CNBC: SpaceX prices Starlink satellite internet service at $99 per month, according to e-mail

jamesd at echeque.com jamesd at echeque.com
Wed Oct 28 23:02:38 PDT 2020


On 2020-10-29 13:44, grarpamp wrote:
> On 10/28/20, jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/27/spacex-starlink-service-priced-at-99-a-month-public-beta-test-begins.html
> 
> Good for remote / mobile locations, but
> costs much more than 4G / 5G tether.

Musk is not aiming at people in the cities, and probably will not aim at
them until he get forty thousand satellites up.

His initial target is underserved locations, and with only eight hundred
satellites up, cities would overwhelm his capability.

Eight hundred is the bare minimum needed to provide rural service in
northerly areas.

He is hoping to launch another fifteen hundred satellites in the next
year, which should suffice for world wide service, but only in thinly
populated regions, the countryside, the exurbs, and small towns - quite
small towns.

He does not intend to provide substantial service to urban centers ever.
 Fiber and 4G makes more sense in dense areas.  In city centers,
Starlink will be a high priced premium service for people who want short
ping times to the other side of the earth.

But, once he gets enough satellites up, it is going to make economic
sense to put modest sized server clusters out in the middle of nowhere,
and going to be easier to have a multiple server cluster around the
world that acts like a single large server cluster from the point of
view of its customers.



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