SpaceX projected 20 million Starlink users by 2022—it ended up with 1 million::Starlink has a fraction of the projected $12B revenue and 20M users, WSJ says.
Private infrastructure owned by that megalomaniac is not good.
Why do you hate the free market?
/s
Although in the case of Starlink, one company is already putting enough space junk in LEO to affect astronomy research and photography. I can’t imagine if there were more than one competitor.
If there was another option I’d take it. As it is though, I’m travelling around Australia and it’s freaking brilliant. Australia has zero coverage for most of the country outside of the towns and city regions. I can park up in total outback with no phone reception and get anywhere from 150 to 400 Mbps. I couldn’t do this without it, so I’ll take it, as it’s the only option
Starlink is perfect for nationalization. Internet is. Infact, nationalize all utilities. Yes, internet should be a utility at this point. It should not be run for profit.
After Musk disabled Starlink to aid Russia, a hostile state in their efforts to invade a sovereign democracy, it should have been clear to everyone that Musk poses a very real security threat, and Starlink should have been seized and nationalised.
This fiasco is a glaring example that no one indvidual shold be able to accrue enough wealth to effect entire countries.
One of many, sadly. With the strong trend toward wealth consolidation they’re not going to slow down any time soon.
There’s a word I’m trying to remember. It rhymes with scmuiolltines…
Y’all all really think there isn’t something more going on there? Like people being like “Crimea is Ukraine!” Well yes I agree with the sentiment, even the US government doesn’t consider crimea to be Ukraine
Edit: After looking further I do see the US stance is that Crimea is Ukraine, however they have specifically not been providing weaponry with the intent of retaking Crimea (at least until recently where it seems they’ve taken a looser stance on it) similarly to how they weren’t providing weaponry to attack Russia, the whole idea was that we were helping them defend themselves “only”.
even the US government doesn’t consider crimea to be Ukraine
*citation needed
Look at how we handle Taiwan for an idea of how wishy-washy the US government is in these situations.
Biden has said we support Taiwan and it’s independence, then directly after that our government walks it back to avoid escalating tensions with China.
Sorry I was definitely wrong about the US’s stance overall on Crimea, however we specifically were not providing armaments that could/would be used to attack Crimea
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/18/us/politics/ukraine-crimea-military.html
My initial statement was based on my incorrect memory of what was said after the initial faux-“referendum” that caused it to be annexed (forcefully taken) by Russia (which they tried to pretend was by the people living in crimea), as the US didn’t do much except slap a few sanctions on Russia.
I’ll edit my initial comment to better reflect the truth.
As someone who lives in a country that formerly had a nationalized phone company in the internet age, and currently has a nationalized power company and airline. Dear God fuck no!
I say we let him build up a huge satellite fleet and then force him to sell a huge chunk of it under antitrust law.
You mean the same government that allowed XM and Sirius to merge with no other satellite radio competition would go after Starlink when they have competition (Hughesnet)?
Probably not but it would be funny.
My internet where I live is through cable and it’s terrible. Bad. Outtages all of the time. Down for days at times. So I switched to starlink. It’s fine. Works great EXCEPT WHEN IT RAINS HEAVILY.
Heavy rain blocks the signal. Elon Musk owns it.
Now, I have a t-mobile hotspot. It’s only $50 per month as opposed to the $110 for Starlink.
If you have no other decent option, Starlink is amazing. If you have other options, don’t give Musk your money.
I get 150 down, 15 up with T-Mobile out in the boondocks, so much better than Starlink when you consider it’s $50/month versus $150/month. Starlink also raised prices on me.
Interesting, I had satellite Internet through explorer and only the heaviest of blizzards would cut access to the internet. Had an uptime of probably 99% through the year. Wonder why satellites further away wouldn’t have a problem with rain but starlink ones do.
Different wave lengths.
Shorter wave lengths are more affected by rain.
I would hazard a guess that they were running a geostationary setup rather than Starlinks LEO approach.
I was really wondering about whether affecting the signal, that is disappointing as hell to learn. Thanks
“ I think that you will be able to fall asleep in a Tesla, is about two years away” Elon Musk, 2017
Yeah you shouldn’t believe anything this guy or his companies say lol
I think that you will be able to fall asleep in a Tesla, is about two years away
I mean, you can do that. It’s just not a good idea if you’re the driver
You can do that now. But you’ll probably wake up dead. Same in two years.
I’ve definitely seen articles proving this was an accurate comment. He didn’t specify what the outcome would be though.
Anybody else read the post about Elon musk raw dogging his data center migration ?
Yeah, I’ve worked in data centers a fair amount in my day and I can’t believe they allowed Musk to do any of that to begin with. Every data center experience I’ve ever had was met with a thousand rules that were meant to keep the customer safe and I cannot believe they were authorized to do this in any fashion.
It’s not about whether they owned the equipment or not, it’s about the fact that they violated policies and procedures that were put in place to safeguard other clients and the privacy of their data. Total bullshit if you ask me and I’d be suing the data center afterwards if I was one of their primary clients for the breach of trust.
I interpreted it that NTT did nothing wrong (other than not physically stopping Musk)? A Twitter worker let him in, and he assuming didn’t have access to data from other NTT clients.
Where can I read about that?
Thank you. This is crazy. This article would work on the onion and with Musk, I don’t know what’s exaggerated and what’s real.
lol elon fall from grace has been so satisfying to watch.
