FCC Chair Rosenworcel Proposes to Investigate Impact of Data Caps
While a lot of ISPs gave up on data caps, the language is still lurking in many Terms Of Service. https://www.fcc.gov/document/chair-rosenworcel-proposes-investigate-impact-d... proposed Notice of Inquiry to learn more about how broadband providers use data caps on consumer plans. Data caps, or usage limits, are a common practice where an internet service provider (ISP) restricts how much bandwidth or data a consumer uses, though many broadband ISPs temporarily or permanently refrained from enforcing or imposing data caps in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the agency would like to better understand the current state of data caps, their impact on consumers, and whether the Commission should consider taking action to ensure that data caps do not cause harm to competition or consumers’ ability to access broadband Internet services.
On 6/15/23 3:19 PM, Sean Donelan wrote:
While a lot of ISPs gave up on data caps, the language is still lurking in many Terms Of Service.
https://www.fcc.gov/document/chair-rosenworcel-proposes-investigate-impact-d...
proposed Notice of Inquiry to learn more about how broadband providers use data caps on consumer plans. Data caps, or usage limits, are a common practice where an internet service provider (ISP) restricts how much bandwidth or data a consumer uses, though many broadband ISPs temporarily or permanently refrained from enforcing or imposing data caps in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the agency would like to better understand the current state of data caps, their impact on consumers, and whether the Commission should consider taking action to ensure that data caps do not cause harm to competition or consumers’ ability to access broadband Internet services.
So why did they back off? Cost too much in support calls with pissed people? Bad publicity? People can't meaningfully use the offered bandwidth these days? Something else? Mike
Comcast still has data caps. My service is 1.2 TB per month. If we get close, we get a warning email. If we were to go over (hasn’t happened yet), we get billed per additional 500 MB. However, I just looked at my account usage for the first time for a few months, and somehow have had zero usage since March of this year. On Thu, Jun 15, 2023 at 5:48 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/15/23 3:19 PM, Sean Donelan wrote:
While a lot of ISPs gave up on data caps, the language is still lurking in many Terms Of Service.
https://www.fcc.gov/document/chair-rosenworcel-proposes-investigate-impact-d...
proposed Notice of Inquiry to learn more about how broadband providers use data caps on consumer plans. Data caps, or usage limits, are a common practice where an internet service provider (ISP) restricts how much bandwidth or data a consumer uses, though many broadband ISPs temporarily or permanently refrained from enforcing or imposing data caps in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the agency would like to better understand the current state of data caps, their impact on consumers, and whether the Commission should consider taking action to ensure that data caps do not cause harm to competition or consumers’ ability to access broadband Internet services.
So why did they back off? Cost too much in support calls with pissed people? Bad publicity? People can't meaningfully use the offered bandwidth these days? Something else?
Mike
I went over often enough that it was easier (and cheaper) to just give them an extra $30/month for unlimited. I also cancelled other Comcast services at the same time that were costing me more than $30/month, so for me, It was a net gain and for Comcast, a net loss. I did this immediately when they started charging for overages in the hopes it would send the correct message. Owen
On Jun 15, 2023, at 22:41, Crist Clark <cjc+nanog@pumpky.net> wrote:
Comcast still has data caps. My service is 1.2 TB per month. If we get close, we get a warning email. If we were to go over (hasn’t happened yet), we get billed per additional 500 MB.
However, I just looked at my account usage for the first time for a few months, and somehow have had zero usage since March of this year.
On Thu, Jun 15, 2023 at 5:48 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com <mailto:mike@mtcc.com>> wrote:
On 6/15/23 3:19 PM, Sean Donelan wrote:
While a lot of ISPs gave up on data caps, the language is still lurking in many Terms Of Service.
https://www.fcc.gov/document/chair-rosenworcel-proposes-investigate-impact-d...
proposed Notice of Inquiry to learn more about how broadband providers use data caps on consumer plans. Data caps, or usage limits, are a common practice where an internet service provider (ISP) restricts how much bandwidth or data a consumer uses, though many broadband ISPs temporarily or permanently refrained from enforcing or imposing data caps in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the agency would like to better understand the current state of data caps, their impact on consumers, and whether the Commission should consider taking action to ensure that data caps do not cause harm to competition or consumers’ ability to access broadband Internet services.
So why did they back off? Cost too much in support calls with pissed people? Bad publicity? People can't meaningfully use the offered bandwidth these days? Something else?
Mike
On 6/15/23 10:41 PM, Crist Clark wrote:
Comcast still has data caps. My service is 1.2 TB per month. If we get close, we get a warning email. If we were to go over (hasn’t happened yet), we get billed per additional 500 MB.
However, I just looked at my account usage for the first time for a few months, and somehow have had zero usage since March of this year.
Is 1.2 TB enough for a typical cord cutter? I just looked at mine and it looks to be about 300GB/month, but we may not be typical for your average family with kids, say. Mike
On 6/16/23 18:41, Michael Thomas wrote:
Is 1.2 TB enough for a typical cord cutter? I just looked at mine and it looks to be about 300GB/month, but we may not be typical for your average family with kids, say.
For residential services, the competition should easily outscore any provider that still delivers capped Internet. It's 2023... Mark.
Mark, In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is no service. As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 take rate. On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 2:28 PM Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa> wrote:
On 6/16/23 18:41, Michael Thomas wrote:
Is 1.2 TB enough for a typical cord cutter? I just looked at mine and it looks to be about 300GB/month, but we may not be typical for your average family with kids, say.
For residential services, the competition should easily outscore any provider that still delivers capped Internet.
It's 2023...
Mark.
On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote:
Mark,
In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is no service.
As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that, since there is only so much money and resources to go around. What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread. Mark.
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote:
Mark,
In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is no service.
As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that, since there is only so much money and resources to go around.
What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread.
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps. Mike
On 6/16/23 22:16, Michael Thomas wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Maybe. I really haven't paid any attention to Starlink, although there are credible reports of folk testing it here in South Africa's urban centres. I have not heard of any mention of Starlink having caps as part of their service. Having said that, for services like this, things change as the number of customers using them rises. Mark.
On 6/16/23 1:22 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 6/16/23 22:16, Michael Thomas wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Maybe. I really haven't paid any attention to Starlink, although there are credible reports of folk testing it here in South Africa's urban centres.
I have not heard of any mention of Starlink having caps as part of their service. Having said that, for services like this, things change as the number of customers using them rises.
I've toyed with getting it which I think I can do here in rural California especially given that my ISP installed fiber and inexplicably didn't change the rate plans from DSL (given that it's an older population here, I doubt that any new over subscription would be much problem). But the fact of the matter is that we don't seem to ever be in the situation that our 25Mbs service is an actual problem. Mike
Not everyone can afford $1000 to start up Starlink and then pay $130+ per month. That may be an option for some, but certainly not the majority. If 100% of a town was covered by a single company with data caps, those that are crying from hitting 1.2 TB/month will not be enough for a competitor to come in and build on top. A TB/mo now is extremely high - In May 2023 we had 4 customers that exceeded that (all 4 of these customers mentioned are subscribed to <25 mbps plans; we offer gig ftth). On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:22 PM Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa> wrote:
On 6/16/23 22:16, Michael Thomas wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Maybe. I really haven't paid any attention to Starlink, although there are credible reports of folk testing it here in South Africa's urban centres.
I have not heard of any mention of Starlink having caps as part of their service. Having said that, for services like this, things change as the number of customers using them rises.
Mark.
On 6/16/23 22:36, Josh Luthman wrote:
Not everyone can afford $1000 to start up Starlink and then pay $130+ per month. That may be an option for some, but certainly not the majority.
Partly why I don't pay any attention to Starlink. It's a niche product for folk who either have the ability to live off-grid, or be in a position to have someone else wealthier cover the cost for them. That won't be the majority. In Africa, most people will connect to the Internet via mobile. Even with mobile coverage being relatively poor in the deepest part of the village, penetration via mobile is far more likely than Starlink, et al.
If 100% of a town was covered by a single company with data caps, those that are crying from hitting 1.2 TB/month will not be enough for a competitor to come in and build on top. A TB/mo now is extremely high - In May 2023 we had 4 customers that exceeded that (all 4 of these customers mentioned are subscribed to <25 mbps plans; we offer gig ftth).
The traditional business case is volume-based, i.e., as many customers as possible. If that is not the model for the competitor, they can be enough of a disruptor if something else drives them. Think what Jared has done in the bundus of Michigan. Mark.
On 6/16/23 1:36 PM, Josh Luthman wrote:
Not everyone can afford $1000 to start up Starlink and then pay $130+ per month. That may be an option for some, but certainly not the majority.
If 100% of a town was covered by a single company with data caps, those that are crying from hitting 1.2 TB/month will not be enough for a competitor to come in and build on top. A TB/mo now is extremely high - In May 2023 we had 4 customers that exceeded that (all 4 of these customers mentioned are subscribed to <25 mbps plans; we offer gig ftth).
I get the impression that they are still in a beta/early adopter situation so unaffordability might be feature not a bug to them to keep the system from a success disaster. At least for now. I get the impression that some/a lot of this is to bring the internet to the rest of the world as one of their goals. I do wonder how they are numbering them though. Are the they using the same scheme that the mobile providers are using with ipv6? hmm. Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:22 PM Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa> wrote:
On 6/16/23 22:16, Michael Thomas wrote:
> Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner > rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if > they do they could compete with their caps.
