-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
We can only hope that this isn't suicide for SpaceX the way partnering with Microsoft usually is.
It’s pretty much a 5 minute corporate infomercial devoid of any substance.
My limited understanding is that to win the SDA 4 satellite bid, SpaceX had to provide interfaces into Azure applications (the US government uses quite a bit of Microsoft and Azure technologies), so SpaceX just fobbed that part off to Microsoft as a subcontractor, which makes a lot of sense.
Apparently, as part of the deal to be a subcontractor, Shotwell had to agree to these kinds of cross marketing promotions...
My limited understanding is that to win the SDA 4 satellite bid, SpaceX had to provide interfaces into Azure applications (the US government uses quite a bit of Microsoft and Azure technologies), so SpaceX just fobbed that part off to Microsoft as a subcontractor, which makes a lot of sense.
Apparently, as part of the deal to be a subcontractor, Shotwell had to agree to these kinds of cross marketing promotions...
Taking a van trip across Canada next summer, and I'm so extremely hopeful we can have a Starlink connection! I saw some reference to it working even at high speeds, but honestly even if we just had it while stationary I'd be so excited.
Plenty of Drama surrounding the C-band *sugar* show.
As noted elsewhere in Starlink conversations, this is why we haven't heard anything from the terrestrial players in the US regarding any kind of response to Starlink. If its not completely obvious to any fan of Starlink, C-band is going to be the biggest competition.
As noted elsewhere in Starlink conversations, this is why we haven't heard anything from the terrestrial players in the US regarding any kind of response to Starlink. If its not completely obvious to any fan of Starlink, C-band is going to be the biggest competition.
Early Beta is happening.
$499 for ground terminal, tripod, and router.
$99 a month for service.
50-150 Mbs
20-50 mS
May have service interruptions
They're calling it the Better Than Nothing Beta
I just officially received an email invite to the Starlink beta. : Starlink
My inbox is sans invite.
$499 for ground terminal, tripod, and router.
$99 a month for service.
50-150 Mbs
20-50 mS
May have service interruptions
They're calling it the Better Than Nothing Beta
I just officially received an email invite to the Starlink beta. : Starlink
My inbox is sans invite.
Xepa777
Banned
The cost of the dish is way lower than what most were anticipating. Hoping the subsidization isn't so massive and it's mainly as a result of how they're producing them. Regardless, I'm quite hopeful for production costs (and pricing) when terminal production really starts ramping up.
Early Beta is happening.
$499 for ground terminal, tripod, and router.
$99 a month for service.
50-150 Mbs
20-50 mS
May have service interruptions
They're calling it the Better Than Nothing Beta
I just officially received an email invite to the Starlink beta. : Starlink
My inbox is sans invite.
Good pricing for both the terminal and service. Interesting that they don’t have data caps, but the non beta service might have one, we will have to see (although Elon seems to be against such things). I love the name of the service! Looks good!
If they beam direct to server farms, I don't see any reason to impose caps. Saturation may be an issue someday though.
Edit: I'm thinking in terms of caps as max GB/month vs throttling due to congestion.
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
Datacenters are going to impose Cross-Connection fees for something like this. I work in the industry, and can tell you DCs never let you connect to them for free. They make a substantial amount of money just connecting fiber from one group of servers (Owner A) to another group (Owner B). Those fees for an Equinix or Zayo type DC are about $250-500 per month, per fiber (and you usually do pairs).
Starlink would need to be able to offer some kind of quid-pro-quo to the DCs in order to get free connectivity, as connectivity is a huge revenue generator for DCs.
Yes, but $500/month is nothing for an ISP like Starlink.
Anyhoo, yes, the problem is never with total data usage, it is always with peak data usage. In large groups, data usage for residential users is very predictable, peaking in early evening local time, and those peaks are double or more what it is during early morning for instance.
Even though there are a lot of disparate commercial users (utilities, emergency responders, etc.), I suspect the vast majority of Starlink's customers will be residential, so managing peak traffic will be something they monitor.
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
You underestimate the number of datacenters they would need to connect to in order to cover a reasonable number of "direct connect" scenarios. Have you ever driven through Ashburn, VA (largest DC corridor in North America)? There are hundreds of DCs just in that county alone. And those prices are just normal X-link costs from server rack to server rack. I don't know the "roof access" prices, but I would bet they are substantially higher.
The best bet for Starlink is to actually not try to access each and every datacenter, but to instead negotiate transit deals with major fiber transit providers, so that they can have access to an "area" filled with datacenters at dirt cheap prices.
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
With a TON of meters on it about every 6 inches . . .
Everyone gets their pound of flesh on transit pricing.
You saw cross connection, but I am thinking of the case where the data center is the end customer (or hosts it). I would have thought streaming services include the cost of data/ hosting in the monthly fee.
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
Streaming services are moving more and more to edge computing, for best possible ping times to the recipient. That makes this a more difficult to deploy proposition.
Or, does it make rural a better market? Instead of edges on a large surface, Starlink could allow centralized servers with low latency. Just spitballing.
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
It's possible, but I would start to get concerned with saturation, at least in the early deployment phase. Nothing uses as much data as video, and people wanting their 4K Netflix streams could really start to put a burden on Starlink (again, in the early phase of deployment), if enough of them were utilizing the service for that function.
As an aside, I think rural internet delivery is really where Starlink will shine. I would expect >90% of revenue over the first 5 years to be derived from rural residential and small businesses. This tech will truly bring them into the 21st century, and honestly I expect will drive significant economic growth for a part of the economy that has significantly lagged behind urban centers.
Case in point - the company I co-own, my business partner lives in a major metro area, and hates it with a passion. He is literally waiting on Starlink in order to move to the mountains of WA. He needs a high-speed connection for business purposes, but our company has been remote work for > 10 years, so aside from that critical need, there is nothing that is keeping him from moving out of the city (suburbs).
I suspect he is not the only one. My family owns a 400+ acre farm in basically the middle of no where (even cell signal is spotty). I'm considering building a log cabin out there, but only if I can get Starlink.
Last edited:
I'm running Netflix on a 7ish Mbs DSL phone line ok (guess I don'tkniw what I'm missing there yet). Worst part (beyond mutli-gig Steam downloads) is working remotely and needing to upload files.
Similar threads