They’re about to lose another one. We finally got fiber run to our area, so now I have internet that doesn’t zone out every 5 - 10 minutes to find another satellite. Canceling Starlink next week. Fuck you Elon.
One thing this article doesn’t get into is whether it is an issue of customer demand or incorrect estimates on how many customers Starlink can handle.
Musk is a dumbass, unserious douche. But from everyone I’ve heard from who has Starlink and NEEDS it, it’s a godsend. For rural and mobile users (van life, RVs, boats, etc) I don’t think there is a better option.
Another question is whether this Starlink service should be nationalized or at least duplicated by other countries. I’m uncomfortable with it being used for war as it is honestly. It’s a supposed civilian, consumer aimed service that I think arguably can be considered a military target right now. Countries like Russia could make an argument for attacking these satellites. And for countries like Ukraine that are relying on it, having it being at the whims of someone like Musk also seems like it isn’t optimal.
My parents have it because of where they live. The only other option they had was century link DSL at 1.5Mbps. Now she can watch streaming services, work from home, etc. The service has been great, Musk is a douche.
Countries like Russia could make an argument for attacking these satellites.
Russia’s best shot would be accidentally crashing a lunar lander into one.
They’d probably fail at that too
They just need to try and land on one, that’s the trick.
Like when the US crashed a lander into Mars. Good times.
Uhh, yeah in 1999. Proving yet again that Russia is stuck 20+ years behind us technologically.
“But… but… muh daddy can beat up yur daddy!”
Brilliant.
It’s a supposed civilian, consumer aimed service
The internet was invented to wage war. It’s not an admirable goal, but it’s what it was made for. Only after the fact did we turn it into the banal meme stream it is now. When SpaceX requested permission to the FAA to launch its hundreds of thousands of garbage cans, military infrastructure backup was actually part of the pitch to justify the sky contamination. And military operations are not just about destroying things and killing people. Military operations include rescuing the wounded and safeguarding civilians from harm. Armies need to have good communications for this, to avoid destroying non-military targets, reduce the risk of collateral damage, coordinate evacuations and to defend themselves from the opposing force. A communication network should be a neutral channel, what Musk has done with it is to politicize and weaponize it, like the Russians weaponize medical care, judicial freedom and other things that should be basic human rights but are used to coerce individuals to commit atrocities against others.
I was hyped when I first learned about starlink, finally I wouldn’t be stuck with 1 Mbps from ATT, then my power co-op announced it would be running gig fiber to all customers homes.
I had Starlink for over a year. They raised the price twice in that time. In addition, it would not play nice with my Uverse streaming service and I would randomly lose my sports and local channels. I live remote, but ended up switching to copper for $50/no and dumped the cable streaming. Since I don’t game, I have not noticed any difference in streaming quality on Netflix or Hulu or Prime. Paying way less than half for copper just made Starlink completely not worth it. The terminal is sitting on a chair in my office…
They haven’t done a great job of marketing it. $100-120 a month isn’t bad and it beats the pants off of all the other satellite internet services.
It’s especially more cost effective than rural wireless ISPs. Those places are straight crooks.
Have they needed to? My mom has no high speed internet to her house. She signed up for Starlink like 2 years ago. Still on the waitlist.
My coworkers mom signed up for it about 1.5 years ago and got connected about a year ago in rural WA. Are you sure you’re still on the list?
They dosh them out to more profitable areas first, or areas with more open slots.
Maybe that’s normal in US but it’s way overpriced in UK. They want £75/mo and I’m paying £35 for 500Mb in a rural area and there’s several different providers to choose from. My sister is even more remote than me and they’re getting fibre this week.
I could also get unlimited 4G for about £20.
I don’t know anyone who is using starlink
Its priced at people who wouldn’t get anything more than a few mb in remote areas who have no other choice, rather than a direct competitor against high speed fiber or someone lucky enough to live line of sight to a 5G mast.
I have fiber at home and starlink for my RV, for travel starlink works perfectly. I have a proper 4g router and external aerial for my van and it never comes close to the speed I get from starlink. I know people who cruise on boats and it works perfectly for them as well (as long as its kept dry).
Mobile high speed internet where you struggle to get even enough mobile phone signal to make a phone call it has no real competitor at that price point. Boats in particular its transformed the market, it used to be thousands per month for high speed internet at sea with any sort of decent data allowance.
I wish the USA had the options you just posted in rural areas. We pay for broadband expansion out of our taxes and they still won’t expand. It’s sad.
“Projecting” inflated numbers. Or, just, y’know, fraud.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
SpaceX’s Starlink division hasn’t come close to meeting customer and revenue projections that the company shared with investors before building the satellite network, according to a Wall Street Journal report published today.
SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in February that Starlink is expected to turn a profit this year.
"The majority of the world’s population that the business could serve and that can afford high-speed broadband lives in cities.
In those regions, Internet service is readily available, usually offers cheaper monthly costs than Starlink and doesn’t require specialized equipment."
But in public he has stated more modest ambitions for Starlink, pointing out that low-Earth orbit satellite ventures have a history of going bankrupt.
One step forward on profitability is that SpaceX says it is no longer selling Starlink user terminals at a loss.
The original article contains 654 words, the summary contains 135 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I live less than an hour from Elon and ended up canceling my starlink preorder after eighteen months because I figured it was never going to come.
@L4s it’s, like, really expensive and shit.
