Starlink now over 1M user terminals manufactured

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1574112663864430593

by mfiguiere • 4 years ago

78 105 4 years ago

Stevvo2• 4 years ago

Not something to be proud of when you have less half a million customers. Literally half the terminals are e-waste because you can't pause service or pass the terminal on to someone else to use.

pmorici3• 4 years ago

Your statement is false. You can both pause service and sell the equipment to someone else when you no longer need or want it.

Stevvo2• 4 years ago

OK, this was not possible a year ago, but looks like it is now.

gordon_freeman• 4 years ago

Starlink is definitely filling the niche market of providing internet connectivity in rural and sparsely populated areas where firms with traditional business models with fiber-optics based network are not incentivized to provide. The real question is: will Starlink become profitable by in turn finding a big enough market itself to be able to cover the Billions of dollars of cost of manufacturing, launching and maintaining these satellites? Elon Musk seems to be open to separate Starlink business from SpaceX and list it publicly in future (he tweeted something in that regard previously [1]) so it seems like he definitely thinks Starlink can become a profitable business in near future.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/07/spacex-starlink-ipo-elon-mus...

seltzered_• 4 years ago

I hope those dreaming of this consider theres knowledgeable engineers and astronomers that think their growth plans are an ecological disaster: https://twitter.com/mxshift/status/1563561387649298432

(Edited my comment from initially having a more polarizing tone.)

brtkdotse• 4 years ago

I read an opinion piece somewhere that Starlink is just busy work to keep SpaceX launching rockets, but because gestures at Google I can’t find it. This Twitter thread nakes this theory plausible.

pmorici3• 4 years ago

This guys thread will almost certainly be wrong and look stupid in the long term. Pessimistic predictions sound smart in the present because with anything new it's hard to know how it will play out. Long term though any early issues with new technology tend to be optimized or solved as things evolve.

bilsbie2• 4 years ago

Lobsters pulling each other back into the pot.

kortilla3• 4 years ago

Sounds a bit daft when you realize that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of crap deposited by meteors .

panick21_3• 4 years ago

This thread is mostly making large conclusions from limited study at google. Lots of it isn't really that true.

And he makes it quite clear with 'Not interest in discussion'. His mind is made up from when he was at google and that's it.

The industry isn't the same as it was then and it was mostly economical that google didn't do the project.

The ecological isn't really bad, its mostly that rocket launches produce CO2, but for a global infrastructure project it isn't actually that much. Everything else isn't really that relevant.

zizee7• 4 years ago

Others have pointed out things wrong with that doomsday predicting Twitter thread. I wanted to add a couple of things

* Rocket launches are a rounding error on co2 emissions when compared to passenger aircraft

* the worries about Kessler syndrome whilst simultaneously worrying about tonnes of aluminum and rare earth minerals (gasp) due to the short orbital lifetime of the satellites are contradictory.

* Presumably astronomers are more worried about light pollution rather than ecological concerns

On a side note, what is it about people hyping up rare earth materials? The twitter thread tries to make them sound scary. Others try to make them sound harder to find than gold.

rlt• 4 years ago

Fully and rapidly reusable rockets, like Starship, if achievable, will change everything. I don’t think peopel comprehend how the economics of launch will change.

Satellite breaks down or runs out of propellant? Send up a repair/refuel/reentry vehicle.

Astronomers upset about light pollution? Launch a space telescope for them for free, and eliminate that pesky atmosphere for them too.

hef198982• 4 years ago

Or a great way to get additional SpaceX funding througha Starlink spin-off.

supernovae2• 4 years ago

I thought the move to do midband mobile spectrum with t-mobile and offer line of site coverage across 100% of the country was a pretty big move. Existing phones can be enabled on this spectrum. I also see it being leveraged well for edge services where classical 5g towers are just too damn expensive to pout out that far

justapassenger5• 4 years ago

You do realize that in terms of speed it makes 2G look like a dream?

It’s only good for emergencies.

And anyway it was mostly just a publicity stunt, announcing non existing feature (no satellites in orbit are able to do it) to preempt Apple by few days, and them rolling out working product this year.

zizee7• 4 years ago

On the "big enough market" question, passenger aircraft, and commercial shipping, and US military make for a compelling business case in of themselves. Each of these use cases have customers that will pay over the odds for a reliable connection to remote areas.

bcrl• 4 years ago

The bigger question is will Starlink be able to retain the customers that they have now as more FTTH is deployed deeper into rural communities. My own company's FTTH service is: faster (1Gbps), better (lower latency, no congestion issues) and cheaper (costs from CAD$30-85 per month less than Starlink). Meanwhile, the incumbent here has just launched 8Gbps service. Starlink is better than what came before, but it's not better than fibre at present.

Seanambers2• 4 years ago

If one assumes that all terminals are in use by paying customers @ 110[1] per month that gives 1.3 billion a year in income. Plus 0,5 billion usd for the hardware.

So far there have been 62 Starlink launches - assuming an average price of 67m usd[2] that gives a total launch cost of 4.15 billion(real launch cost is lower as SpaceX does it at cost.

