[dibujante]

$5000 a month? That's pretty embarrassing, isn't it? That indicates they aren't doing satellite-to-satellite and are using some kind of specialized hardware to simply send the signal to coastal satellites from farther away.

[omni]

The only thing a $5000/mo price tag indicates is that they think their target demo will pay $5000/mo

[lxgr]

Compared to what?

Inmarsat is the only viable alternative for smaller boats that offers unlimited data plans, has higher latency due to being geostationary, much lower bandwidth, and charges about $8000 for a gigabyte…

I‘m not sure what Ku or Ka band GEO providers charge, but I doubt you can find anything competitive there either, and these require very large antennas.

[sithadmin]

Considering the coverage map is mostly coastal waters, private LTE and 5g are the 'budget' competition (for now). In some areas like the Gulf of Mexico, a not insignificant portion of the water is serviced by LTE that you can roam onto using a conventional TMobile, Sprint or AT&T SIM, often without an additional cost.

[dibujante]

Compared to what their architecture should enable. Sure, it's more satellites consumed per request but there aren't _that_ many satellites between some random point in the Pacific and the nearest base station. Certainly seems like it's not scaling that well if the price jumps from ~$120 to $5000.

[cheeze]

Not really embarrassing when nothing else exists like it.

350mbps is _insane_ for this

[dibujante]

It is! But their architecture should enable them to hit a much lower price point. Maybe it's just charging what the market will bear? If this is what they need to charge to be profitable, though, that indicates the satellite-to-satellite approach doesn't scale well, or they've been losing money.

[themodelplumber]

Or maybe it's the Tesla Roadster of this particular long-term plan. Some scoff, others wait for the price on the upcoming tier that's not quite 350 Mbps...