However, six weeks ago, his circumstances changed thanks to Starlink. Woodward has become a beta user of SpaceX, an Internet service that uses a growing fleet of 1,600 satellites orbiting the Earth to provide Internet access to humans on the surface. As of the end of July, the company had about 90,000 users. “During the first few weeks, I became a real Starlink fan,” says Woodward.
“For anyone who has lived on sticks like me, Starlink will be something of a revelation,” he adds.
But Starlink wasn’t just designed to connect remote cybersecurity educators: SpaceX made bigger claims than that. He hopes to provide high-speed satellite Internet for many of the 3.7 billion people on this planet who currently do not have an Internet connection. Many people simply get by with a mobile phone connection, which in itself is an expensive solution. (One gigabit of data in sub-Saharan Africa costs 40% of the average monthly wage.)
And that’s not even counting the people who have internet access but no broadband connection. Almost all of the US has access to the Internet, but 157 million Americans, most of whom live in rural communities,do not use it at broadband speeds. Black communities disproportionately lack access to broadband, even when they are in close proximity to whiter (and wealthier) communities. Having survived covid and a time when most people relied on the internet as a lifeline, it’s hard to think that high-speed internet is still an unaffordable luxury for some.
Unfortunately, it is unclear if Starlink can actually solve this big problem. “This is really meant for sparsely populated regions,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk said at a conference in June. “In areas with a high population density, we will be able to serve a limited number of clients.” And many of the world’s villagers will be locked out because they cannot afford it.
Starlink needs to cut costs quickly to expand its customer base, but it also needs to make enough money to keep launching hundreds or even thousands of satellites every year. This is a thin needle and cannot be threaded.
Price points
Typical satellite Internet services place only a few satellites in very high orbits called geostationary orbits. From here, individual satellites can provide wider coverage areas, but the delay (or delay time) is greater. Woodward has used these services before, but has always found them “useless”.
Starlink and its competitors like OneWeb and Amazon Kuiper are instead placing tens of thousands of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Their closer proximity to Earth means that waiting times are greatly reduced. And while they each cover a smaller area, the sheer numbers mean that they should theoretically cover the planet and prevent any loss of communication.
Starlink began beta testing last year and is now available in 14 countries. Last December, the US Federal Communications Commission gave SpaceX $ 886 million through its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), which subsidizes US telecom companies building infrastructure to provide broadband in rural areas.
But it’s not entirely clear if rural America is a viable customer base for Starlink. The biggest issue is cost. A Starlink subscription costs $ 99. Speeds can vary greatly, but the average user should expect between 50 and 150 megabits per second. You’ll have to pay traditional satellite internet companies like Viasat (which operates geostationary satellites) twice as much to get the same speed. Not bad.
However, this is the down payment that will hit Starlink the most. Costs for things like a satellite dish and a router run up to a whopping $ 499, and this equipment is being sold to customers at a loss. SpaceX founder Elon Musk previously said he hoped those costs could drop to $ 250, but it’s unclear when and if that might happen. For much of the rural world, in America and elsewhere, the price is simply too high.
So who will be the first Starlink user? The physical and financial need to build satellites and launch them into orbit (although cheaper than ever, but still a very expensive venture) means Starlink will run at a loss for a while, says Derek Turner, technology policy analyst. Free Press. a non-profit organization that advocates for open communication. And lower costs will mean that customers will be looking at more than just offline people in rural areas.
Instead, the early customers are likely to be the US military, which often rely on geostationary satellites to operate in remote areas, which suffer from congestion and high latency. Both the Air Force and the Army are interested in testing Starlink. Some intelligence experts have pointed to the alarming withdrawal from Afghanistan. As an example from where the service could help.
Airlines looking to offer passengers faster, more stable in-flight Wi-Fi are also looking at Starlink. Other businesses in rural areas may find value in this as well. And, of course, there are technicians and curious buyers in the suburbs and cities who have the money to try it out.
Adding these customers could help bring down prices for everyone, Turner said, but it also means less bandwidth. Starlink could solve this problem by launching more satellites, which it ultimately plans to do, provided it has enough subscribers.
Musk said it would take tens of billions of dollars in capital before Starlink has enough capacity to generate positive cash flow. So far, it has launched 1,600 satellites without issue, but the ultimate goal of 42,000 is a different matter entirely. “It doesn’t scale as well as wired broadband,” Turner says. It is not yet clear how many satellites Starlink will need to provide reliable high-speed Internet for hundreds of thousands or even millions of subscribers who log on to the system at the same time.
And for many customers, especially commercial ones, there are cheaper Starlink alternatives that can still meet their needs. A farmer who uses smart sensors to track things like local weather and soil conditions doesn’t need broadband internet to connect these devices. This is where smaller companies like Swarm in the US come to the rescue, using a fleet of more than 120 small satellites to help connect IoT devices for these use cases. Swarm (recently acquired by SpaceX) offers a pricing plan from just $ 5 a month. And of course, if you are in a densely populated area, spending $ 99 a month on another ISP, you are likely to get the speed closer to 1000Mbps.
Return
On the surface, Starlink’s FCC RDOF award suggests that rural America is integral to Starlink’s development. But Turner says this is a misconception and that SpaceX shouldn’t have been allowed to cut RDOF rates in the first place because it will be building the Starlink network anyway. “I think the FCC would be better off focusing its resources on providing future-proof broadband in areas where it is not economically feasible to deploy it,” he says.
Acting FCC Chairman Jessica Rosenvoorsel, late last year, spearheaded a review of how RDOF subsidies were provided under her predecessor, Ajita Pai, and found that companies were given billions to bring broadband internet to places where it was unnecessary or impractical, such as : “Car parks and well-maintained urban areas”. According to a Free Press report, approximately $ 111 million of SpaceX’s own bounty will go to urban areas or places without real infrastructure or the need for an internet connection, such as on highways. The FCC is asking these companies, including Starlink, to essentially return some of the money. (SpaceX did not respond to questions or requests for comment.)
Turner acknowledges that LEO satellites “will be a very important innovation in the telecommunications space.” But he still believes that services such as Starlink will be a niche product in the US, even in the long term, and believes the general trend towards fiber continues. Even new technology like 5G relies on very dense antenna networks that can connect to fiber as quickly as possible. Cable broadband has steadily improved over time as companies push fiber networks deeper and closer to customers.
For underdeveloped parts of the world, Starlink could prove to be a boon, as many of these places lack physical networks like the cable system that the US built in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. But for now, beta testing is carried out exclusively in the United States, Canada, some countries in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Chile. It is too early to say what impact this could have on the developing world, especially if subscription and hardware costs remain high.
The Woodward experience is one that the company would like to replicate for all of its customers. But Woodward knows he’s lucky that he can afford Starlink and that he can meet his needs. At least for now. “It will be interesting to see how Starlink works when they have 200,000 users,” he says. “Prices should be reduced, but speed and service will remain the same. This is all that remains to be determined. “