Maybe. I really haven't paid any attention to Starlink, although there are credible reports of folk testing it here in South Africa's urban centres.
I have not heard of any mention of Starlink having caps as part of their service. Having said that, for services like this, things change as the number of customers using them rises.
Mark.
I have not heard of any mention of Starlink having caps as part of their service. Having said that, for services like this, things change as the number of customers using them rises.
They were proposing data caps to roll out this year, but they abandoned that in lieu of a 'priority tier. Pay extra and get throttled less essentially. On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:24 PM Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa> wrote:
On 6/16/23 22:16, Michael Thomas wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Maybe. I really haven't paid any attention to Starlink, although there are credible reports of folk testing it here in South Africa's urban centres.
I have not heard of any mention of Starlink having caps as part of their service. Having said that, for services like this, things change as the number of customers using them rises.
Mark.
On Jun 16, 2023, at 13:16, Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote:
Mark,
In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is no service.
As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that, since there is only so much money and resources to go around.
What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread.
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
Maybe, but ta the rate their prices have been going up and their reviews have been going down, it’s not at all promising. I’m in a wait and see mode with Starling. Every time I get just about frustrated enough with Comcast to shell out, I discover that Starling’s pricing has again moved above my threshold of frustration. Owen
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for those services to completely replace terrestrial only service. On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote:
Mark,
In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is no service.
As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that, since there is only so much money and resources to go around.
What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread.
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for those services to completely replace terrestrial only service.
Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only niche? I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions. From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest. As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll. Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote: > > > On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote: >> Mark, >> >> In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. >> Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. >> Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US >> (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is >> no service. >> >> As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a >> focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 >> take rate. > > I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets > is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that, > since there is only so much money and resources to go around. > > What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the > opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are > capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low > hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative > provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread. > Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
- Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a month, that's $165M in revenue, - A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to 60 Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff, they aren't launching an external paying customer.) - The reported price per sat is $250k. Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for sats. - The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K cluster, that's 1200 a year. That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats. Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there. So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And that's just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff , R&D, etc . Numbers kinda speak for themselves here. I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he
does have big ambitions.
Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math. On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner
rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for those services to completely replace terrestrial only service.
Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only niche? I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote:
Mark,
In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is no service.
As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that, since there is only so much money and resources to go around.
What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread.
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
You’re assuming the launches are costing them something, which in fact may not be true. Rumor has it, they are piggybacking on other payloads which pay for the launches, particularly government contracts.
Assuming they are, they aren't doing enough of those launches to piggyback enough sats to reach the 40k claim. Zero out the launch costs, subscriber revenue still doesn't doesn't come close to touching the sat costs. On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 6:27 PM <sronan@ronan-online.com> wrote:
You’re assuming the launches are costing them something, which in fact may not be true. Rumor has it, they are piggybacking on other payloads which pay for the launches, particularly government contracts.
On Jun 17, 2023, at 5:54 PM, Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
- Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a month, that's $165M in revenue,
- A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to 60 Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff, they aren't launching an external paying customer.) - The reported price per sat is $250k.
Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for sats.
- The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K cluster, that's 1200 a year.
That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats. Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there.
So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And that's just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff , R&D, etc .
Numbers kinda speak for themselves here.
I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he
does have big ambitions.
Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner
rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for those services to completely replace terrestrial only service.
Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only niche? I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote:
Mark,
In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is no service.
As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that, since there is only so much money and resources to go around.
What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread.
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
You are also assuming their only product is Home Internet. Providing Internet to ships at sea, planes in the sky and other more unconventional uses will provide a lot more revenue than the home Internet will.
I am not assuming that at all. There is absolutely a market for sat internet. It's just not a $30B revenue a year business as Musk has said. On land , why do wireline providers not build out into rural areas? There is not enough subscriber density to recover buildout costs in an acceptable timeframe. Starlink has the same problem ; the number of possible subscribers is exceptionally low relative to the buildout cost. There won't ever be high demand for Starlink in urban areas because it's not needed, and performance is bad when users are clustered like that. Again, I agree there is a market for sat internet. It's just never going to be anywhere close to as large as what is claimed. On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 7:25 PM <sronan@ronan-online.com> wrote:
You are also assuming their only product is Home Internet. Providing Internet to ships at sea, planes in the sky and other more unconventional uses will provide a lot more revenue than the home Internet will.
On Jun 17, 2023, at 7:04 PM, Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
You’re assuming the launches are costing them something, which in fact may not be true. Rumor has it, they are piggybacking on other payloads which pay for the launches, particularly government contracts.
Assuming they are, they aren't doing enough of those launches to piggyback enough sats to reach the 40k claim.
Zero out the launch costs, subscriber revenue still doesn't doesn't come close to touching the sat costs.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 6:27 PM <sronan@ronan-online.com> wrote:
You’re assuming the launches are costing them something, which in fact may not be true. Rumor has it, they are piggybacking on other payloads which pay for the launches, particularly government contracts.
On Jun 17, 2023, at 5:54 PM, Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
- Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a month, that's $165M in revenue,
- A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to 60 Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff, they aren't launching an external paying customer.) - The reported price per sat is $250k.
Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for sats.
- The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K cluster, that's 1200 a year.
That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats. Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there.
So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And that's just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff , R&D, etc .
Numbers kinda speak for themselves here.
I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he
does have big ambitions.
Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner
rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for those services to completely replace terrestrial only service.
Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only niche? I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote:
Mark,
In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is no service.
As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a
take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers
~1/3 that,
since there is only so much money and resources to go around.
What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread.
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 5:41 PM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
You are also assuming their only product is Home Internet. Providing Internet to ships at sea, planes in the sky and other more unconventional uses will provide a lot more revenue than the home Internet will.
I am not assuming that at all.
There is absolutely a market for sat internet. It's just not a $30B revenue a year business as Musk has said.
On land , why do wireline providers not build out into rural areas? There is not enough subscriber density to recover buildout costs in an acceptable timeframe. Starlink has the same problem ; the number of possible subscribers is exceptionally low relative to the buildout cost.
No it does not. Reduced density in any area makes for a compelling market for starlink. The buildout cost is fixed (cover the globe with sats), once the globe is covered, taking advantage of any area under that is straightforward. It is quite unlike wires in this case, or even FWA, there is no power to towers, no need for power or cable anything but a downlink site located somewhere within a few hundred miles. We are also seeing rural 5G FWA expand rapidly, in part because the gear costs the same no matter how many people are on it.
There won't ever be high demand for Starlink in urban areas because it's not needed, and performance is bad when users are clustered like that.
Agreed.
Again, I agree there is a market for sat internet. It's just never going to be anywhere close to as large as what is claimed.
I think we are arguing the difference between 10m people and 30m? 10m people is quite a substantial business, barely cracking the ranks of the larger ISPS, and yet ~$1B/month. Hard to complain... I would have liked it if starlink´s business service included BGP peering, and other classic aspects of the internet that it does not have as yet.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 7:25 PM <sronan@ronan-online.com> wrote:
You are also assuming their only product is Home Internet. Providing Internet to ships at sea, planes in the sky and other more unconventional uses will provide a lot more revenue than the home Internet will.
On Jun 17, 2023, at 7:04 PM, Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
You’re assuming the launches are costing them something, which in fact may not be true. Rumor has it, they are piggybacking on other payloads which pay for the launches, particularly government contracts.
Assuming they are, they aren't doing enough of those launches to piggyback enough sats to reach the 40k claim.
Zero out the launch costs, subscriber revenue still doesn't doesn't come close to touching the sat costs.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 6:27 PM <sronan@ronan-online.com> wrote:
You’re assuming the launches are costing them something, which in fact may not be true. Rumor has it, they are piggybacking on other payloads which pay for the launches, particularly government contracts.
On Jun 17, 2023, at 5:54 PM, Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
- Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a month, that's $165M in revenue,
- A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to 60 Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff, they aren't launching an external paying customer.) - The reported price per sat is $250k.
Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for sats.
- The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K cluster, that's 1200 a year.
That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats. Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there.
So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And that's just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff , R&D, etc .
Numbers kinda speak for themselves here.
I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for those services to completely replace terrestrial only service.
Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only niche? I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote: > Mark, > > In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. > Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. > Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US > (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is > no service. > > As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a > focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 > take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that, since there is only so much money and resources to go around.
What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread.
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
-- Podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7058793910227111937/ Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
There are probably a few more than 100 000 ocean going ships in the world. There are maybe 60 000 airliners. They may be able to charge more per unit, maybe several times more, but it’s still orders of magnitude below the size of the consumer market. It’s not like satellite Internet is a new thing. It’s not even like LEO satellite is a new thing. Iridium and Globalstar been doing it for over two decades. Yeah, the service sucked, but part of that is because the markets never materialized to justify funding to improve it. On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 5:16 PM Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:
You are also assuming their only product is Home Internet. Providing
Internet to ships at sea, planes in the sky and other more unconventional uses will provide a lot more revenue than the home Internet will.
I am not assuming that at all.
There is absolutely a market for sat internet. It's just not a $30B revenue a year business as Musk has said.
On land , why do wireline providers not build out into rural areas? There is not enough subscriber density to recover buildout costs in an acceptable timeframe. Starlink has the same problem ; the number of
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 5:41 PM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote: possible subscribers is exceptionally low relative to the buildout cost.
No it does not. Reduced density in any area makes for a compelling market for starlink. The buildout cost is fixed (cover the globe with sats), once the globe is covered, taking advantage of any area under that is straightforward. It is quite unlike wires in this case, or even FWA, there is no power to towers, no need for power or cable anything but a downlink site located somewhere within a few hundred miles.
