Re:Professional astronomers are calculating the cost of the ...
by Tuna-Fish on Sunday May 26, 2019 @02:59PM
(#20016729)
The reason to expect Starlink to provide lower cost than VSAT is that SpaceX is currently paying less than $500k per functional Starlink sat (including both manufacturing and launch cost), and intends to dramatically reduce the cost from that before launching the larger stages of the constellation. In contrast, the geostationary satellites that are used by VSAT cost near billions per each.
This three orders of magnitude difference in cost can be expected to be reflected in the price of the service.
Re:Professional astronomers are calculating the cost of the ...
by Robotbeat on Sunday May 26, 2019 @01:13PM
(#20016006)
That’s simply not true. Viasat offers much lower cost per GB. The higher speed plans are less than $1 per GB. The cheapest plan is $50/40GB. That’s already far cheaper than mobile data.
Starlink and others are likely to significantly improve on that, too. Fundamental costs (especially for later versions) are cents per GB or lower, competitive with AWS transit fees.
Re:Professional astronomers are calculating the cost of the ...
by YjSe2GMQ on Sunday May 26, 2019 @01:23PM
(#20016081)
Touché. Where can I find such offers?
Re:Professional astronomers are calculating the cost of the ...
by Robotbeat on Sunday May 26, 2019 @09:35PM
(#20018811)
This one:
https://www.reviews.org/internet-service/viasat-reviews/
(look for "data cap") ...note that, for instance, the $50/month plan goes up to $70 after 3 months. But the data cap of 40GB is a soft cap.
Or those, with prices around 50usd/gb: https://www.vsat-systems.com/service-offerings/VAR-VNO-Deale...
Even if Starlink is 10x cheaper than existing VSAT it does not come even close to LTE cost. And we have 5g on the horizon.