Starlink will get slower and slower as they get more subscribers.
This is already happening. In many places it is well below half as fast as before. More, and more powerful, birds will help some, but if they need to loft 4000 a year their unit cost will matter.
I expect they will cap subscriptions offered in some areas, particularly parts of Asia and Africa.
No, it assumes that they will sell as many subscriptions as they can just barely support, because they desperately need the revenue to sustain the business model.
I was excited about Starlink until I learned more about it. Far too many issues. We need wire under ground or 4g. I lived in an area without many services (no cable, water, sewer) and had several satellite services which are more stable than Starlink and still found it inadequate.
What issues? I’ve had less issues than with other wired ISPs and satellite providers, personally. Not to mention any other satellite provider is going to be incredibly latency positive. Starlink has been a godsend. I guess just be careful of andecdata.
True, they aren't upgrading the satellites to the v2 ones that are 10x more powerful in total throughput and number of subscribers. They also aren't launching more satellites (and rockets) every year /s
They have launched exactly zero of those "more powerful" satellites. And they are not launching at near the replacement rate for the final constellation.
It appears you are doubting that they will eventually launch their 2.0 satellites with an order of magnitude more bandwidth. It's not like they haven't delivered in the past...
The constellation is still growing quickly, they just passed 3000 launched Starlink satellites. By the time they go past the 9.000 satellites or so they should have Starship ready and kick their launch volume into overdrive. Have the 30,000 extra satellites (on top of the 12,000 already approved ones) even been approved yet?
> Higher-bandwidth birds just moves the bottleneck.
What does that even mean? There is no reason to believe they can't launch enough powerful satellites to reach faster speeds in those rural areas.
If each new satellite can put down more spot beams, you can cover more cells for longer. With the spectrum they have, they could put 8 beams on a cell with 100% duty cycle, which is probably around 3.2-4Gbps.
They’ve already applied to the FCC for the 2Ghz spectrum. They’re already launching the larger 1.5 satellites that include lasers to limit ground stations. They just had a successful test fire of a starship with the engines mounted this week.
What makes you doubt the company that made reusable rockets that land on boats and reflux 13+ times won’t do this? The ENTIRE industry said it was impossible but it was fully within the realm of physics. They pulled it off because it was possible.
Oh Starlink is still losing massive amounts of money. There’s absolutely no feasible way they’re profitable at this stage.
That said. I’m sure the US Department of Defense will effectively write SpaceX a blank check after seeing how quickly they switched to spread spectrum frequency hopping to prevent Russian jamming of comms in Ukraine.
> They have launched exactly zero of those "more powerful" satellites. And they are not launching at near the replacement rate for the final constellation.
You can't deny that they're going to launch the more powerful satellites while simultaneously relying on those more powerful satellites for your calculations of the size of the final constellation...
They're launching at much faster than the rate needed for replacement for the existing planned constellation for the version 1/1.5 satellites.
Don’t the next gen satellites require the new Starship for deployment, which is still nowhere near ready for launch (they aim for a first test launch by the end of this year, IIRC)?
This is already happening. In many places it is well below half as fast as before. More, and more powerful, birds will help some, but if they need to loft 4000 a year their unit cost will matter.
I expect they will cap subscriptions offered in some areas, particularly parts of Asia and Africa.