Nothing is ever going to be able to compete with starlink on price and speeds until there’s another launch provider with reusable rockets.
The sheer amount of satellites you need in LEO to get proper coverage requires an assembly line mass producing them like starlink does.
To launch those satellites you then need a launch provider. SpaceX does it for cost. Anyone else will need to pay SpaceX the for profit rate.
SpaceX also uses most of its capacity for itself. They can only launch so often. There isn’t enough launch capacity (today) to further launch another large competing constellation.
So that means they can’t mass produce them and get economies of scale like Starlink, and they pay high cost per launch.
Anything anyone else comes out with will be at a huge disadvantage to Starlink.
SpaceX will then leapfrog everyone with Starships launch capabilities and push starlink even further on that.
Theoretically once Starship has a really high launch cadence maybe someone could build a competitive service while using it by mass producing satellites cheaper, but that’s very far away still.
If Blue Origin can make their rocket reuse work, Kupier might have a chance, but at their pace, that’s a very long ways away as well, and only BO will be able to compete, not some other 3rd party.
Ah yes, a satellite network that predates Starlink’s announcement and only has 2 satellites in orbit, is going to be competitive with Starlink in 2 years when they launch using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 at a for profit rate (edit: and others who are even more expensive than SpaceX)
Their expected bandwidth in the network once complete is 10tbps for all 198 satellites.
The current Starlink network bandwidth is over 350tbps. A single v2 mini dish is 96gbps, and a single Falcon 9 launch adds 2.592 tbps to the network. A single gen 3 satellite if Starship is successful is 1tbps and they’ll launch 60 at a time.
Edit: Oh and even better, Telesat is going to try and NOT compete with Starlink, but I wouldn’t expect Starlink to stay out of that.
Rather than compete with Starlink, Telesat is focused on being a wholesale satellite connectivity provider, explained Glenn Katz, the company’s CCO. Meaning, Telesat will sell its services to carriers, enterprises and others, not directly to consumers like Starlink does.
Edit: i just wanted to add, those gen 3 starlink satellites are designed and ready to go. They just need Starship to work and then they would heavily ramp production.
How much bandwidth you need? Traditional sattelitte already offer ~100Mb. The only issue starlink solves is latency and thats just because the satts are 1/3 the distance. AST’s approach seems way smarter than starlink’s shotgun approach.
Latency is the critical piece those networks are missing, and they are expensive. Low latency is what allows real-time connection with people, which is a big part of what’s difficult with any internet in remote areas other than Starlink today.
You can only solve latency by being closer, and being closer means a lot more smaller satellites as they’ll come down faster and will have a smaller field of view. We can’t beat the speed of light.
SpaceX is also launching cellular satellites now and will provide cellular coverage to phones globally in participating countries (canada is on Rogers) for use in dead zones, but the bandwidth is tiny compared to using their dish internet network.
Edit: sorry forgot the part where bandwidth then becomes the competing value of the LEO constellation. If someone else does it, maybe they are only 100mbs, but spacex is cheaper and offers 200mbs for example.
Nothing is ever going to be able to compete with starlink on price and speeds until there’s another launch provider with reusable rockets.
The sheer amount of satellites you need in LEO to get proper coverage requires an assembly line mass producing them like starlink does.
To launch those satellites you then need a launch provider. SpaceX does it for cost. Anyone else will need to pay SpaceX the for profit rate.
SpaceX also uses most of its capacity for itself. They can only launch so often. There isn’t enough launch capacity (today) to further launch another large competing constellation.
So that means they can’t mass produce them and get economies of scale like Starlink, and they pay high cost per launch.
Anything anyone else comes out with will be at a huge disadvantage to Starlink.
SpaceX will then leapfrog everyone with Starships launch capabilities and push starlink even further on that.
Theoretically once Starship has a really high launch cadence maybe someone could build a competitive service while using it by mass producing satellites cheaper, but that’s very far away still.
If Blue Origin can make their rocket reuse work, Kupier might have a chance, but at their pace, that’s a very long ways away as well, and only BO will be able to compete, not some other 3rd party.
All of that seems perfectly reasonable.
And it’s also perfectly wrong. Because Telsat Canada has been working on its LEO constellation for about 10 years now. And it goes live in about 2 years.
And yes, it will be superior to Starlink in multiple ways.
Ah yes, a satellite network that predates Starlink’s announcement and only has 2 satellites in orbit, is going to be competitive with Starlink in 2 years when they launch using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 at a for profit rate (edit: and others who are even more expensive than SpaceX)
Their expected bandwidth in the network once complete is 10tbps for all 198 satellites.
The current Starlink network bandwidth is over 350tbps. A single v2 mini dish is 96gbps, and a single Falcon 9 launch adds 2.592 tbps to the network. A single gen 3 satellite if Starship is successful is 1tbps and they’ll launch 60 at a time.
Edit: Oh and even better, Telesat is going to try and NOT compete with Starlink, but I wouldn’t expect Starlink to stay out of that.
Edit: i just wanted to add, those gen 3 starlink satellites are designed and ready to go. They just need Starship to work and then they would heavily ramp production.
How much bandwidth you need? Traditional sattelitte already offer ~100Mb. The only issue starlink solves is latency and thats just because the satts are 1/3 the distance. AST’s approach seems way smarter than starlink’s shotgun approach.
Latency is the critical piece those networks are missing, and they are expensive. Low latency is what allows real-time connection with people, which is a big part of what’s difficult with any internet in remote areas other than Starlink today.
You can only solve latency by being closer, and being closer means a lot more smaller satellites as they’ll come down faster and will have a smaller field of view. We can’t beat the speed of light.
SpaceX is also launching cellular satellites now and will provide cellular coverage to phones globally in participating countries (canada is on Rogers) for use in dead zones, but the bandwidth is tiny compared to using their dish internet network.
Edit: sorry forgot the part where bandwidth then becomes the competing value of the LEO constellation. If someone else does it, maybe they are only 100mbs, but spacex is cheaper and offers 200mbs for example.
I’m repeating myself a lot in this thread, but everyone seems to be sleeping on Telesat Lightspeed.