Re:Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders
by tuatoru on Thursday February 18, 2021 @09:06AM
(#26179914)
> Who do you imagine will buy it on a global scale?
About 3.5 billion people don't have reliable access to the internet[1]. That's a large market.
The satellites are orbiting anyway.
For household customers in OECD countries, Starlink will charge OECD retail prices.
Customers in developing countries represent extra revenue for negligible extra cost, so Starlink can practise geographic price discrimination to maximise net revenue.
Or Starlink could permit "village WISP" bandwidth reselling arrangements in specific geographic areas. A video call needs no more than 2 Mbps down and up, so you can probably serve up to 50 undemanding households plus a one-room school and a medical clinic on one connection (with appropriate rate limiting and local caching).
Starlink can also price-discriminate by latency tier for high-frequency traders and arbitrageurs. They can price-discriminate by QoS for organisations that demand a guaranteed minimum bandwith (e.g. militaries). And then there are shipping lines and air lines.
About 3.5 billion people don't have reliable access to the internet[1]. That's a large market.
The satellites are orbiting anyway.
For household customers in OECD countries, Starlink will charge OECD retail prices.
Customers in developing countries represent extra revenue for negligible extra cost, so Starlink can practise geographic price discrimination to maximise net revenue.
Or Starlink could permit "village WISP" bandwidth reselling arrangements in specific geographic areas. A video call needs no more than 2 Mbps down and up, so you can probably serve up to 50 undemanding households plus a one-room school and a medical clinic on one connection (with appropriate rate limiting and local caching).
Starlink can also price-discriminate by latency tier for high-frequency traders and arbitrageurs. They can price-discriminate by QoS for organisations that demand a guaranteed minimum bandwith (e.g. militaries). And then there are shipping lines and air lines.
1. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/coronavirus-covid-19-...
("weforum" is the World Economic Forum.)