[2bitencryption]

Is there any company even remotely close to competing with Starlink in the "global satellite ISP" space?

I remember reading somewhere that literally most of the satellites orbiting earth are Starlink satellites. As in, more than half of all satellites are Starlink.

Obviously that statistic does not mean they have a successful business, that there's enough of a market, etc etc.

But one can imagine the types of services you can supply in just a few years to customers when you have by far the largest satellite constellation in the sky, with global coverage, and the ability to launch dozens of new satellites at low cost.

[throwawaaarrgh]

Other providers are in the works, but they don't work as fast as Starlink and don't have their own rockets to launch them in. Which is good. BlueWalker 3, a prototype for a new internet satellite provider, is brighter than 99.8% of all stars visible from Earth. They're planning on launching 70 more of them.

There are about 5,000 Starlink satellites and about 8,000 satellites total. For the past few years, the number of satellites has been increasing by 30% every year. Starlink can launch 50 satellites in each Falcon 9, which can fly every week. Eventually Starlink will have about 42,000 satellites in orbit. Other mega satellite networks are being planned which could raise the total to over 400,000 satellites.

[mensetmanusman]

I wonder if someday starlink will be able to animate the Big Dipper by blinking satellites. A giant Pepsi logo or something.

[inemesitaffia]

There will never be more than 12k sats up at a time

[joshuahedlund]

Not sure about overall prospects for successful business, but current revenue is a lot higher than I realized:

> The Wall Street Journal reports that Starlink's revenue for 2022 was $1.4 billion, up from $222 million in 2021. It is not known how much profit or loss the division made, but SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in February that Starlink is expected to turn a profit this year.

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/spacexs-starlink-...

[Dig1t]

Everyone in my neighborhood pays $120/month for it, myself included. It was an absolute game changer. Honestly I think most people in my neighborhood would pay even more for it. It's so much better than the options it replaced. I don't think many people understand how frustrating it is to live in a slightly rural area without good internet options, so many of these areas have been ignored by normal ISP's for forever.

[inemesitaffia]

Consider that revenue figure doubled as of today. Starlink has grown at minimum 100% YOY

[modeless]

The most likely competitor is Kuiper but they're way behind. There's also OneWeb but they've had a lot of business issues. They're not selling service direct to consumers AFAIK. China is planning a constellation but I don't know much about it and I would never use an ISP from China in any case.

SpaceX's reusable rockets give them kind of an insurmountable launch cost advantage for now, and also for the foreseeable future assuming Starship achieves second stage reusability.

[hef19898]

The question is not if there are competitors in the "satelite ISP" space, but rather how Starlink compares to other ISPs. Reason being that the market where Starlink, or satelite communications in general, have a unique selling point is rather small, especially compared to the global communications market.

We'll see, so far I think Starlink is SpaceX's way to keep investor money flowing, valuations high and the point of general profitability (pinky promise) in the future without raising any eye brows.

[toast0]

Iridium and Globalstar are in this space. As I understand it, the cost is much higher, and the data rates are much lower.

Hughesnet, Viasat and others offer internet services via satellite from geostationary orbits, and may not offer global coverage; similarish costs, lower data caps (as I understand it), and much higher latency. Mostly targeted for fixed location broadband connectivity, where there's no terrestrial option (because almost all terrestrial options are better in all dimensions)

[stagger87]

What's your definition of competing? The 2 big satellite internet companies Hughesnet and Viasat both appear to have larger revenues.

[matthewdgreen]

Clearly rural broadband has a reasonable market. Focusing specifically on cellular phones: my iPhone lets me send emergency SOS messages via satellite and doesn't use Starlink. This means that at least the "emergency calling when out of cellular range" piece of the market has competitors (and they're cheap enough that Apple can include two years of service in my phone's price.) I'm not sure how big the discretionary texting/calling/browsing-while-out-of-cellular service market is.

[Scoundreller]

I’m hoping the next iPhone “feature” will be to point your phone at the sky and get an iMessage sync.

Dunno if there’s enough bandwidth actually available to do that (currently or theoretically).

Though iMessage is not graceful with queuing messages when you’re offline. WhatsApp does much better.

[Jorge1o1]

RIP AST SpaceMobile

[AshamedCaptain]

By Itanium effect if anything, because AST at least has actually demonstrated the technology. Musk is just setting up a website and he already hits HN frontpage...

[hnreport]

Is there any company even remotely close to competing with Starlink in the "global satellite ISP" space?

No, or anything similar with SpaceX and Tesla

But alas, I’m accused of being a Musk dick rider.

[dzhiurgis]

Rivian, Lucid and Mercedes if you want to pay 3x for somewhat better build but somewhat worse software.

I agree tho long term at lower end there’s just no way anyone can compete (except in cars of anti-software or anti-feature).

[meepmorp]

> But alas, I’m accused of being a Musk dick rider.

The fact that you feel compelled to add this unbidden disclaimer says more than the disclaimer itself.