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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday March 25 2020, @05:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the space-is-becoming-a-crowded-place dept.

SpaceX gets FCC license for 1 million satellite-broadband user terminals

SpaceX has received government approval to deploy up to 1 million user terminals in the United States for its Starlink satellite-broadband constellation.

SpaceX asked the Federal Communications Commission for the license in February 2019, and the FCC announced its approval in a public notice last week. The FCC approval is for "a blanket license for the operation of up to 1,000,000 fixed earth stations that will communicate with [SpaceX's] non-geostationary orbit satellite system." The license is good for 15 years.

[...] One million terminals would only cover a fraction of US homes, but SpaceX isn't necessarily looking to sign up huge portions of the US population. Musk said at the conference that Starlink will likely serve the "3 or 4 percent hardest-to-reach customers for telcos" and "people who simply have no connectivity right now, or the connectivity is really bad." Starlink won't have lots of customers in big cities like LA "because the bandwidth per cell is simply not high enough," he said.

SpaceX's main Starlink constellation competitor is running out of money

OneWeb, the only pressing competitor facing SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet constellation, has reportedly begun to consider filing for bankruptcy shortly before the London-based company completed its third dedicated launch.

Following the completion of its first full 34-satellite launch with a Russian Soyuz rocket on February 7th, OneWeb managed to complete a second launch on March 22nd just a few days after Bloomberg revealed its bankruptcy concerns. OneWeb now has 74 ~150-kg (330 lb) satellites in orbit – roughly 11% of its initial 650-satellite constellation. Like SpaceX, OneWeb's goal is to manufacture and launch an unprecedented number of high-performance small satellites for a per-spacecraft cost that would have previously been inconceivable.

[...] Requiring numerous revolutions in satellite manufacturing, antenna production, and launch vehicle affordability, as well as a vast and complex network of ground terminals, numerous companies have tried and failed to rise to the challenge over the decades. Original Globalstar, Teledesic, and Iridium constellations all raised more than $10 billion in the 1990s under the promise of blanketing the Earth with internet from space. All wound up bankrupt at one point or another.

See also: The true impact of SpaceX's Starlink constellation on astronomy is coming into focus

Previously:
SpaceX Seeks Approval for 1 Million Starlink Ground Stations, Faces Pentagon Audit
SpaceX and OneWeb Clash Over Proposed Satellite Constellation Orbits
OneWeb Joins the Satellite Internet Gold Rush this Week
OneWeb Launches its First Large Batch of Broadband Satellites, Plans March Launch and April Break
How Does Starlink Work Anyway?


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  • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday March 26 2020, @05:16AM (9 children)

    by deimtee (3272) on Thursday March 26 2020, @05:16AM (#975748) Journal

    Actually, another way to look at it would be to count how many satellites are over the country at any one time and assume you could support n customers where n = (no. sats) x (bandwidth / (bandwidth per cust)) x (capacity factor)

    no. sats = 12,000 / (2 x 10) : half in N hemisphere, USA is about 1/10 of circumference of the world.
    b/(bpc) = 20
    CF probably 10

    = 120,000 customers in USA.
    @ $50 p/month = $150M per year return from USA.

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    19/20ths of the time the satellites won't be over the USA. Somewhere up to half the time they will be over another country. I think the profitability of Starlink is really going to depend on being able to sell in other countries. (I am actually more interested in AU, cos I live here. About the same size, and could probably supply just as many customers.)

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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday March 26 2020, @02:09PM (8 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Thursday March 26 2020, @02:09PM (#975869)

    Don't forget the high frequency traders - they made it worth laying new trans-atlantic cable to shave a few milliseconds off lag times. They'll probably be major profit centers for Starlink as well.

    I think you made a mistake in your math as well, at least in the intermediate step. Given, say 20Mbps bpc, - b/bpc is = 1,000 customers per satellite. Even 100Mbps = 200 cust/sat
    x (CF of 10) x (600 satellites) = 1.2 to 6 million customers
    x$50 = $60M to 300M revenue

    But I believe Musk has projected 3% market penetration, which would be ~10M USA customers at ~12Mbps

    My point though was just that most of those customers would have to be rural. Each individual satellite will have to target a relatively small area of the surface. Even if they have enough flexibility for several to join forces to cover a city,you're still only talking about supporting thousands of customers out of millions of people living there - a tiny faction of a percent, compared to 3% overall.

    • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday March 26 2020, @03:23PM (1 child)

      by deimtee (3272) on Thursday March 26 2020, @03:23PM (#975914) Journal

      Oops. Yeah, I cribbed 20Gps total from your earlier post and then used takyons 1Gps / connection.

      My $150M was per year. X 10(custs) / 12 months = $125M p.m. Brings it back to the same ballpark as yours.
      I've also seen a projected user price of $80/month which is 60% more. Given the uncertainties your range looks pretty good.

