Starlink cuts satellite dish price from $600 to $300 in excess-capacity areas
- by Ars Technica
- Jun 12, 2024
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vought1221 said:
Still underperforming here in NW Nevada, but I’m sure they’ll park a couple of birds over us for Elon’s annual trip to the desert.
I am currently getting 250+ Mbps from our rural ISP, which beats any result I ever got from Starlink. It’s good for camping; that’s why they only get a month of usage from me a year. Click to expand...
My use case. National ISP close to me just can't be bothered to hook me up, not at any price.
I'd bet just that alone is probably a few million customers in the US alone.
But yeah, ubiquitous fiber is never, ever going to be a thing. The cost of launching (at even SpaceX current launch costs) a constellation in the tens of thousands, maintaining it, and running the ground stations, support, etc. is not all that much. A lot less than T-Mobile's annual operating budget. That is ~$65 billion a year. SpaceX had revenue of $6.6 billion in the past year and from what I can find, has estimated capitol expenses of $3.1 billion in the same time period ($3.5 billion EBITA, that is a very healthy profit margin!)
Even wireless is too expensive to hook-up some people. I can see a tower from where I am located, but it isn't a cell tower (nor does it have Wi-Fi as the local WISP is blocked by that tower). Yes, cellular radios and antennas could be put on the power tower, but my neighbor down the ridge line definitely has no visibility to anything.
Just in my general geographic location, at least based on what I can tell, there are about half a dozen houses who can hit the WISP tower, two other Starlink users (not counting myself or my neighbor as we are sharing service), and I am not sure how the other couple are connected as I don't see any dishes of any kind and I know darned well Comcast and Verizon are not serving them. They just might not have internet or maybe a mobile hotspot.
Of note, NONE of the cellular providers will offer fixed service to my area, even though reception is actually fine (I can get ~25Mbps down and ~20Mbps up on my mobile hotspot, if I don't mind spending $50 per 100GB per month, which works out to likely $300-400 a month for my data needs). I'd imagine a couple of my neighbors probably can't even do a mobile hotspot as down at the bottom of the valley (okay, it is like a stream valley) I am seeing about 1 bar of Verizon, versus the 4 bars I see at my house with no trees around it and about a quarter mile upslope.
Plenty of areas around me cellular service is just marginal. My last house DID have both Comcast and Verizon FIOS, so no complaints. But if that was out, cell service was...not good. I had 1 bar in my house and barely 2 bars outside. Speed testing it with LTE I could get 2-4Mbps down and 1-3Mbps up inside and about 5Mbps down and 3-4Mbps up outside. Now the area covered might have made it worthwhile for Verizon, or AT&T or T-Mobile to put in a new tower if they were just going to be THE provider for fixed wireless there.
But my current place? Pfft, not a chance anyone is going to put in a tower, or probably even expand on to an existing tower that doesn't currently host cell radios an antennas for what might add a few dozen customers for fixed wireless by doing it.
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