We are also seeing rural 5G FWA expand rapidly, in part because the gear costs the same no matter how many people are on it.
There won't ever be high demand for Starlink in urban areas because it's not needed, and performance is bad when users are clustered like that.
Agreed.
Again, I agree there is a market for sat internet. It's just never going to be anywhere close to as large as what is claimed.
I think we are arguing the difference between 10m people and 30m? 10m people is quite a substantial business, barely cracking the ranks of the larger ISPS, and yet ~$1B/month. Hard to complain...
I would have liked it if starlink´s business service included BGP peering, and other classic aspects of the internet that it does not have as yet.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 7:25 PM <sronan@ronan-online.com> wrote:
You are also assuming their only product is Home Internet. Providing
On Jun 17, 2023, at 7:04 PM, Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
You’re assuming the launches are costing them something, which in fact
may not be true. Rumor has it, they are piggybacking on other payloads which pay for the launches, particularly government contracts.
Assuming they are, they aren't doing enough of those launches to
Zero out the launch costs, subscriber revenue still doesn't doesn't
come close to touching the sat costs.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 6:27 PM <sronan@ronan-online.com> wrote:
You’re assuming the launches are costing them something, which in fact
may not be true. Rumor has it, they are piggybacking on other payloads which pay for the launches, particularly government contracts.
On Jun 17, 2023, at 5:54 PM, Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are
- Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a month,
- A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to
60 Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume
- The reported price per sat is $250k.
Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for sats.
- The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K cluster, that's 1200 a year.
That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats. Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there.
So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And that's just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff , R&D, etc .
Numbers kinda speak for themselves here.
I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for
Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only
niche? I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the
incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are
Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote: > > > On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote: >> Mark, >> >> In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. >> Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. >> Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US >> (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there
is
>> no service. >> >> As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a >> focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 >> take rate. > > I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets > is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers
> since there is only so much money and resources to go around. > > What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the > opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are > capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low > hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative > provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other
Internet to ships at sea, planes in the sky and other more unconventional uses will provide a lot more revenue than the home Internet will. piggyback enough sats to reach the 40k claim. the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll. that's $165M in revenue, the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff, they aren't launching an external paying customer.) those services to completely replace terrestrial only service. the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll. that, thread.
> Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
-- Podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7058793910227111937/ Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
part of that is because the markets never materialized to justify funding to improve it.
Not like there's funding here either ; Musk has been playing the same financial shell games here that he did with SolarCity. Even before the FCC disqualified them for the $900M in broadband funds , they were saying Starlink needed $30B or they'd go bankrupt. On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 8:59 PM Crist Clark <cjc+nanog@pumpky.net> wrote:
There are probably a few more than 100 000 ocean going ships in the world. There are maybe 60 000 airliners. They may be able to charge more per unit, maybe several times more, but it’s still orders of magnitude below the size of the consumer market.
It’s not like satellite Internet is a new thing. It’s not even like LEO satellite is a new thing. Iridium and Globalstar been doing it for over two decades. Yeah, the service sucked, but part of that is because the markets never materialized to justify funding to improve it.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 5:16 PM Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:
You are also assuming their only product is Home Internet. Providing
Internet to ships at sea, planes in the sky and other more unconventional uses will provide a lot more revenue than the home Internet will.
I am not assuming that at all.
There is absolutely a market for sat internet. It's just not a $30B revenue a year business as Musk has said.
On land , why do wireline providers not build out into rural areas? There is not enough subscriber density to recover buildout costs in an acceptable timeframe. Starlink has the same problem ; the number of
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 5:41 PM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote: possible subscribers is exceptionally low relative to the buildout cost.
No it does not. Reduced density in any area makes for a compelling market for starlink. The buildout cost is fixed (cover the globe with sats), once the globe is covered, taking advantage of any area under that is straightforward. It is quite unlike wires in this case, or even FWA, there is no power to towers, no need for power or cable anything but a downlink site located somewhere within a few hundred miles.
We are also seeing rural 5G FWA expand rapidly, in part because the gear costs the same no matter how many people are on it.
There won't ever be high demand for Starlink in urban areas because it's not needed, and performance is bad when users are clustered like that.
Agreed.
Again, I agree there is a market for sat internet. It's just never going to be anywhere close to as large as what is claimed.
I think we are arguing the difference between 10m people and 30m? 10m people is quite a substantial business, barely cracking the ranks of the larger ISPS, and yet ~$1B/month. Hard to complain...
I would have liked it if starlink´s business service included BGP peering, and other classic aspects of the internet that it does not have as yet.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 7:25 PM <sronan@ronan-online.com> wrote:
You are also assuming their only product is Home Internet. Providing
On Jun 17, 2023, at 7:04 PM, Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
You’re assuming the launches are costing them something, which in
fact may not be true. Rumor has it, they are piggybacking on other payloads which pay for the launches, particularly government contracts.
Assuming they are, they aren't doing enough of those launches to
Zero out the launch costs, subscriber revenue still doesn't doesn't
come close to touching the sat costs.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 6:27 PM <sronan@ronan-online.com> wrote:
You’re assuming the launches are costing them something, which in
fact may not be true. Rumor has it, they are piggybacking on other payloads which pay for the launches, particularly government contracts.
On Jun 17, 2023, at 5:54 PM, Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics
are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully
- Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a
month, that's $165M in revenue,
- A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to
60 Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume
- The reported price per sat is $250k.
Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for sats.
- The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K cluster, that's 1200 a year.
That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats. Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there.
So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And
Numbers kinda speak for themselves here.
I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you
will he does have big ambitions.
Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote: > > Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner > rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for
Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only
niche? I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the
incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics
are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully
Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com>
wrote:
> > > On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote: > > > > > > On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote: > >> Mark, > >> > >> In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet
> >> Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. > >> Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US > >> (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX)
> >> no service. > >> > >> As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a > >> focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 > >> take rate. > > > > I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets > > is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers
> > since there is only so much money and resources to go around. > > > > What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the > > opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are > > capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low > > hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative > > provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other
Internet to ships at sea, planes in the sky and other more unconventional uses will provide a lot more revenue than the home Internet will. piggyback enough sats to reach the 40k claim. throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll. the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff, they aren't launching an external paying customer.) that's just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff , R&D, etc . those services to completely replace terrestrial only service. throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll. options. there is that, thread.
> > > Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner > rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if > they do they could compete with their caps. > > Mike >
-- Podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7058793910227111937/ Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
" On land , why do wireline providers not build out into rural areas?" Some of it is indeed your answer. Some of it is also gross incompetence by the operators. ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com Midwest-IX http://www.midwest-ix.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom Beecher" <beecher@beecher.cc> To: sronan@ronan-online.com Cc: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2023 6:38:23 PM Subject: Re: FCC Chair Rosenworcel Proposes to Investigate Impact of Data Caps You are also assuming their only product is Home Internet. Providing Internet to ships at sea, planes in the sky and other more unconventional uses will provide a lot more revenue than the home Internet will. I am not assuming that at all. There is absolutely a market for sat internet. It's just not a $30B revenue a year business as Musk has said. On land , why do wireline providers not build out into rural areas? There is not enough subscriber density to recover buildout costs in an acceptable timeframe. Starlink has the same problem ; the number of possible subscribers is exceptionally low relative to the buildout cost. There won't ever be high demand for Starlink in urban areas because it's not needed, and performance is bad when users are clustered like that. Again, I agree there is a market for sat internet. It's just never going to be anywhere close to as large as what is claimed. On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 7:25 PM < sronan@ronan-online.com > wrote: <blockquote> You are also assuming their only product is Home Internet. Providing Internet to ships at sea, planes in the sky and other more unconventional uses will provide a lot more revenue than the home Internet will. <blockquote> On Jun 17, 2023, at 7:04 PM, Tom Beecher < beecher@beecher.cc > wrote: </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> You’re assuming the launches are costing them something, which in fact may not be true. Rumor has it, they are piggybacking on other payloads which pay for the launches, particularly government contracts. </blockquote> Assuming they are, they aren't doing enough of those launches to piggyback enough sats to reach the 40k claim. Zero out the launch costs, subscriber revenue still doesn't doesn't come close to touching the sat costs. On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 6:27 PM < sronan@ronan-online.com > wrote: <blockquote> You’re assuming the launches are costing them something, which in fact may not be true. Rumor has it, they are piggybacking on other payloads which pay for the launches, particularly government contracts. <blockquote> On Jun 17, 2023, at 5:54 PM, Tom Beecher < beecher@beecher.cc > wrote: </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll. </blockquote> - Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a month, that's $165M in revenue, - A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to 60 Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff, they aren't launching an external paying customer.) - The reported price per sat is $250k. Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for sats. - The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K cluster, that's 1200 a year. That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats. Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there. So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And that's just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff , R&D, etc . Numbers kinda speak for themselves here. <blockquote> I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions. </blockquote> Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math. On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38 PM Michael Thomas < mike@mtcc.com > wrote: <blockquote> On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote: <blockquote> <blockquote> Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? </blockquote> Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for those services to completely replace terrestrial only service. </blockquote> Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only niche? I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll. Mike <blockquote> On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17 PM Michael Thomas < mike@mtcc.com > wrote: <blockquote> On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote:
Mark,
In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is no service.
As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that, since there is only so much money and resources to go around.
