IMO, one of the central problems is the cost of launching stuff into space.

Today, SpaceX offers world leading low prices to launch satellites: $4 m / tonne[1]. But Starlink has access to launch at cost, which is $0.86 m / tonne[2]. Which is a huge advantage when launching an enormous number of satellites.

One thing to keep in mind, especially for these LEO constellations: the lifetime of these satellites is 5-10 years. Which means the operators can never stop launching. It's an ongoing operational cost.

For smaller operators like OneWeb, they don't have to launch that often, but for a serious competitor like Kuiper, they'll be constantly launching some satellite every year.

IMO, launch cost will be a problem even for China. The cost of an LEO constellation is so high that even if it's partially subsidized by the military it'll be a serious cost for the country.

That could change pretty soon, though - various companies and organizations in China are aggressively working on getting reusable rockets working.

---

1. $70 m / 17.5 tonnes == $4 m / tonne

2. $15 m[3] / 17.5 tonnes == $0.86 / tonne

3. The $15 m number is not public info, but it is widely believed that it is in the correct ballpark.

  >We can only hope competitors are half as responsible as SpaceX... about space debris.. and satellite [visibility]

https://youtu.be/MNc5yCYth5E?t=1717

We civilians aren't going to get anything useful from foreign militaries launching payloads

> There's no inherent reason for this to be a winner takes all market.

Economics?

Competitors would have to match SpaceX's vertical integration: Satellite design, reusable launches at cost, its exiting armada of satellites, and its moving target of customer penetration. The latter is huge. Starlink is clearly not satisfied leaving any satellite demand on the table.

There is no military on Earth that has demand for satellite bandwidth approaching anything like SpaceX's, which is basically being designed to meet the needs of the whole planet.

Note that militaries (US, China, Russia, Europe, ...) have their custom means of communicating on planet, for unique reasons, but the vast majority of their communication is over commercial cell phones. This is no different.

If anyone was going to have a chance, it was Bezos. But neither his launch capabilities, or big satellite constellation plans, have amounted to much.

China will feel the need to try. But they won't have SpaceX's customer base to support a fraction of a comparable effort. (And I say that as someone who has tremendous respect for the multi-decade cadence of their space capability march.)

Game that out for us. How government innovation competes with a private sector launch company whose main differentiator is lower cost.

Tesla fanatics espouse the same sort of thinking. Tesla will figure out FSD and will capture the entire automotive market leaving competitors to close up shop and give up. I don't get it. Otherwise intelligent people have told me some version of this with a straight face. It's like they've somehow blocked how the economy functions out of their minds in an effort to further exalt Tesla.

With respect, I’m not sure you understand the scale of what we are talking about. No other organization — including national space agencies and military contractors — has the life capacity to compete with Starlink at ANY cost. Even if money were no object, the other contenders literally don’t have the launch capacity and can’t reasonably scale up.

It’s as if Intel released the Pentium Pro back in the 50’s when everyone else was working with vacuum tubes. Yes, in theory there is room for competition. But the gulf is so large in practice.

This is already available in iPhone with their text based coverage: https://support.apple.com/en-us/120930

Probably they are using GSAT satellites.

You have no idea the margins at which Elon Musk operates.

If you read his biography he is obsessive about cost cutting like no else in the history of mankind. There are plenty of examples where Musk brings down the cost of a component by 90%.

No other leader takes risks like Musk and hence he will always push frontiers.

His companies never get lazy or bloated even if it reaches $10T market cap.

Musk methods can't be replicated because it is the anti-thesis of every management practice.

I disagree too, but because it will no longer require military budget to start a SpaceX competitor.

Pretty soon AI agents could reasonably take a crack at it.

A (temporary) monopoly is not as bad in something that wouldn't otherwise exist. If Elon Musk concentrated only on cars, or SpaceX had had another couple of launch failures and gone bust, this functionality might be 40 years away.

Not to say you're wrong, we all benefit from competition in the long run. We get it from a level playing field and preventing natural monopolists from locking the gate behind them.

Where was this? Members of my family have three different remote cabins surrounded by trees in Montana, Idaho, and Oregon, and all work perfectly. The early days were a little more glitchy, but with the constellation they have today, you don’t even need to aim.

Your experience is not typical. Starlink has been working flawlessly for me for the last few years. It revolutionized Internet access in my remote area. HughesNet was the only game in town with speeds under 3Mbps and 10GB monthly data cap. Now everyone has Starlink with over 100 Mbps speeds. Never heard of issues.