Life expectancy of the satellites are between 5 - 7 years so excluding R&D cost I'd say Starlink is already cashflow positive and will generate huge returns in the future. I'm sure there are some commercial / military contracts in the mix which alone will add a couple of B's to the income number.

1 & 2- https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/23/spacex-raises-prices-for-lau...

hef198982• 4 years ago

You forgot on-going operations, maintenance and so on. Also, you assume all terminals are in use and paid for every month.

Seanambers2• 4 years ago

Yeah, thats why I started with "If one assumes.." :) But good point, I did not consider overhead and operational costs in this.

parker_mountain3• 4 years ago

Your numbers are a bit off, it's sort of safe to assume that maybe half of terminals are operational - not 100%.

some commercial / military contracts in the mix

T-Mobile is a massive $$$ for them.

I would assume the availability of worldwide, omnipresent, inexpensive low speed broadband is going to open new use-cases (and thus revenue streams), that we're not even aware of. It's going to be exciting.

chiefalchemist3• 4 years ago

And speeds will creep up, as they did for phone / cable / fiber / cell.

karaterobot• 4 years ago

Your numbers are a bit off, it's sort of safe to assume that maybe half of terminals are operational - not 100%.

Wait, why is this? Do you mean that 50% have been produced and not yet sold, or 50% have been sold to people who aren't paying for service? I'd assume a much smaller percentage in either case.

frankjr• 4 years ago

Starlink's prices now take into consideration the buying power of each country. For example, it costs ~$55 in Czechia and ~$41 in Hungary.

tuatoru5• 4 years ago

Of course SpaceX would use differential pricing.

Once the satellites are up there orbiting, they might as well be earning income for as much of each orbit as they can. Zero marginal cost to do so. So SpaceX's prices in each market will be low enough to be competitive in each market.

The caveat to that is that they're still taking a large loss on each user terminal, so they have to make that back over the expected life of a contract.

chippiewill• 4 years ago

I think the current estimate for the direct cost of reusing a Falcon 9 is at most $30m and potentially as low as $15m (there's a lot of fixed costs so getting a "true" price for this would be hard even if you had access to the same data SpaceX does).

leke• 4 years ago

Lol, I read the headline as...

Starlink now over. 1M user terminals manufunctioned.

naveen99• 4 years ago

You don’t need to go rural or sparsely populated for low cost living… places like india have low cost housing, food, internet, and labor. I would think the market for internet in sparsely populated areas is by definition negligible.

But, if all cell phones can access starlink in cell phone dead zones, that might make it economically viable, as the market expands to 5 billion plus users.

seizethecheese• 4 years ago

That’s some funky reasoning. Most Americans will not move overseas to get lower cost of living, so rural areas are a good substitute. Likewise, cost is not the only consideration, also quiet and privacy.

tuatoru5• 4 years ago

The world is around 60% urbanized, so there are still 3 billion people in rural areas. Quite a stretch to call that number negligible.

chiefalchemist3• 4 years ago

Perhaps. But another way to look at it is, now you could live anywhere. Pardon the cliche but Starlink might a game changer, a paradigm shift. I don't disagree with you per se. But in this case the future might be different than the past. We'll have to wait and see.

palata8• 4 years ago

Because the only thing preventing you from living anywhere is the Internet connection? What abouy access to water, food, infrastructure, social life?

justapassenger5• 4 years ago

You sound like someone who did many pitches to VC.

“Everyone on earth breathes, so our market for oxygen bars is 8 billion plus users”.

Profitability of dead zones (especially with speeds lower than 2G) is not exactly high. There’s reason why they’re dead zones in the first place.

bumbledraven• 4 years ago

The profitability of the placing and maintaining physical network infrastructure (cell towers etc) in ”dead zones” is low. The profitability of covering many “dead zones” with a single orbit may be different.

NelsonMinar3• 4 years ago

Related: Starlink Speeds Drop Significantly in the US Amid Congestion Woes

https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-speeds-drop-significantl...

simondotau2• 4 years ago

Because it is not intended for dense populated areas. The point of Starlink is to serve the underserved.

justapassenger5• 4 years ago

Totally. But revenue and profit expectations don’t align with it.

anonporridge• 4 years ago

Surprising absolutely no one who understands networking.

The ludicrously high speeds that were praised during the limited beta really seem like they were designed to be a bait and switch to get people on board with completely unrealistic expectations for a full fledged satellite internet service.

NelsonMinar3• 4 years ago

It seems to be surprising Starlink; they're still telling customers they should expect speeds far above what we're getting in practice. Their service description is a fiction.

https://www.starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1002-69942-69?r...

oceanplexian2• 4 years ago

I have Starlink and have been using it since last year. It’s true, the speeds have gone down during peak hours. I get maybe 100Mbps instead of 250-300. And I see speeds back in the 200s off-peak.

But damn, Bait and Switch? Harsh words for extremely usable high speed Internet from Space that’s fast enough for remote working, online games, zoom, and 4K streaming that works extremely well from a good portion of the Earth. Compared to “satellite internet” of the past it’s a similar technological leap as dial up was to cable internet. I don’t know how people can complain.

chrisco2552• 4 years ago

I'm a Starlink customer. I regularly get 100+ mbps in Austin, TX and have not noticed any speed drops. If anything, it's gotten more consistently fast.

senectus1• 4 years ago

I just setup a wireless bridge this weekend for a farm that needed to stretch their starlink.

I found some interesting behaviour on start link.. Using the starlink in built speed test app I would easily get 150mbps using the ookla [1] speed test on a desktop machine I'd get no more than 55mbps and on a mobile phone I'd consistently get 20mbps slower than the desktop. ookla tells you where you're getting your speed test sent to but the starlink one doesn't... is it a speed test just to the satellite in LEO?

[1] https://www.speedtest.net/

retrocryptid4• 4 years ago

1m user terminals manufactured and yet we still don't have one 18 months after paying for it. (Actually, I canceled my order a year ago. But my brother, who also paid the full $600 still doesn't have his. And they keep delaying it.)

Three years ago we both signed up for a terminal, paid the $100 deposit and got on the list. Eighteen months ago I got an email saying I should log in, pay the additional $500 to have the terminal shipped to me. After three months of waiting nothing had shown up. There's no way to contact customer support so I had to ask a friend who works at SpaceX who I should talk to. Two weeks later I got an email from someone I'm guessing is part of their support group saying i was in the queue for delivery in late 2021. Late 2021 comes and goes and no terminal. I ping that same person. Now I'm in the queue for a late 2023 delivery. I ask if I can get a refund, they say yes. They credit my card for the second $500 charge but not the original $100 which they claim is unrefundable.

My brother, the true believer, is still waiting for his terminal and his cybertruck.

I know that Elon is a minor deity on hacker news and peeps are going to downvote the heck out of this comment, but from my perspective, dude's a ripoff artist who survives only because the government is paying for his rockets and ev subsidies.

completelylegit• 4 years ago

It’s been my thinking for a while that the majority of people who interface with Musk ventures walk away happy. They must, right? Customers are the most important fans.

But if for some reason one of the cogs in the big machine fails you - you are screwed. There is no real recovery beyond tweeting @ElonMusk on the day once a year has his heart reinserted to legally be considered alive.

I’m sorry to hear your situation - mine was different, more positive.

The line that separates us is one broken cog. Musk customer support is the worst and I’m sorry you can’t enjoy what has been a life changing product for me.

Hang in there, it (Musk venture customer service) sometimes gets better.

retrocryptid4• 4 years ago

How long have you worked for Mr. Musk?

kortilla3• 4 years ago

You’re in an oversubscribed area, it’s that simple. That’s not going to change until they either get more sats up there or people in your area cancel service.

retrocryptid4• 4 years ago

If you email me to tell me "pay for your terminal and we'll ship it to you within 2 weeks" and instead of shipping it to me in two weeks you tell me, "thanks for the cash, we decided to send it to you in 18 months," then the problem is not that I'm in an oversubscribed area. The problem is SpaceX is incompetent when it comes to basic logistics or is less than truthful regarding its service.

diebeforei485• 4 years ago

That's fine but he should get a full refund not a partial one.

terafo• 4 years ago

I wonder how expensive they are to produce now and have they managed to break even. Gwen Shotwell told the press that their costs were around 1300 with some updated model that was released in early 2021, she said that in April. Since then there was second gen antenna made, that is, I presume, cheaper to produce. And there was leaked email of Musk in late 2021 that was talking about need to get v2 sats working so amount of terminals they are ordering could make sense(email was about their need to fix Raptor 2 production in order to do this). Then they upped their prices in March of this year and IMO this could be a sign of break even point(not sure though).

pmorici3• 4 years ago

I’d guess that the fact that they are allowing service you can pause now means that they are probably at break even on the user terminal hardware cost.

1 million terminals shipped means roughly $1 billion a year in revenue. Some customers are paying substantially more than $100 a month depending on the tier of service.

xnx• 4 years ago

Would love to see websites start optimizing for low-bandwidth high-latency connections. Page sizes have continue to increase even with the increase in usage of [typically] slower mobile connections, so I'm not holding my breath.

dj_gitmo• 4 years ago

Maybe HTTP/3 with QUIC would help since there are less round trips?

palata8• 4 years ago

One thing that has always been true is that we always put as much crap as possible while not getting unusable.

Computers got infinitely more powerful, but websites are not faster to load because they are much bigger. QUIC won't change that, it would just allow for more crap.

sam0x17• 4 years ago

And each one they deploy seems to decrease the average bandwidth https://telecoms.com/517598/starlinks-download-speeds-have-d...

Smoosh• 4 years ago

Interesting that they can have them manufactured at high volume when everyone else is claiming that they are struggling with supply chain issues.

sidcool• 4 years ago

Love him or hate him, Elon Musk knows how to productionize things.

Starlink now over 1M user terminals manufactured

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