What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread.
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps. Mike </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote>
Whether or not it makes business sense isn't really what I was talking about. I was talking about the home dish costing $1k. That sounds like it could easily be reduced significantly unless there is some underlying tech reason. Also: they plan to use Starship when it's available which has 10x more capacity. If it really is fully reusable as advertised, that is going to really drive down the launch cost. But your calculations don't take into account that they are not at anywhere close to a full constellation: they are only at 4k out of the 40k they need so they literally can't support higher numbers. Their new generation of satellite is also suppose to be doing some in-orbit routing or something like that which would I would assume will really help on the bandwidth front. How much that affects their maximum subscriber base when they are fully deployed I don't know but it's bound to be a lot more possible subs than they have now. I mean, this could be a spectacular flop like Iridium but a lot has changed in 20 some years not least of which is the cost of launch. Mike On 6/17/23 2:53 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
- Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a month, that's $165M in revenue,
- A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to 60 Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff, they aren't launching an external paying customer.) - The reported price per sat is $250k.
Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for sats.
- The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K cluster, that's 1200 a year.
That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats. Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there.
So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And that's just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff , R&D, etc .
Numbers kinda speak for themselves here.
I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for those services to completely replace terrestrial only service.
Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only niche? I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote: > > > On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote: >> Mark, >> >> In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. >> Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. >> Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US >> (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is >> no service. >> >> As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a >> focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 >> take rate. > > I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets > is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that, > since there is only so much money and resources to go around. > > What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the > opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are > capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low > hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative > provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread. > Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
Also: they plan to use Starship when it's available which has 10x more capacity. If it really is fully reusable as advertised, that is going to really drive down the launch cost.
Starship is years away from being flight ready. The most recent test launch from Texas was not a 'successful failure' as widely portrayed in the media. Reputable people who have been working in this field for decades have pointed out tons of massive problems that are not quick fixes. On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 6:56 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
Whether or not it makes business sense isn't really what I was talking about. I was talking about the home dish costing $1k. That sounds like it could easily be reduced significantly unless there is some underlying tech reason.
Also: they plan to use Starship when it's available which has 10x more capacity. If it really is fully reusable as advertised, that is going to really drive down the launch cost.
But your calculations don't take into account that they are not at anywhere close to a full constellation: they are only at 4k out of the 40k they need so they literally can't support higher numbers. Their new generation of satellite is also suppose to be doing some in-orbit routing or something like that which would I would assume will really help on the bandwidth front. How much that affects their maximum subscriber base when they are fully deployed I don't know but it's bound to be a lot more possible subs than they have now.
I mean, this could be a spectacular flop like Iridium but a lot has changed in 20 some years not least of which is the cost of launch.
Mike On 6/17/23 2:53 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the
real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
- Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a month, that's $165M in revenue,
- A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to 60 Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff, they aren't launching an external paying customer.) - The reported price per sat is $250k.
Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for sats.
- The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K cluster, that's 1200 a year.
That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats. Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there.
So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And that's just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff , R&D, etc .
Numbers kinda speak for themselves here.
I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he
does have big ambitions.
Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner
rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for those services to completely replace terrestrial only service.
Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only niche? I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote:
Mark,
In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is no service.
As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that, since there is only so much money and resources to go around.
What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread.
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
On 6/17/23 4:14 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
Also: they plan to use Starship when it's available which has 10x more capacity. If it really is fully reusable as advertised, that is going to really drive down the launch cost.
Starship is years away from being flight ready. The most recent test launch from Texas was not a 'successful failure' as widely portrayed in the media. Reputable people who have been working in this field for decades have pointed out tons of massive problems that are not quick fixes.
Betting that Starship won't be a factor is not a bet I'd make. And I'm definitely not a Musk fan boy. A lot of the same NASA types didn't believe they'd get where they are now either. Because... you know, vested interests. I'd bet that Starship will be a factor way before the Senate Launch System. Mike
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 5:16 PM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
Also: they plan to use Starship when it's available which has 10x more capacity. If it really is fully reusable as advertised, that is going to really drive down the launch cost.
Starship is years away from being flight ready. The most recent test launch from Texas was not a 'successful failure' as widely portrayed in the media. Reputable people who have been working in this field for decades have pointed out tons of massive problems that are not quick fixes.
1) I agree that they are years from flight ready, however the improvements in the queue for the next launch are already impressive. A lot of nay-saying concerns have been addressed since the launch. The environmental impact was far less than believed. An analysis of the dust spread across town was shown to just be sand, not vaporised fondag, as thought. While the everyday astronaut and starbase_csi can be thought of as fanbois, they are also producing the most quality reporting and analysis that exists: https://twitter.com/Erdayastronaut https://twitter.com/CSI_Starbase They are good folk to track. Eric Burger is a more conventional tech journalist covering all of space: https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace https://arstechnica.com/author/ericberger/ There are an amazing number of individuals reporting on daily progress, with live video feeds. There is really massive construction going on, replacing the existing megabay, the damaged tanks are being replaced rapidly, the launch site has been dug out and partially repaired, and a new launch license was issued for the next 6 months last week. The principal barriers to another launch are a successful test of the new water deluge system, and qualifying a more advanced flight termination system. The next ship and booster will possibly be tested next month, and these have replaced the hydrolic controls with electric and have better motor shielding in general. Yes, an utterly amazing amount of things need to go right to launch a spaceship, but ... my best bet for another launch of starship would be early september.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 6:56 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
Whether or not it makes business sense isn't really what I was talking about. I was talking about the home dish costing $1k. That sounds like it could easily be reduced significantly unless there is some underlying tech reason.
Also: they plan to use Starship when it's available which has 10x more capacity. If it really is fully reusable as advertised, that is going to really drive down the launch cost.
But your calculations don't take into account that they are not at anywhere close to a full constellation: they are only at 4k out of the 40k they need so they literally can't support higher numbers. Their new generation of satellite is also suppose to be doing some in-orbit routing or something like that which would I would assume will really help on the bandwidth front. How much that affects their maximum subscriber base when they are fully deployed I don't know but it's bound to be a lot more possible subs than they have now.
I mean, this could be a spectacular flop like Iridium but a lot has changed in 20 some years not least of which is the cost of launch.
Mike
On 6/17/23 2:53 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
- Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a month, that's $165M in revenue,
- A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to 60 Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff, they aren't launching an external paying customer.) - The reported price per sat is $250k.
Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for sats.
- The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K cluster, that's 1200 a year.
That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats. Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there.
So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And that's just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff , R&D, etc .
Numbers kinda speak for themselves here.
I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for those services to completely replace terrestrial only service.
Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only niche? I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote:
Mark,
In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is no service.
As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that, since there is only so much money and resources to go around.
What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread.
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
-- Podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7058793910227111937/ Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
The principal barriers to another launch are a successful test of the new water deluge system, and qualifying a more advanced flight termination system.
The fact that not only they tested WITHOUT a water deluge system the first time, OR a flame trench, is why the Cult of Musk will continue to hold them back. It's fascinating to me to watch him 'discover' solutions to problems solved 50 years ago that he chose to ignore. The environmental impact was far less than believed. An analysis of
the dust spread across town was shown to just be sand, not vaporised fondag, as thought.
The easily predictable environmental damage around the launch area still exists and is significant, and will take them months to clean up via the terms of their contract with the state of Texas. There is really massive construction going on, replacing the existing
megabay, the damaged tanks are being replaced rapidly, the launch site has been dug out and partially repaired, and a new launch license was issued for the next 6 months last week.
Also here, the fact that they even have LOX and CH4 thanks THAT CLOSE to the pad itself is borderline negligent, but still absolutely mind boggling. On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 8:04 PM Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 5:16 PM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
Also: they plan to use Starship when it's available which has 10x more
capacity. If it really is fully reusable as advertised, that is going to really drive down the launch cost.
Starship is years away from being flight ready. The most recent test launch from Texas was not a 'successful failure' as widely portrayed in the media. Reputable people who have been working in this field for decades have pointed out tons of massive problems that are not quick fixes.
1) I agree that they are years from flight ready, however the improvements in the queue for the next launch are already impressive. A lot of nay-saying concerns have been addressed since the launch.
The environmental impact was far less than believed. An analysis of the dust spread across town was shown to just be sand, not vaporised fondag, as thought.
While the everyday astronaut and starbase_csi can be thought of as fanbois, they are also producing the most quality reporting and analysis that exists:
https://twitter.com/Erdayastronaut https://twitter.com/CSI_Starbase
They are good folk to track.
Eric Burger is a more conventional tech journalist covering all of space:
https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace
https://arstechnica.com/author/ericberger/
There are an amazing number of individuals reporting on daily progress, with live video feeds.
There is really massive construction going on, replacing the existing megabay, the damaged tanks are being replaced rapidly, the launch site has been dug out and partially repaired, and a new launch license was issued for the next 6 months last week.
The principal barriers to another launch are a successful test of the new water deluge system, and qualifying a more advanced flight termination system. The next ship and booster will possibly be tested next month, and these have replaced the hydrolic controls with electric and have better motor shielding in general.
Yes, an utterly amazing amount of things need to go right to launch a spaceship, but ... my best bet for another launch of starship would be early september.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 6:56 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
Whether or not it makes business sense isn't really what I was talking
Also: they plan to use Starship when it's available which has 10x more
capacity. If it really is fully reusable as advertised, that is going to really drive down the launch cost.
But your calculations don't take into account that they are not at
anywhere close to a full constellation: they are only at 4k out of the 40k
I mean, this could be a spectacular flop like Iridium but a lot has
changed in 20 some years not least of which is the cost of launch.
Mike
On 6/17/23 2:53 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are
- Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a month,
- A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to
60 Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume
- The reported price per sat is $250k.
Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for sats.
- The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K cluster, that's 1200 a year.
That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats. Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there.
So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And that's just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff , R&D, etc .
Numbers kinda speak for themselves here.
I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for
Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only
niche? I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the
incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are
Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote: > Mark, > > In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. > Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. > Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US > (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there
is
> no service. > > As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a > focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 > take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers
since there is only so much money and resources to go around.
What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other
about. I was talking about the home dish costing $1k. That sounds like it could easily be reduced significantly unless there is some underlying tech reason. they need so they literally can't support higher numbers. Their new generation of satellite is also suppose to be doing some in-orbit routing or something like that which would I would assume will really help on the bandwidth front. How much that affects their maximum subscriber base when they are fully deployed I don't know but it's bound to be a lot more possible subs than they have now. the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll. that's $165M in revenue, the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff, they aren't launching an external paying customer.) those services to completely replace terrestrial only service. the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll. that, thread.
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
-- Podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7058793910227111937/ Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
Heh, its kinda sad that noone mentions space environment impact at all. How that 40k sats will pollute already decently pulluted orbit. I wonder if decommision process will be clean (burn in atmosphere). If there will be failure rate, we will end up w/ dead sats at orbit. I really wonder if thats really necessary. I think that money could be better spent building earth infra reaching those under-serviced places. Cheaper, easy maintenance, less centralization. We also need orbit for more importand sats out there than internet. GPS, earth monitoring infra, space telescopes, R&D. ---------- Original message ---------- From: Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> To: Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: FCC Chair Rosenworcel Proposes to Investigate Impact of Data Caps Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2023 21:11:53 -0400
The principal barriers to another launch are a successful test of the new water deluge system, and qualifying a more advanced flight termination system.
The fact that not only they tested WITHOUT a water deluge system the first time, OR a flame trench, is why the Cult of Musk will continue to hold them back. It's fascinating to me to watch him 'discover' solutions to problems solved 50 years ago that he chose to ignore. The environmental impact was far less than believed. An analysis of
the dust spread across town was shown to just be sand, not vaporised fondag, as thought.
The easily predictable environmental damage around the launch area still exists and is significant, and will take them months to clean up via the terms of their contract with the state of Texas. There is really massive construction going on, replacing the existing
megabay, the damaged tanks are being replaced rapidly, the launch site has been dug out and partially repaired, and a new launch license was issued for the next 6 months last week.
Also here, the fact that they even have LOX and CH4 thanks THAT CLOSE to the pad itself is borderline negligent, but still absolutely mind boggling. On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 8:04˙˙PM Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 5:16˙˙PM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
Also: they plan to use Starship when it's available which has 10x more
capacity. If it really is fully reusable as advertised, that is going to really drive down the launch cost.
Starship is years away from being flight ready. The most recent test launch from Texas was not a 'successful failure' as widely portrayed in the media. Reputable people who have been working in this field for decades have pointed out tons of massive problems that are not quick fixes.
1) I agree that they are years from flight ready, however the improvements in the queue for the next launch are already impressive. A lot of nay-saying concerns have been addressed since the launch.
The environmental impact was far less than believed. An analysis of the dust spread across town was shown to just be sand, not vaporised fondag, as thought.
While the everyday astronaut and starbase_csi can be thought of as fanbois, they are also producing the most quality reporting and analysis that exists:
https://twitter.com/Erdayastronaut https://twitter.com/CSI_Starbase
They are good folk to track.
Eric Burger is a more conventional tech journalist covering all of space:
https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace
https://arstechnica.com/author/ericberger/
There are an amazing number of individuals reporting on daily progress, with live video feeds.
There is really massive construction going on, replacing the existing megabay, the damaged tanks are being replaced rapidly, the launch site has been dug out and partially repaired, and a new launch license was issued for the next 6 months last week.
The principal barriers to another launch are a successful test of the new water deluge system, and qualifying a more advanced flight termination system. The next ship and booster will possibly be tested next month, and these have replaced the hydrolic controls with electric and have better motor shielding in general.
Yes, an utterly amazing amount of things need to go right to launch a spaceship, but ... my best bet for another launch of starship would be early september.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 6:56˙˙PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
Whether or not it makes business sense isn't really what I was talking
Also: they plan to use Starship when it's available which has 10x more
capacity. If it really is fully reusable as advertised, that is going to really drive down the launch cost.
But your calculations don't take into account that they are not at
anywhere close to a full constellation: they are only at 4k out of the 40k
I mean, this could be a spectacular flop like Iridium but a lot has
changed in 20 some years not least of which is the cost of launch.
Mike
On 6/17/23 2:53 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are
- Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a month,
- A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to
60 Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume
- The reported price per sat is $250k.
Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for sats.
- The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K cluster, that's 1200 a year.
That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats. Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there.
So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And that's just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff , R&D, etc .
Numbers kinda speak for themselves here.
I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38˙˙PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for
Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only
niche? I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the
incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are
Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17˙˙PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote: > Mark, > > In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. > Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. > Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US > (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there
is
> no service. > > As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a > focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 > take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers
since there is only so much money and resources to go around.
What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other
about. I was talking about the home dish costing $1k. That sounds like it could easily be reduced significantly unless there is some underlying tech reason. they need so they literally can't support higher numbers. Their new generation of satellite is also suppose to be doing some in-orbit routing or something like that which would I would assume will really help on the bandwidth front. How much that affects their maximum subscriber base when they are fully deployed I don't know but it's bound to be a lot more possible subs than they have now. the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll. that's $165M in revenue, the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff, they aren't launching an external paying customer.) those services to completely replace terrestrial only service. the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll. that, thread.
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
-- Podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7058793910227111937/ Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
They are supposed to automatically de-orbit in ~5 years (atmospheric drag) if they are DOA based on a quick search. That does mean that they are space junk for a while but not permanent space junk.
On 19 Jun 2023, at 17:44, borg@uu3.net wrote:
Heh, its kinda sad that noone mentions space environment impact at all. How that 40k sats will pollute already decently pulluted orbit.
I wonder if decommision process will be clean (burn in atmosphere). If there will be failure rate, we will end up w/ dead sats at orbit.
I really wonder if thats really necessary. I think that money could be better spent building earth infra reaching those under-serviced places. Cheaper, easy maintenance, less centralization.
We also need orbit for more importand sats out there than internet. GPS, earth monitoring infra, space telescopes, R&D.
---------- Original message ----------
From: Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> To: Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: FCC Chair Rosenworcel Proposes to Investigate Impact of Data Caps Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2023 21:11:53 -0400
The principal barriers to another launch are a successful test of the new water deluge system, and qualifying a more advanced flight termination system.
The fact that not only they tested WITHOUT a water deluge system the first time, OR a flame trench, is why the Cult of Musk will continue to hold them back. It's fascinating to me to watch him 'discover' solutions to problems solved 50 years ago that he chose to ignore.
The environmental impact was far less than believed. An analysis of
the dust spread across town was shown to just be sand, not vaporised fondag, as thought.
The easily predictable environmental damage around the launch area still exists and is significant, and will take them months to clean up via the terms of their contract with the state of Texas.
There is really massive construction going on, replacing the existing
megabay, the damaged tanks are being replaced rapidly, the launch site has been dug out and partially repaired, and a new launch license was issued for the next 6 months last week.
Also here, the fact that they even have LOX and CH4 thanks THAT CLOSE to the pad itself is borderline negligent, but still absolutely mind boggling.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 8:04˙˙PM Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 5:16˙˙PM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
Also: they plan to use Starship when it's available which has 10x more
capacity. If it really is fully reusable as advertised, that is going to really drive down the launch cost.
Starship is years away from being flight ready. The most recent test launch from Texas was not a 'successful failure' as widely portrayed in the media. Reputable people who have been working in this field for decades have pointed out tons of massive problems that are not quick fixes.
1) I agree that they are years from flight ready, however the improvements in the queue for the next launch are already impressive. A lot of nay-saying concerns have been addressed since the launch.
The environmental impact was far less than believed. An analysis of the dust spread across town was shown to just be sand, not vaporised fondag, as thought.
While the everyday astronaut and starbase_csi can be thought of as fanbois, they are also producing the most quality reporting and analysis that exists:
https://twitter.com/Erdayastronaut https://twitter.com/CSI_Starbase
They are good folk to track.
Eric Burger is a more conventional tech journalist covering all of space:
https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace
https://arstechnica.com/author/ericberger/
There are an amazing number of individuals reporting on daily progress, with live video feeds.
There is really massive construction going on, replacing the existing megabay, the damaged tanks are being replaced rapidly, the launch site has been dug out and partially repaired, and a new launch license was issued for the next 6 months last week.
The principal barriers to another launch are a successful test of the new water deluge system, and qualifying a more advanced flight termination system. The next ship and booster will possibly be tested next month, and these have replaced the hydrolic controls with electric and have better motor shielding in general.
Yes, an utterly amazing amount of things need to go right to launch a spaceship, but ... my best bet for another launch of starship would be early september.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 6:56˙˙PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
Whether or not it makes business sense isn't really what I was talking
Also: they plan to use Starship when it's available which has 10x more
capacity. If it really is fully reusable as advertised, that is going to really drive down the launch cost.
But your calculations don't take into account that they are not at
anywhere close to a full constellation: they are only at 4k out of the 40k
I mean, this could be a spectacular flop like Iridium but a lot has
changed in 20 some years not least of which is the cost of launch.
Mike
On 6/17/23 2:53 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are
- Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a month,
- A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to
60 Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume
- The reported price per sat is $250k.
Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for sats.
- The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K cluster, that's 1200 a year.
That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats. Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there.
So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And that's just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff , R&D, etc .
Numbers kinda speak for themselves here.
I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38˙˙PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for
Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only
niche? I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the
incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are
Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17˙˙PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote: > > > On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote: >> Mark, >> >> In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. >> Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. >> Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US >> (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there
is
>> no service. >> >> As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a >> focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 >> take rate. > > I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets > is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers
> since there is only so much money and resources to go around. > > What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the > opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are > capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low > hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative > provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other
about. I was talking about the home dish costing $1k. That sounds like it could easily be reduced significantly unless there is some underlying tech reason. they need so they literally can't support higher numbers. Their new generation of satellite is also suppose to be doing some in-orbit routing or something like that which would I would assume will really help on the bandwidth front. How much that affects their maximum subscriber base when they are fully deployed I don't know but it's bound to be a lot more possible subs than they have now. the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll. that's $165M in revenue, the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff, they aren't launching an external paying customer.) those services to completely replace terrestrial only service. the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll. that, thread.
> Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
-- Podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7058793910227111937/ Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
-- Mark Andrews, ISC 1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: marka@isc.org
They are supposed to automatically de-orbit in ~5 years (atmospheric drag) if they are DOA based on a quick search. That does mean that they are space junk for a while but not permanent space junk.
Sorta. At 500km, an uncontrolled object can take around 10 years to deorbit naturally. It's a function of cross sectional area, mass, and drag coefficient. An uncontrolled object will also, over time, slowly orient itself to a position of least drag, which thereby extends the curve. This is also subject to natural atmospheric density fluctuations. 5 years for a spent bird at 550km is most likely the best possible case, and won't be the norm. On Mon, Jun 19, 2023 at 4:32 AM Mark Andrews <marka@isc.org> wrote:
They are supposed to automatically de-orbit in ~5 years (atmospheric drag) if they are DOA based on a quick search. That does mean that they are space junk for a while but not permanent space junk.
On 19 Jun 2023, at 17:44, borg@uu3.net wrote:
Heh, its kinda sad that noone mentions space environment impact at all. How that 40k sats will pollute already decently pulluted orbit.
I wonder if decommision process will be clean (burn in atmosphere). If there will be failure rate, we will end up w/ dead sats at orbit.
I really wonder if thats really necessary. I think that money could be better spent building earth infra reaching those under-serviced places. Cheaper, easy maintenance, less centralization.
We also need orbit for more importand sats out there than internet. GPS, earth monitoring infra, space telescopes, R&D.
---------- Original message ----------
From: Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> To: Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: FCC Chair Rosenworcel Proposes to Investigate Impact of Data Caps Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2023 21:11:53 -0400
The principal barriers to another launch are a successful test of the new water deluge system, and qualifying a more advanced flight termination system.
The fact that not only they tested WITHOUT a water deluge system the first time, OR a flame trench, is why the Cult of Musk will continue to hold them back. It's fascinating to me to watch him 'discover' solutions to problems solved 50 years ago that he chose to ignore.
The environmental impact was far less than believed. An analysis of
the dust spread across town was shown to just be sand, not vaporised fondag, as thought.
The easily predictable environmental damage around the launch area still exists and is significant, and will take them months to clean up via the terms of their contract with the state of Texas.
There is really massive construction going on, replacing the existing
megabay, the damaged tanks are being replaced rapidly, the launch site has been dug out and partially repaired, and a new launch license was issued for the next 6 months last week.
Also here, the fact that they even have LOX and CH4 thanks THAT CLOSE to the pad itself is borderline negligent, but still absolutely mind boggling.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 8:04˙˙PM Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:
Also: they plan to use Starship when it's available which has 10x more
capacity. If it really is fully reusable as advertised, that is going to really drive down the launch cost.
Starship is years away from being flight ready. The most recent test launch from Texas was not a 'successful failure' as widely portrayed in
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 5:16˙˙PM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote: the media. Reputable people who have been working in this field for decades have pointed out tons of massive problems that are not quick fixes.
1) I agree that they are years from flight ready, however the improvements in the queue for the next launch are already impressive. A lot of nay-saying concerns have been addressed since the launch.
The environmental impact was far less than believed. An analysis of the dust spread across town was shown to just be sand, not vaporised fondag, as thought.
While the everyday astronaut and starbase_csi can be thought of as fanbois, they are also producing the most quality reporting and analysis that exists:
https://twitter.com/Erdayastronaut https://twitter.com/CSI_Starbase
They are good folk to track.
Eric Burger is a more conventional tech journalist covering all of space:
https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace
https://arstechnica.com/author/ericberger/
There are an amazing number of individuals reporting on daily progress, with live video feeds.
There is really massive construction going on, replacing the existing megabay, the damaged tanks are being replaced rapidly, the launch site has been dug out and partially repaired, and a new launch license was issued for the next 6 months last week.
The principal barriers to another launch are a successful test of the new water deluge system, and qualifying a more advanced flight termination system. The next ship and booster will possibly be tested next month, and these have replaced the hydrolic controls with electric and have better motor shielding in general.
Yes, an utterly amazing amount of things need to go right to launch a spaceship, but ... my best bet for another launch of starship would be early september.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 6:56˙˙PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
Whether or not it makes business sense isn't really what I was talking
Also: they plan to use Starship when it's available which has 10x more
capacity. If it really is fully reusable as advertised, that is going to really drive down the launch cost.
But your calculations don't take into account that they are not at
anywhere close to a full constellation: they are only at 4k out of the 40k
I mean, this could be a spectacular flop like Iridium but a lot has
changed in 20 some years not least of which is the cost of launch.
Mike
On 6/17/23 2:53 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are
- Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a month,
- A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to
60 Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume
- The reported price per sat is $250k.
Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for sats.
- The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K cluster, that's 1200 a year.
That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats. Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there.
So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And that's just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff , R&D, etc .
Numbers kinda speak for themselves here.
I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38˙˙PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote: > > Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner > rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for
Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only
niche? I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the
incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are
Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17˙˙PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com>
wrote:
> > > On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote: >> >> >> On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote: >>> Mark, >>> >>> In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. >>> Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. >>> Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US >>> (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is >>> no service. >>> >>> As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a >>> focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 >>> take rate. >> >> I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets >> is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers
>> since there is only so much money and resources to go around. >> >> What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the >> opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are >> capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low >> hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative >> provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other
about. I was talking about the home dish costing $1k. That sounds like it could easily be reduced significantly unless there is some underlying tech reason. they need so they literally can't support higher numbers. Their new generation of satellite is also suppose to be doing some in-orbit routing or something like that which would I would assume will really help on the bandwidth front. How much that affects their maximum subscriber base when they are fully deployed I don't know but it's bound to be a lot more possible subs than they have now. the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll. that's $165M in revenue, the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff, they aren't launching an external paying customer.) those services to completely replace terrestrial only service. the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll. that, thread.
>> > Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner > rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if > they do they could compete with their caps. > > Mike >
-- Podcast:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7058793910227111937/
Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
-- Mark Andrews, ISC 1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: marka@isc.org
I am happy to see the conversation about starlink escaping over here, because it is increasingly a game-changing technology (I also run the starlink mailing list, cc´d)... On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 3:56 PM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics.
There is a whole other cluster on the drawing boards, called Starshield, which you can read about here: https://www.spacex.com/starshield/ The current "retail"economics are limited to US allies as a result of the ukraine war showing how important information and bandwidth are to modern warfare. There are also political implications to downlinks in each country. I imagine, for example, that India is holding off on licensing until Musk gets them a tesla factory. Multiple other countries are making a huge investment into retaining control of the "spacewaves", so there´s that also.
I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time.
Throttling demand is not how I would put it. Each cell has a limited capacity, so starlink has been running promotions to get more subscribers into more rural cells where the capacity exists. I have kvetched elsewhere about how poorly starlink manages bandwidth and bufferbloat currently, but they are largely better than modern day 5G and DSL, so...
Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes?
The original cost/dish was about 2k, so they were selling those at well below the install price, with a ROI of about 12 months, given that figure. I imagine with mass manufacturing the cost/dish has come down substantially, and they also charge a realistic price on the business quality dish of $2500. It would not surprise me if the basic dishy essentially cost less than 500 to manufacture nowadays. The default wifi router, which many replace, cannot be more than 50 dollars on the BOM.
I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
There is no truck roll. They have gone to amazing extants in - put the dish in a clear area, power it up, you are on. Establishing infrastructure, like downlinks, connected near fiber in civilization does have a large cost, takes time, and is also subject to government regulation.
- Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a month, that's $165M in revenue,
Creating A 2B dollar/year business in 4 years is quite impressive. A reasonable projection would be 10m subs in 4 more years, e.g. 10B/year. That aint' chicken scratch. In fact, I think it funds humanity´s expansion into the solar system quite handily.
- A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to 60 Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff, they aren't launching an external paying customer.)
- The reported price per sat is $250k.
There are multiple sat types, the mini v2 (which can only be flown on the falcon 9, is rumored to cost about that much) Starship had had a much larger, much more highly capable sat designed for it, but it is running a few years behind schedule. The hope for that was that launch costs would decline even further. Also OPEX - running this network - is probably a substantial cost. I have lost track of the number of downlink stations established (over 200 now) but I would guess those are about 1m per. There is a really amazing site that looks at this stuff called starlink.sx.
Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for sats.
The present day capacity, even if they were to do no more launches, is still underused. Roughly half the USA has no starlink service yet, multiple countries have been slow to license, and nearly all of Africa remains uncovered. Maritime and air are big sources of new business. I try to stress it is where people are but infrastructure isn´t is where starlink really shines, and that very little bandwidth is required for things like email and chat.
- The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K cluster, that's 1200 a year.
Where did you see that? So far as I can tell, the failure rate, exclusive of one launch lost to solar expansion, is trending towards zero. Also, maneuvering thrust (documented somewhere) has been quite under expectations, in terms of operating fuel they could use the existing sats for far, far longer than the intended 5 year operational lifetime, in this regard.
That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats. Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there.
So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And that's just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff , R&D, etc .
Numbers kinda speak for themselves here.
I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for those services to completely replace terrestrial only service.
I agree they will not replace terrestrial service, but maritime, roaming, airplanes, and rural are big enough markets.
Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only niche? I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote:
Mark,
In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is no service.
As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that, since there is only so much money and resources to go around.
What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread.
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
-- Podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7058793910227111937/ Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
Where did you see that? So far as I can tell, the failure rate, exclusive of one launch lost to solar expansion, is trending towards zero. Also, maneuvering thrust (documented somewhere) has been quite under expectations, in terms of operating fuel they could use the existing sats for far, far longer than the intended 5 year operational lifetime, in this regard.
https://phys.org/news/2020-10-starlink-satellites.html I would highly dispute any analysis that the failure rate was trending towards zero. That doesn't happen on the ground, let alone in orbit. On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 7:09 PM Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:
I am happy to see the conversation about starlink escaping over here, because it is increasingly a game-changing technology (I also run the starlink mailing list, cc´d)...
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 3:56 PM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote: the real economics.
There is a whole other cluster on the drawing boards, called Starshield, which you can read about here: https://www.spacex.com/starshield/
The current "retail"economics are limited to US allies as a result of the ukraine war showing how important information and bandwidth are to modern warfare. There are also political implications to downlinks in each country.
I imagine, for example, that India is holding off on licensing until Musk gets them a tesla factory.
Multiple other countries are making a huge investment into retaining control of the "spacewaves", so there´s that also.
I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time.
Throttling demand is not how I would put it. Each cell has a limited capacity, so starlink has been running promotions to get more subscribers into more rural cells where the capacity exists.
I have kvetched elsewhere about how poorly starlink manages bandwidth and bufferbloat currently, but they are largely better than modern day 5G and DSL, so...
Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes?
The original cost/dish was about 2k, so they were selling those at well below the install price, with a ROI of about 12 months, given that figure. I imagine with mass manufacturing the cost/dish has come down substantially, and they also charge a realistic price on the business quality dish of $2500. It would not surprise me if the basic dishy essentially cost less than 500 to manufacture nowadays.
The default wifi router, which many replace, cannot be more than 50 dollars on the BOM.
I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
There is no truck roll. They have gone to amazing extants in - put the dish in a clear area, power it up, you are on.
Establishing infrastructure, like downlinks, connected near fiber in civilization does have a large cost, takes time, and is also subject to government regulation.
- Starlink currently reports around 1.5M subscribers. At $110 a month,
that's $165M in revenue,
Creating A 2B dollar/year business in 4 years is quite impressive. A reasonable projection would be 10m subs in 4 more years, e.g. 10B/year. That aint' chicken scratch. In fact, I think it funds humanity´s expansion into the solar system quite handily.
- A Falcon 9 launch is billed out at $67M. A Falcon 9 can carry up to 60 Starlink sats. That's ~667 launches to reach the stated goal of 40k sats in the constellation. So roughly $45B in just launch costs, if you assume the public launch price. (Because if they are launching their own stuff, they aren't launching an external paying customer.)
- The reported price per sat is $250k.
There are multiple sat types, the mini v2 (which can only be flown on the falcon 9, is rumored to cost about that much)
Starship had had a much larger, much more highly capable sat designed for it, but it is running a few years behind schedule. The hope for that was that launch costs would decline even further.
Also OPEX - running this network - is probably a substantial cost. I have lost track of the number of downlink stations established (over 200 now) but I would guess those are about 1m per.
There is a really amazing site that looks at this stuff called starlink.sx .
Assuming they give themselves a friendly internal discount, the orbital
buildout cost are in the neighborhood of $30B for launches, and $10B for sats.
The present day capacity, even if they were to do no more launches, is still underused. Roughly half the USA has no starlink service yet, multiple countries have been slow to license, and nearly all of Africa remains uncovered. Maritime and air are big sources of new business. I try to stress it is where people are but infrastructure isn´t is where starlink really shines,
and that very little bandwidth is required for things like email and chat.
- The satellite failure rate is stated to be ~ 3% annually. On a 40K
cluster, that's 1200 a year.
Where did you see that? So far as I can tell, the failure rate, exclusive of one launch lost to solar expansion, is trending towards zero. Also, maneuvering thrust (documented somewhere) has been quite under expectations, in terms of operating fuel they could use the existing sats for far, far longer than the intended 5 year operational lifetime, in this regard.
That's about 20 more launches a year, and $300M for replacement sats.
Let's round off and say that's $1B a year there.
So far, that's a $40B buildout with a $1B annual run rate. And that's
just the orbital costs. We haven't even calculated the manufacturing costs of the receiver dishes, terrestrial network infra cost , opex from staff , R&D, etc .
Numbers kinda speak for themselves here.
I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will
he does have big ambitions.
Ambition is good. But reality tends to win the day. As does math.
On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 4:38 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/17/23 1:25 PM, Tom Beecher wrote:
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don't make sense for
those services to completely replace terrestrial only service.
I agree they will not replace terrestrial service, but maritime, roaming, airplanes, and rural are big enough markets.
Why would they put up 40000 satellites if their ambition is only niche?
I mean, I get that Musk is sort of a cuckoo bird but say what you will he does have big ambitions.
From my standpoint, they don't have to completely replace the
incumbents. I'd be perfectly happy just keeping them honest.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not sure that the current economics are
the real economics. I'm pretty sure they've been purposefully throttling demand because they still don't have the capacity so it would make sense to overcharge in the mean time. Is there something inherent in their cpe that makes them much more expensive than, say, satellite tv dishes? I can see marginally more because of the LEO aspect, but isn't that mainly just software? It wouldn't surprise me that the main cost is the truck roll.
Mike
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote:
Mark,
In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is no service.
As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a
take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers
since there is only so much money and resources to go around.
What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other
~1/3 that, thread.
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
-- Podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7058793910227111937/ Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
Assuming that Starlink and other LEO are capable of doing so. They've made some lofty goals that have thus far, failed to materialize in many areas (while in many areas, they have). ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com Midwest-IX http://www.midwest-ix.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Thomas" <mike@mtcc.com> To: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Friday, June 16, 2023 3:16:22 PM Subject: Re: FCC Chair Rosenworcel Proposes to Investigate Impact of Data Caps On 6/16/23 1:09 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote:
Mark,
In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is no service.
As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that, since there is only so much money and resources to go around.
What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread.
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps. Mike
You're assuming that an uncapped service is viable to offer. In many areas, it is. In many areas, it is not. ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com Midwest-IX http://www.midwest-ix.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Tinka" <mark@tinka.africa> To: "Josh Luthman" <josh@imaginenetworksllc.com> Cc: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Friday, June 16, 2023 3:09:08 PM Subject: Re: FCC Chair Rosenworcel Proposes to Investigate Impact of Data Caps On 6/16/23 21:19, Josh Luthman wrote:
Mark,
In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US (and I'm going to assume it's worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is no service.
As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a focus for us and for the urban market it's tough to survive on a ~1/3 take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that, since there is only so much money and resources to go around. What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread. Mark.
On 6/19/23 14:56, Mike Hammett wrote:
You're assuming that an uncapped service is viable to offer. In many areas, it is. In many areas, it is not.
It is viable for mobile services, even though I think mobile operators have taken the model a little too far. But for fixed line services, it is mainly used to print free money, or limit investment in the network. I'm okay with either model an operator chooses to take, because until someone else comes along to break capped services on fixed line, there isn't much anyone can do about it. Mark.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. When you go down in density, your fixed cost per customer really escalates and you simply can't afford to provision as much as you'd like to. When you leave glass as a transport mechanism, scaling isn't easy. When you don't have a wireline to the customer prem, scaling isn't easy. You might have a licensed backhaul going 10 - 20 miles to feed a remote cluster of customers (be it wireless, copper, coax, or glass as the last mile). Those are more or less limited to about 1.5 gb/s. Spectrum availability can reduce that. You can sometimes stack them, but again, spectrum availability would be king in that decision. You might have fixed wireless as the last mile. We're starting to see platforms capable of multi-hundred megabit per customer with a sector capacity of low gigabits, but again, spectrum availability comes into play here. Those solutions require line of sight (or close to it) and only go a few miles. The systems that can penetrate foliage really cut your per-sector capacity to around 100 megabit, shared amongst all customers. Those are simply limitations of physics. When you don't have the benefits of scale, the only viable path forward in a managed setting is usage-based billing, with some amount of included data. ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com Midwest-IX http://www.midwest-ix.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Tinka" <mark@tinka.africa> To: "Mike Hammett" <nanog@ics-il.net> Cc: nanog@nanog.org, "Josh Luthman" <josh@imaginenetworksllc.com> Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2023 12:44:54 AM Subject: Re: FCC Chair Rosenworcel Proposes to Investigate Impact of Data Caps On 6/19/23 14:56, Mike Hammett wrote: You're assuming that an uncapped service is viable to offer. In many areas, it is. In many areas, it is not. It is viable for mobile services, even though I think mobile operators have taken the model a little too far. But for fixed line services, it is mainly used to print free money, or limit investment in the network. I'm okay with either model an operator chooses to take, because until someone else comes along to break capped services on fixed line, there isn't much anyone can do about it. Mark.
On 6/20/23 15:20, Mike Hammett wrote:
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
When you go down in density, your fixed cost per customer really escalates and you simply can't afford to provision as much as you'd like to. When you leave glass as a transport mechanism, scaling isn't easy. When you don't have a wireline to the customer prem, scaling isn't easy.
You might have a licensed backhaul going 10 - 20 miles to feed a remote cluster of customers (be it wireless, copper, coax, or glass as the last mile). Those are more or less limited to about 1.5 gb/s. Spectrum availability can reduce that. You can sometimes stack them, but again, spectrum availability would be king in that decision. You might have fixed wireless as the last mile. We're starting to see platforms capable of multi-hundred megabit per customer with a sector capacity of low gigabits, but again, spectrum availability comes into play here. Those solutions require line of sight (or close to it) and only go a few miles. The systems that can penetrate foliage really cut your per-sector capacity to around 100 megabit, shared amongst all customers. Those are simply limitations of physics.
When you don't have the benefits of scale, the only viable path forward in a managed setting is usage-based billing, with some amount of included data.
We are saying the same thing re: mobile (when I say mobile I mean wireless) providers. Because spectrum is a limitation, capped services make sense. When I say "fixed line", I mean end-to-end, i.e., from CPE to nearest ISP PoP, all on wire. In such a case, if an operator is still offering a capped service, it is because they have no incentive (competition) to do otherwise. Mark.
Or the investment to upgrade doesn’t make financial sense.
On Jun 20, 2023, at 9:54 AM, Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa> wrote:
On 6/20/23 15:20, Mike Hammett wrote:
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
When you go down in density, your fixed cost per customer really escalates and you simply can't afford to provision as much as you'd like to. When you leave glass as a transport mechanism, scaling isn't easy. When you don't have a wireline to the customer prem, scaling isn't easy.
You might have a licensed backhaul going 10 - 20 miles to feed a remote cluster of customers (be it wireless, copper, coax, or glass as the last mile). Those are more or less limited to about 1.5 gb/s. Spectrum availability can reduce that. You can sometimes stack them, but again, spectrum availability would be king in that decision. You might have fixed wireless as the last mile. We're starting to see platforms capable of multi-hundred megabit per customer with a sector capacity of low gigabits, but again, spectrum availability comes into play here. Those solutions require line of sight (or close to it) and only go a few miles. The systems that can penetrate foliage really cut your per-sector capacity to around 100 megabit, shared amongst all customers. Those are simply limitations of physics.
When you don't have the benefits of scale, the only viable path forward in a managed setting is usage-based billing, with some amount of included data.
We are saying the same thing re: mobile (when I say mobile I mean wireless) providers. Because spectrum is a limitation, capped services make sense.
When I say "fixed line", I mean end-to-end, i.e., from CPE to nearest ISP PoP, all on wire. In such a case, if an operator is still offering a capped service, it is because they have no incentive (competition) to do otherwise.
Mark.
On Jun 16, 2023, at 11:27, Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa> wrote:
On 6/16/23 18:41, Michael Thomas wrote:
Is 1.2 TB enough for a typical cord cutter? I just looked at mine and it looks to be about 300GB/month, but we may not be typical for your average family with kids, say.
For residential services, the competition should easily outscore any provider that still delivers capped Internet.
It's 2023...
Mark.
Competition… You’re hilarious… Here’s my current choices: Local WISP: Excellent service, great guy, tops out at 60MBPS. AT&T: Awful service, but no worse than Comcast. Tops out at 768Kbps down (Yes, Kbps) and 384Kbps up. Ugh. 5G (various providers): Lousy service, no inbound connections allowed (they stateful firewall everything), many no longer give a public IPv4. Not an option for my needs since GRE is an essential capability. There is no REAL competition to Comcast in my area. I’m not in the sticks, I’m in the so called “capitol of Silicon Valley”, aka San Jose, CA. If you get further out of the urban areas, the lack of competitors gets even worse. Competition, indeed… Very few places in the US have actual competition. Owen
I always looked at Comcast's caps as pre-emptive fodder for future FCC bargaining. The next time they want to do something with the FCC's approval and the commission wanted a concession, they would offer it up for the block. -Steve On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 1:41 AM Crist Clark <cjc+nanog@pumpky.net> wrote:
Comcast still has data caps. My service is 1.2 TB per month. If we get close, we get a warning email. If we were to go over (hasn’t happened yet), we get billed per additional 500 MB.
However, I just looked at my account usage for the first time for a few months, and somehow have had zero usage since March of this year.
On Thu, Jun 15, 2023 at 5:48 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 6/15/23 3:19 PM, Sean Donelan wrote:
While a lot of ISPs gave up on data caps, the language is still lurking in many Terms Of Service.
https://www.fcc.gov/document/chair-rosenworcel-proposes-investigate-impact-d...
proposed Notice of Inquiry to learn more about how broadband providers use data caps on consumer plans. Data caps, or usage limits, are a common practice where an internet service provider (ISP) restricts how much bandwidth or data a consumer uses, though many broadband ISPs temporarily or permanently refrained from enforcing or imposing data caps in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the agency would like to better understand the current state of data caps, their impact on consumers, and whether the Commission should consider taking action to ensure that data caps do not cause harm to competition or consumers’ ability to access broadband Internet services.
So why did they back off? Cost too much in support calls with pissed people? Bad publicity? People can't meaningfully use the offered bandwidth these days? Something else?
Mike
Cox also has a 1.2 TB cap. If I can believe my graphs, the metered Cox connection (video streaming primarily for wife) is about 90 GB the month of April and the unmetered ATT fiber WFH for me is about 370 GB. Total LAN is about 450 GB. Napkin math but it's pretty close. ________________________________ From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+keiths=salonbiz.com@nanog.org> on behalf of Steve Meuse <smeuse@mara.org> Sent: Friday, June 16, 2023 3:59 PM To: cjc+nanog@pumpky.net <cjc+nanog@pumpky.net> Cc: nanog@nanog.org <nanog@nanog.org> Subject: Re: FCC Chair Rosenworcel Proposes to Investigate Impact of Data Caps I always looked at Comcast's caps as pre-emptive fodder for future FCC bargaining. The next time they want to do something with the FCC's approval and the commission wanted a concession, they would offer it up for the block. -Steve On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 1:41 AM Crist Clark <cjc+nanog@pumpky.net<mailto:cjc%2Bnanog@pumpky.net>> wrote: Comcast still has data caps. My service is 1.2 TB per month. If we get close, we get a warning email. If we were to go over (hasn’t happened yet), we get billed per additional 500 MB. However, I just looked at my account usage for the first time for a few months, and somehow have had zero usage since March of this year. On Thu, Jun 15, 2023 at 5:48 PM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com<mailto:mike@mtcc.com>> wrote: On 6/15/23 3:19 PM, Sean Donelan wrote:
While a lot of ISPs gave up on data caps, the language is still lurking in many Terms Of Service.
https://www.fcc.gov/document/chair-rosenworcel-proposes-investigate-impact-d...
proposed Notice of Inquiry to learn more about how broadband providers use data caps on consumer plans. Data caps, or usage limits, are a common practice where an internet service provider (ISP) restricts how much bandwidth or data a consumer uses, though many broadband ISPs temporarily or permanently refrained from enforcing or imposing data caps in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the agency would like to better understand the current state of data caps, their impact on consumers, and whether the Commission should consider taking action to ensure that data caps do not cause harm to competition or consumers’ ability to access broadband Internet services.
So why did they back off? Cost too much in support calls with pissed people? Bad publicity? People can't meaningfully use the offered bandwidth these days? Something else? Mike
On 6/16/23 3:18 PM, Keith Stokes wrote:
Cox also has a 1.2 TB cap.
If I can believe my graphs, the metered Cox connection (video streaming primarily for wife) is about 90 GB the month of April and the unmetered ATT fiber WFH for me is about 370 GB. Total LAN is about 450 GB. Napkin math but it's pretty close.
Modulo P2P nodes, what drives high usage? I guess game downloads are getting gigantic these days, but that's not an every day event. Back in the bad old days it wasn't inconceivable to go over the lower caps but once it's big enough to support video what is left? I mean, how much 4k pr0n can randy teenagers watch in one month? Mike
participants (15)
-
borg＠uu3.net -
Crist Clark -
Dave Taht -
Delong.com -
Josh Luthman -
Keith Stokes -
Mark Andrews -
Mark Tinka -
Michael Thomas -
Mike Hammett -
Owen DeLong
-
Sean Donelan -
sronan＠ronan-online.com -
Steve Meuse -
Tom Beecher