I appreciate you have had a bad experience, but to then think that's the overall experience is myopic. There are many highly remote areas where people can't speak more highly of Starlink.

I use Starlink in Italy and it's been flawless. To be honest it's like magic with how easy it was to setup and use.

One my colleagues tried Starlink at his cabin in the PNW and he had to return it. He just couldn't get a clear and wide enough line of sight through the tree cover. I wonder if that was your issue?

I think this is quite perceptive. Musk is a narcissist, and the driving motivators of narcissists are a bottomless need for praise and attention and contempt for others.

Musk is famous for being contemptuous of his employees, and he's starting to show more and more contempt for Rest of World. Cybertruck and X both reek of it.

Everyone here is assuming Musk is rational and SpaceX and Starlink will continue to develop rationally.

I don't think they will. He appears to be becoming more and more unhinged, and that's going to have negative effects on his fledgling empire.

> moving back to our 6mbps

* Mbps

Perhaps they merely mean it's awesome to have one global satellite broadband service, and one semi-affordable launch option, instead of zero which is what we had before?

A more charitable interpretation would obviously be that the OP is very happy with the products and services that these companies build and provide and if the alternative is between this never happening and the companies becoming monopolies, at least in the short-term, they are OK with it.

More to it, monopolies eventually get broken up by regulations.

EU will step in eventually and regulate if it becomes too great of a concern, right now it's quiet because it hasn't reached critical mass yet.

Musk's empire is already being dismantled and the trend will continue, either by direct competition of laws.

[dead]

You seem to have a lot of creativity in your judgements as none of this follows from his comment.

It'll be interesting for sure. similar to requesting Chrome to become separate from Google, there might some law enforcement scenarios where they'll have to split things.

There will be several competitors in 5-10 years. Due to immense military capability of this technology. Same thing happens with GPS.

Any consortium that includes Deutsche Telekom is doomed to failure.

We've seen that when Germany introduced the Autobahn toll, it was a complete disaster.

If I had to guess who's going to have a Starlink competitor up next, I'd point to China.

That's not going to happen.

Remember when the EU wanted to build it's own internet browser? Or it's own search engine? Or it's own sovereign cloud?

None of these initiatives panned out. This is just political posturing when they have literally zero plans on how to achieve that.

Expect it to be worse than OneWeb for more money

Which is precisely why it will not be built. Too many cooks in the kitchen and too many known grifters with their own vested interests.

SpaceX, as much as there is to dislike about its founder, has the advantage of being one company with a founder at the top who has made it very clear that only his vision matters and intra-company political bullshit just Does Not Fly.

That constellation doesn't even play in the same league as Starlink.

It makes some sense for Europe, but it will likely be more for government use and a few large European commercial uses. This has no chance what so ever in the larger global consumer market.

And the claim that it will exist by 2027 is utterly hilarious.

But even this small constellation is way beyond what European industry can currently do, they need to basically mobilize every European space company to do this, and all of them working together to get this working. Lets see them pull this off first.

I'm sorry but if you think this has even a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding you need to learn more about the launch and satellite comms industries. This is political posturing, not a plan.

I don't want to spend hours typing on this so let's just say this; Arianespace is on the "team", so it's going to launch on Ariane 6, a rocket that was obsolete before it launched (and it was not a successful launch).

The idea that you can launch mass on Ariane6 to challenge Starlink is like saying you can win NASCAR on a horse and buggy. I'm not even exaggerating, that is literally the price differential between Starship and the rest. This initiative is a joke.

The EU's one skill is to turn my tax money into shit ever better than my socialist government. If any private company was as reckless with its customer's money as European governments, they would be fraudulent.

Starlink mostly does have competition but they are seeking out specifically underserved customers which is an ever decreasing market. 5 or so years ago I signed up for the waiting list because there was no reasonable internet, 6mb DSL. Before I got the invite there was 4G for $50 a month. Now there's two 5G service providers and Fiber is suppose to come very soon.

In the market for internet service, Starlink is a disruptor to existing ISPs. Especially for those servicing rural areas. I don't understand a reflexive reach to encumber a nascent business model with additional regulations. What problem are you trying to solve?

Because it is not abusing its position. Monopolies are not an inherent bad, they just tend to start abusing their position, and when they do then they get handled.

This is more common with public companies than private companies though.

