
--
Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
2021-06-30 18:33 ` Mikael Abrahamsson
@ 2021-06-30 20:40 ` Dick Roy
0 siblings, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread
From: Dick Roy @ 2021-06-30 20:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: 'Mikael Abrahamsson', 'Dave Taht'; +Cc: starlink
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-----Original Message-----
From: Starlink [mailto:starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net] On Behalf Of
Mikael Abrahamsson
Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2021 11:33 AM
To: Dave Taht
Cc: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
Subject: Re: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
On Wed, 30 Jun 2021, Dave Taht wrote:
> I don't think data caps are needed. fairness is needed.
[RR] Engineers always think fairness is "needed". Corporate managers who
make the real decisions couldn't care less about "fairness". It's all about
income - expenditures which is simply PROFIT! When fair becomes profitable,
you'll see it. Until then,dream on.
LTE has pretty good airtime fairness (but FIFO per customer). Still
doesn't work very well when there isn't enough airtime to satisfy demand.
[RR] There will NEVER be enough supply (of information carrying capacity in
the network) to meet demand all the time. The reason is simple, until the
supply is exhausted, there's gold in them thar hills and the carriers are
not going to leave it there. They will fill their pipes until they burst,
knowing that there is little if anything their customers will do about it
until their pain threshold is exceed, and they spend a helluva lot of money
on psychologists to let them know where that breaking point is and they aim
to get there ASAP. Why?? PROFIT and MARKET CAP! Business 101!
> I would prefer a solution that just billed for usage over a minimum.
Well, data caps is similar to this. People generally don't like to get
billed automatically upon higher usage, thus data caps can be used and
people will have to go to some self-service page and "pay more" if they're
over the cap, to get a higher cap.
[RR] The people in charge at the carriers hate caps . they want customers
unknowingly pouring cash into their coffers. CAPs came about when consumers
complained to the regulators, not one day before! CAPs are nothing more than
a compromise that forces the carriers to let their customers know when they
are about to get sc___d.
All communication networks ultimately reach an "uncomfortable equilibrium"
where all parties are unhappy, but not unhappy enough to quit the game.
Thinking that there is some technical means by which 1Gbps can be shoved
through a pipe whose maximum possible throughput is only a fraction of that
data rate is misguided thinking. More importantly, fairness is in the "eye
of the beholder". One man's fairness is another man's inequity. The point is
that any algorithm for handling packets in a congested/overloaded network at
best will satisfy those that run the networks and not disappoint their
customers "too much". It's bloody obvious that finding the algorithm or
algorithms that achieve these two goals is the only path to success.
RR
--
Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
2021-06-30 7:30 ` David Lang
` (2 preceding siblings ...)
2021-06-30 9:57 ` Mikael Abrahamsson
@ 2021-06-30 23:33 ` Daniel AJ Sokolov
2021-07-01 0:00 ` David Lang
3 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread
From: Daniel AJ Sokolov @ 2021-06-30 23:33 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: starlink
On 2021-06-30 at 12:30 a.m., David Lang wrote:
> the orbital life of a satellite may end up being a bit better than you
> think, they will de-orbit by themselves after about 5 years, but they do
> have thrusters that they can use to raise their orbits to extend their
> lives if they don't need the fuel for collision avoidance.
OK. But does it help Starlink if 3 satellites in a train of 10 run an
extra year, and 3 more an extra half year? Can they reasonably "refill"
the train satellite by satellite?
BR
Daniel AJ
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread* Re: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
2021-06-30 23:33 ` Daniel AJ Sokolov
@ 2021-07-01 0:00 ` David Lang
2021-07-01 0:03 ` Daniel AJ Sokolov
0 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread
From: David Lang @ 2021-07-01 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Daniel AJ Sokolov; +Cc: starlink
On Wed, 30 Jun 2021, Daniel AJ Sokolov wrote:
> OK. But does it help Starlink if 3 satellites in a train of 10 run an
> extra year, and 3 more an extra half year? Can they reasonably "refill"
> the train satellite by satellite?
so far they have launched between 3 and 60 satellites per launch, not always 60.
And if they start using starship to launch (which they plan to as quickly as
they can), a single launch can be up to 400 satellites
good cost summaries in this video for the new sat systems (not counting strship)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBzIkt6M4lY
David Lang
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
2021-07-01 0:00 ` David Lang
@ 2021-07-01 0:03 ` Daniel AJ Sokolov
2021-07-01 0:20 ` David Lang
0 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread
From: Daniel AJ Sokolov @ 2021-07-01 0:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: David Lang; +Cc: starlink
On 2021-06-30 at 5:00 p.m., David Lang wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Jun 2021, Daniel AJ Sokolov wrote:
>
>> OK. But does it help Starlink if 3 satellites in a train of 10 run an
>> extra year, and 3 more an extra half year? Can they reasonably
>> "refill" the train satellite by satellite?
>
> so far they have launched between 3 and 60 satellites per launch, not
> always 60. And if they start using starship to launch (which they plan
> to as quickly as they can), a single launch can be up to 400 satellites
Yes, that's exactly it. The lower their launch costs, the more it may
make sense to deorbit and replace entire trains rather than individual
satellites within trains.
If that is the case, it doesn't help much that the average life span is
a bit more than 5 years. When a train of satellite starts to degrade,
they may just deorbit the entire train, even if some of the satellites
in the train could still operate for a while.
Or am I getting that wrong?
BR
Daniel AJ
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: [Starlink] 69,000 Users
2021-07-01 0:03 ` Daniel AJ Sokolov
@ 2021-07-01 0:20 ` David Lang
0 siblings, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread
From: David Lang @ 2021-07-01 0:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Daniel AJ Sokolov; +Cc: David Lang, starlink
On Wed, 30 Jun 2021, Daniel AJ Sokolov wrote:
> If that is the case, it doesn't help much that the average life span is a bit
> more than 5 years. When a train of satellite starts to degrade, they may just
> deorbit the entire train, even if some of the satellites in the train could
> still operate for a while.
>
> Or am I getting that wrong?
My point is that a train is already a variable number, so it's not line 1 train
== 1 orbit of satellites
They have had a number of failures and a few deliberate deorbits for testing.
the sateelites they have already launched are sufficient to provide global
coverage (except at the poles), but they plan to launch a LOT more, including
more into the current shell.
So I think it's going to be more a matter of graceful degredation and then
launching a new set to fill gaps than killing an entire train at a time.
If they are going to launch 400 or so on a single starship launch, there has to
be enough delta-v for them to not only space themselves out along one orbit, but
to shift the orbit east/west as well, which gives them a lot more flexibility
than you are assuming.
David Lang
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread