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Re:Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders by kortilla on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @10:22PM (#26175215)
It’s not really meant to compete with cable/fiber. This is for people stuck with geo stationary trash, dsl, microwave relay, etc. It’s a massive market and can take SpaceX to a trillion dollar company easily without ever stealing a cable customer.
Re:Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders by tgsovlerkhgsel on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @10:35PM (#26175345)
The incredible thing is that despite not having to compete with wired connections, it is almost competitive with them.

They likely have to price it a bit above wired connections just to keep load manageable in dense areas, but it puts an upper bound on how badly monopolist incumbents can treat their customers.

While I don't think it will actually replace cable/fiber, I think it will drive prices down and service quality/customer treatment up, so its existence is a huge benefit even for people in populated areas that will never actually use it.

Re:Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders by lotsofpulp on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @10:55PM (#26175533)
What is the latency? I find there is a material difference in my internet experience with 5ms fiber connection vs 100ms+ cable connection. I imagine it’s worse for satellite links due to the limitations of physics.
Re:Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders by tgsovlerkhgsel on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @11:00PM (#26175576)
20 ms was cited elsewhere in the thread. Unlike older satellite Internet solutions that use geostationary satellites (~36000 km altitude), this uses satellites in low earth orbit (~550 km altitude, with additional, slightly lower and higher levels planned).
Re:Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders by lotsofpulp on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @11:04PM (#26175612)
That would be a welcome surprise if it delivers and finally gives people an alternative to the one wired option they usually have.
Re:Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders by tzs on Thursday February 18, 2021 @12:25AM (#26176249)
Their 12000 satellites will have a total bandwidth of 240000 Gbps. I don't see how they get to a trillion dollars on that. A 100 Mbps stream being uploaded to one satellite and then relayed through others and finally download to and end user is going to use at least 200 Mbps of that total system bandwidth.

That puts an upper limit of 1.2 million worldwide simultaneous 100 Mbps streams, and that's probably being too generous. In a given region the limit is much smaller. The numbers I saw said 500k simultaneous 100 Mbps streams in the US.

Overselling can push those numbers up, but I don't think they can oversell enough to take them to a trillion dollar company.

Re:Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders by kortilla on Thursday February 18, 2021 @12:51AM (#26176431)
> Overselling can push those numbers up, but I don't think they can oversell enough to take them to a trillion dollar company.

You’re vastly underestimating how much you oversell as a consumer ISP. Fiber companies with dedicated lines to your house can’t even handle all of their customers pulling 100mbps at a time because the bottlenecks are the IXPs.

The AMS IXP is one of the largest exchanges in the world, and it only hits about 10,000 gbps max per day.

You’re also forgetting that $100/mo is a cost offered to consumers on the ground. Commercial shipping and military won’t bat an eye at paying $1000/mo for a measly 10mbps to a ship in the pacific. Oil rigs, mines, military bases, etc, etc.

Re:Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders by wkcmp on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @10:27PM (#26175246)
Great insight, and I agree. With a lot of family and some friends in rural parts of the U.S., the weak internet and cable connections are detrimental to any sort of internet-based tech.
Re:Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders by tester756 on Thursday February 18, 2021 @06:18AM (#26178521)
>trillion dollar company easily

trillion dollar??

it seems WAYYYYYYYY too much for

Re:Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders by Trias11 on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @10:33PM (#26175327)
...or with shitty Cox