Founders have their own life, honor, ethics, desires, etc. which usually help strongly keep the company on a positive track. e.g. Valve Corporation.

Because it's owned by the second most powerful man on the planet, who has power over all of the would-be regulators. Politics matters.

What people sometimes don't understand about monopolies, specially of a new product, is that the competition, in additions to all the competition that already exists for internet, is simply not having it.

SpaceX can just asked for an absurdly high price, because if they want to sell into the broader consumer market, people aren't going to pay 1000s of $ a month to watch Netflix.

Perhaps you’re not aware that SpaceX sued the US government to break ULAs monopoly on national security launches and brought down costs.

And perhaps you’re unaware just how many national telcos world wide have a national monopoly and for the first time ever may have to compete with Starlink?

Perhaps you’re also unaware of the grip that Russian rocket engine manufacturers had with the RD180 engine on the US launch sector until recently and the positive impace SpaceX has had on that.

Honest question because it's something I've internally debated over. Would we have had Bell Labs without the AT&T monopoly?

Must a monopoly always be bad?

For example: Mitutoyo seems to have a monopoly on producing accurate digital calipers that have battery life measured in years (using one dainty little LR44 alkaline cell). They use approximately fuck-all for power whether switched on or off.

Certainly, the market is open for others to produce an actually-competitive product with similar performance. All it takes is for the competition figure out how to do it and put them into production, since any necessary patents expired long ago.

But they simply have not done so.

So here we are today, wherein: The free market has decided that Mitutoyo has a defacto monopoly on tools of this capability.

Is that... is that implicitly a problem, somehow?

if you don't want monopolies then you need to create regulations that make it easy for new startups to compete

There are dozens of satellite launch systems around the world. Its hardly a monopoly.

There is a difference between having a monopoly and having a lower cost per unit of mass put into orbit.

For the monopolist they are!

[dead]

They are when you can regulate the crap out of them to benefit everyone after they’ve benefited from government contracts, FCC governance, an educated population, etc.

Lets cool down a bit. Falcon 9 launches cost much more then 'just the fuel'. Estimated launch price is still 10-20 million $. The Upper stage is an expensive thing to build. Operations cost are also not that low. Fuel cost are only like a couple 100k$.

China is deftly building something. Russia doesn't have a snowball chance in hell of building something like Starlink.

Monopolies due to the State granting permissions to only one company, or gaining advantages due to coercion or lobbying are indeed terrible.

But monopolies due to excellence in the development of the product, like Starlink, are not bad at all. In any case these are extremely rare and tend to last very little time.

While you're technically correct, the parent is more correct. Competitors have to pay normal launch rates. The competitive service needs to include those costs to end users.

Starlink "pays" for launches at cost. While we don't know what SpaceX's cost margins are, they are not trivial. To setup a low orbit constellation is extremely expensive and competitors lose millions per launch that Starlink gets to reinvest.

There's been 136 launches of Falcon 9 for Starlink. ~US$62m per launch? If their margins are 20% that's that's $1.6b in savings. And I bet F9's margins are closer to 50% - supporting Starship and more.

Sure, but Starlink launches are at-cost, which is much, much cheaper than the cost for external customers.

Starlink also has launch priority. Good luck with getting 50 launches a year as a customer...

Swarm wasn't a competitor to SpaceX at the time, Swarm and Starlink wasn't aiming at the same market at all. And they didn't exactly kill Swarm. They launched Swarm satellites for a while and there was talk of integrating Swarm transceivers on Starlink satellites. I think once direct-to-cell became a reality, the idea of Swarm was subsumed into that project since it should do everything Swarm did but better. It's worth noting that the Swarm founders are now working on the direct-to-cell project.

Barely nothing? Are you out of your mind?

pLEO, Starshield, SDA, NSSL, Commercial Crew, Commercial Cargo?????

Only HLS is in view. And it's less than 5 billion.

Everything listed above is delivered and has more expensive alternatives.

I think it's important to recognize the irony in how much SpaceX and Tesla benefit from government programs and funds that he now wants to turn off as part of DOGE, but you can't say SpaceX has barely done anything.

Musk is at least a named individual, somewhat accountable for his decisions. Yes him having the ability to cut people off is worrying, but I'm less worried about him doing it than e.g. the Internet Watch Foundation, or whoever cut off Kiwi Farms (where we still don't really know who's actually responsible).

Wouldn’t put it past him? Can you offer even a single example?