It's $99/mo for 100+ megabit service. Sure, it's moderately expensive if you're comparing to cable service in cities. It's downright cheap compared to the cost of connecting the extremely rural customers Starlink targets with physical cables. You don't think running a new set of physical cables to every rural residence in the world (or even cell towers to cover the same) would be expensive or have any environmental impact? Starlink wins on both and not by a small margin.
And then of course there's the prospect of bringing service to the remote mountains and jungles and deserts and polar regions and oceans where nobody lives and which will never (and should never) have ground-based infrastructure. And a bit of sorely needed competition to keep the ground-based monopoly service providers in check. And service for disaster areas or war zones where infrastructure is destroyed.
It's crazy how many options it opens. With combination of remote work, many areas that were effectively shielded off from digital nomads, now have a chance to attract those tourists.
I remember as well rejecting lots of vacation places because of terrible internet. Poor local people stayed poor and I spent my money in popular tourist destinations that already had high internet speeds.
Overall its one of the factors that can transform the society and possibly partially break down the big cities.
Isn't it $99/mo for service? Afaik there is no guaranteed bandwidth at all at the moment as all users are beta testers? All users are on a "best effort all you can get" plan. I'm sure there will be different tiers as the network matures.
I hate to break it to you, but you don't get guaranteed bandwidth on your wired consumer ISP either. Reported speeds have been more than reasonable for a consumer service. 100 Mbps isn't even the peak speed, that's more like 250 Mbps.
That pays for the antenna. The antennas are expensive now because they are new technology, never manufactured on this scale before, but that is changing fast. The fee will get smaller soon enough. Ground-based infrastructure will not be experiencing any analogous rapid cost reduction. And in rural areas it costs a lot more than $500 per residence already. What infrastructure exists is heavily subsidized.
The problem with that logic is that it’s not paid across
50 months. It’s a sign up lump sum to pay for the antenna rather than a fixed monthly cost added to your contract duration.
Also your post doesn’t take into account the life span of the antennae, that could be less than 5 years. It doesn’t take into account any competing services that you might want to switch to (eg some internet contracts in the U.K. typically run for 2 years and you’re encouraged to shop around at that point). Nor does it take into account any other personal circumstances that might lead one to cancel Starlink.
You do realise not everyone has $500 to spare? For some people the distinction matters a lot.
It’s the same reason some people with high end phones pay a larger monthly phone bill. They want a phone they cannot afford to buy so they pay in instalments as part of their mobile contract.
So yes, it absolutely does matter to a lot of people.
> This is a beta with no subsidies yet and no promotions because they have too many people interested
Not entirely true. The hardware is sold at a huge loss. If I recall correctly the dishes cost a grand to make. Musk expects those costs to come down but the fact remains he’s losing money with every sign up.
My point wasn’t about whether the cost is worth it though. It’s that the service costs 6 (!!!) times more than the GP claimed.
It’s really not a complicated point I’m making here either. I’m not judging the service, just correcting an error in someone’s post.
> So you're worrying about that way too early.
I’m not worried. Why would I be worried about how much an ISP I don’t need costs?
> You'll be able to get starlink without a big upfront fee later, I assure you.
I could afford it now if I wanted it. But I’m also socially aware enough to see that most people aren’t as privileged as we are.
> It's an issue but it's a separate issue from "high cost of service".
I’m skeptical this will ever become economical for low income families or lesser developed counties. The latter being a group that could really benefit from this.
Regarding cost of service, we moved on from the environmental impact a while ago and now just discussing the financial cost of service.
> I could afford it now if I wanted it. But I’m also socially aware enough to see that most people aren’t as privileged as we are.
You and everyone else.
Is that implication not obvious?
You're so locked on to the privilege issue and misreading the word "you" that you're completely ignoring my point, which is that the privilege of paying a big upfront fee will not be necessary.
Just like dozens of other services, you'll be able to sign up for a contract and the equipment fee will become either a small monthly amount or get waived entirely.
Eventually you might be right. But you’re now talking about theoretical future rather than what the literal monetary cost of the service is right now.
I say that because my point wasn’t to say that Starlink is uneconomical for the poor and always will be. My point was just that the GPs post was factually incorrect because he left off a hugely significant sum (relative to the first month) for the cost of Starlink right now.
The point about privilege only came about after others handwaved that $500 as loose change and I only really made that point to illustrate how ridiculous it was to say “it’s fine to get a payment wrong by half a grand because we’re wealthy”. It just smacks of being out of touch with reality (or perhaps they were just Starlink/Musk fanboys and defending factually incorrect posts if it looks favourably on Starlink?).
My personal opinions of Starlink is that it looks really promising. In fact I nearly signed up 9 months ago myself when I moved house. The kicker was I needed it a available within a week and didn’t really want to run two
service providers. I’m guess given that Starlink is still beta I was asking a little much there. The problem is my current ISP locks me into a 2 year service and as much as I can afford Starlink there’s other things I’d rather spend my money on than paying for two ISPs just for curiosities sake. I’ll probably review that decision when the contract for the current ISP has > 12 months remaining.
I’m sure I’m 5 years time the cost of Starlink will become a lot more attractive to lower income families in the west. Or at least those that might need to depend on it might find it easier to gain access to the service. But I’m skeptical we’ll see the service affordable for most rural communities in Africa, India or South America, to name but a few large regions that could really benefit from such a service. Maybe Musk does have a plan here. He certainly doesn’t owe these people any charity; however it does feel a missed opportunity if some arrangement couldn’t eventually be found.
It makes a huge difference to whether people buy it. It does not make a difference as a measure of "how much carbon does it release when they buy it", which is the question being debated in this thread.
My point wasn’t whether the cost is reasonable. My point was just that the first month is a $600 bill rather than $100 like the GP suggested.
For some that cost is still reasonable for what they’re getting. And that’s fine. But from a purely mathematical standpoint the GP was significantly off in terms of the price they quoted.
You can all argue about whether that matters or not but that’s really just a subjective matter. Some folk cannot afford a $500 sign up cost. Whereas for others it will be an absolute bargain for what they need. It really depends on their income/savings, what other internet providers are available to them and how dependent they are on the internet. So the answer to the point you’re discussing is going to vary depending on the individual.
Thanks for clarifying, it's a fair point. Especially since lots of folks who don't have the upfront costs will finance it on a credit card and end up paying even more in the long run. (Hoping they wouldn't also do that for the monthly charge too, but lots of people finance normal living expenses every month, beyond their monthly income, until their credit breaks under the load)
It's $99/mo for 100+ megabit service. Sure, it's moderately expensive if you're comparing to cable service in cities. It's downright cheap compared to the cost of connecting the extremely rural customers Starlink targets with physical cables. You don't think running a new set of physical cables to every rural residence in the world (or even cell towers to cover the same) would be expensive or have any environmental impact? Starlink wins on both and not by a small margin.
And then of course there's the prospect of bringing service to the remote mountains and jungles and deserts and polar regions and oceans where nobody lives and which will never (and should never) have ground-based infrastructure. And a bit of sorely needed competition to keep the ground-based monopoly service providers in check. And service for disaster areas or war zones where infrastructure is destroyed.