Starlink Surpasses 4 Million Subscribers (circleid.com) 15
Longtime Slashdot reader penciling_in shares a report from CircleID: Starlink, SpaceX's satellite-based internet service, has hit a major milestone by surpassing 4 million subscribers worldwide. SpaceX confirmed the news on Thursday after company President Gwynne Shotwell hinted earlier in the week that the service would reach the mark within days. Since its beta launch in October 2020, Starlink has rapidly scaled, growing from 1 million subscribers by December 2022, to 2 million by September 2023, and now 4 million just months later. The service operates through a vast constellation of nearly 6,000 satellites, providing satellite internet to users in almost 100 countries, including expanding into previously underserved regions like Africa and the Pacific islands. [While competition from OneWeb and Amazon's Project Kuiper looms, Starlink remains the market leader. However, challenges like slowing U.S. growth and concerns over satellite interference with radio astronomy persist.] Starlink is coming to United Airlines' entire fleet and Hawaiian Airlines Airbus flights. Air France also announced yesterday that it, too, will support free Starlink Wi-Fi on all its aircraft.
Hm (Score:2)
How many people said Starlink would never work, and that it was snake oil to fool investors out of their money?
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How many people said Starlink would never work, and that it was snake oil to fool investors out of their money?
Can you please point me to someone saying that? Especially given they are far from the first satellite internet company? Or are you generating fake smugness in your head?
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Do they really need to? When it was announced, and even through its early days of operation, there was a *ton* of people claiming it would never work. That it wasn't economically viable. That it couldn't scale and could never handle more than a small number of users.
It's hardly been a perfect service, but the performance has largely held up even as their subscriber count got into the millions.
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https://science.slashdot.org/c... [slashdot.org]
https://science.slashdot.org/c... [slashdot.org]
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So... two guys out of > 10 million Slashdot members?
FCC (Score:2)
Meanwhile the government spent $42 billion on rural broadband and still haven't connected even one person. Reference: https://www.washingtonpolicy.o... [washingtonpolicy.org]
Why couldn't they just spend the $42 billion on giving every unconnected rural household (3 million total) a free Starlink subscription for 10 years .. a full decade .. at $0 cost .. (3 million * $12,000) ? They'd still have $6 billion left over to spend on fentanyl.
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And by the way that $42 billion is just the Biden administration amount, we're not even counting the tens of billions given to AT&T, Verizon etc. by previous administrations. No accountability .. nothing. Nobody went to jail. Nobody got fired. Nothing.
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And the Feds are already becoming beholden to SpaceX and not looking forward to throwing more money and power to the richest man on earth.
By the way, why would you think that Musk would be stupid enough to make any subscription deal that lasts 10 years at a fixed price? Never going to happen.
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No shit. Surprise, Starlink didn't connect a single person in the first 3 years of its inception either. Infrastructure takes money to build. Sure telecom companies have a vested interest to pocket the money without doing anything, but your expectations are wildly ignorant of how things are built. Throwing money around doesn't magic things into existence. The world is not a Disney film where you get a magic wish from a genie in exchange for ever couple of billion spent.
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Your position is that AT&T didn't exist until 2021, or is it that you think some new tech needs to be developed? What do you reckon it takes 3 years to do? In the case of satellites .. the satellites had to be designed and the launch system had to be ready. In the case of rural broadband what do you reckon is taking engineers 3 years to figure out what to do? What new tech are they working on?
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Meanwhile the government spent $42 billion on rural broadband and still haven't connected even one person. Reference: https://www.washingtonpolicy.o... [www.washingtonpolicy.o] [washingtonpolicy.org] Why couldn't they just spend the $42 billion on giving every unconnected rural household (3 million total) a free Starlink subscription for 10 years
Because the Congresscritters wouldn't get the same kickbacks from SpaceX that they do from the telecom providers. Silly rabbit.
There ought to be a criminal investigation, to find out just exactly where that $42 billion has landed. Why was the contract not performance based? Why pay out money, when there were no results? Where are the penalty clauses? Lots of people were on the take, from the contract officers up through Congress.
Finances? (Score:2)
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And will other rural broadband projects eat their lunch before break even?