      The 10M USA customers might be after he gets all 42,000 satellites up. He isn't going to match that in AU, but if he gets permission to operate then half a million AU customers wouldn't be an unreasonable goal. Still a nice little earner for satellites that would otherwise be idle at that time.

      I would expect that small communities will band together and get one or two links, and then wifi everyone in range. There are places still on dial-up here, and a lot more on 2M/250K ~ 5M/500k ISDN or laggy GEO satellite. They could share 100Mbs between 10 houses and still be very happy.

      I really hope that they aren't location locked. There are a lot of reasonably well off "grey nomads" in Oz, retired people that live in caravans and head north for winter and back to the south for summer. A pizza box antenna and a tracking mount is well within their budgets. It sounds like a fun lifestyle.

      --
      If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday March 26 2020, @03:53PM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday March 26 2020, @03:53PM (#975927) Journal

        Oops. Yeah, I cribbed 20Gps total from your earlier post and then used takyons 1Gps / connection.

        [...] He isn't going to match that in AU, but if he gets permission to operate then half a million AU customers wouldn't be an unreasonable goal.

        Here is a source for 1 Gbps speculation:

        Elon Musk's SpaceX clears first hurdle to Australian broadband market [theguardian.com]

        Much remains a mystery about what Starlink’s internet services will be like in reality. In a November 2016 filing [fastcompany.com] with the US federal communications commission (FCC), SpaceX said it would be able to offer speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second for users, at “low cost”.

        1 Gbps is a magic amount that is impressive (which is why Google Fiber went for it) but can still be handled by most consumer equipment (maybe we'll see in uptick in 2.5 Gbps fiber soon?). But clearly a lot of people could get by with 100 Mbps, and would like to save a few bucks if they can.

        Australia's telecommunications regulator gave initial approval for SpaceX to operate its Starlink satellite network in the country. [cnbc.com]

        Australia could be one of the first major countries after the U.S. to get service, although the article notes some problems.

        I really hope that they aren't location locked. There are a lot of reasonably well off "grey nomads" in Oz, retired people that live in caravans and head north for winter and back to the south for summer. A pizza box antenna and a tracking mount is well within their budgets. It sounds like a fun lifestyle.

        The ability to get as much as 1 Gbps connectivity while living almost anywhere on the planet (outside of the extreme latitudes) or camping out somewhere will make those lifestyles more accessible and attractive to people. Get ready for the articles about literal "Digital Nomads" (with yurts). It may halt the outflux of young people from less populated areas.

        Des Moines is 'flyover country' no more: Millennials choose Heartland [desmoinesregister.com]

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    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday March 26 2020, @03:30PM (5 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday March 26 2020, @03:30PM (#975919) Journal

      Military is also a probable premium customer.

      SpaceX sees U.S. Army as possible customer for Starlink and Starship [spacenews.com]

      Air Force enthusiastic about commercial LEO broadband after successful tests [spacenews.com]

      A program known as Defense Experimentation Using the Commercial Space Internet, or DEUCSI, recently tried out SpaceX’s Starlink satellite broadband services and demonstrated download speeds of 610 megabits per second into the cockpit of a C-12J Huron twin-engine turboprop aircraft.

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      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday March 27 2020, @12:48AM (4 children)

        by Immerman (3985) on Friday March 27 2020, @12:48AM (#976149)

        Heck yeah they would be. Especially since we tend to fight our proxy-wars in out-of-the-way places that aren't easily connected to high-bandwidth, low-latency connections back to the drone-operators at home.

        Of course you probably wouldn't want to rely on a satellite signal on the battlefield proper (though it might be option #1 with a fallback). The transmission powers are low and easily jammed. But deliver that bandwidth to your base of operations and you can handle the last miles as appropriate.

        • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday March 27 2020, @01:05AM (3 children)

          by deimtee (3272) on Friday March 27 2020, @01:05AM (#976153) Journal

          It mightn't be that easy to jam. The ground station is highly directional and looking roughly straight up. The satellites are 500km away and moving fast. Swamping the signal might be doable, but then the ground station might simply switch to the next satellite if it loses the connection.
          Not to mention anything putting out that much interference on a battleground is radiating a "bomb here" message.

          --
          If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
          • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday March 27 2020, @03:23AM (2 children)

            by Immerman (3985) on Friday March 27 2020, @03:23AM (#976201)

            Bet you a $50 commercial drone with a $10 transmitter could do the job quite nicely over an impressive area. What's it cost you to shoot down a dispersed $1000 swarm worth of softball-size objects?

            • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday March 27 2020, @12:30PM (1 child)

              by deimtee (3272) on Friday March 27 2020, @12:30PM (#976263) Journal

              No bet. :)

              Doesn't mean that the military won't pay a shit load to use it in any area that isn't an actual battlefield.

              --
              If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.