There will be many price increases seeing as:<p>-SpaceX raised $75bn in the IPO which will only last so long for a loss making high capital requirements company.<p>-Then $25bn via bonds which have an annual interest rate repayment of $1.46 billion + repayment of the $25b (depending on bond length in years 2031,33,36,46 and 2056)<p>-Morgan Stanley said: "In our model, we estimate SpaceX raising an average of $72bn annually between 2027 and 2030 and then an average of $95bn annually between 2031 and 2034."[0]<p>So huge amounts needed continuously.<p>[0]<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/09a62ed4-16af-433c-adb7-c877d1975388?syn-25a6b1a6=1" rel="nofollow">https://www.ft.com/content/09a62ed4-16af-433c-adb7-c877d1975...</a>
Note that this is for the "aviation plan" which already requires six-digits equipment.
Starlink should probably reverse course on this however, it's one thing to pay 10k for up to 20 guests on a small private jet vs a company like Delta with a fleet of 747s. Charge Delta 20k, charge this guy 10k.
They also recently doubled the price of the standby plan
Yeah, for regular people they're just starting to suddenly charge $1,500 fees.<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1uklz4q/starlink_1500_dollar_demand_surcharge/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1uklz4q/starlink_...</a>
> He then reviewed my billing history and account details, confirmed that my service address had never actually changed, and determined that nothing had been moved. As a result, he issued a full refund.
So not <i>his</i> service address, but a slightly different latitude/longitude <i>would</i> have received that.
Yeah but it still sounds like $1,500 demand fee was not a mistake, charging OP was the mistake.<p>People first mentioned these fees at like $100... now you can go to Costco, grab a Starlink, and they'll randomly ask for $1,500 to actually start service.<p>Congestion is a thing when each node needs to go to space, but it also feels like they're cashing in on years of "just move to a cabin in the woods and work off Starlink"... once you've done that they have you by the balls even worse than a typical ISP.
Isn't this fee specifically <i>before</i> they have you by the balls?
If you're privileged enough to work a six-figure tech job while engaging in a homesteader larp in a "cabin in the woods", you can probably afford the fee. So can "off-grid" YouTuber grifters.<p>It's like everyone feels entitled to something they didn't know existed a few years ago.
People feel entitled to the advertised rate structure. Was there anywhere in the promo material that you might get slapped with $1500 connection fees?<p>If you are not big tech, that’s a lot of money. For the home in the middle of nowhere, $1500 could be more than you would pay in monthly rent. Plenty of rural people without access to good internet were hoping for Starlink to save them from garbage DSL connection options.
Boo hoo.... these same people were previously faced with $40,000 connection fees for Comcast and Verizon to trench a cable 1/2 mile to their property so $1500 seems like a pittance.<p>Look, friends of mine did this, they bought a country place so they can live the dream and write software in the sticks.<p>Next thing you know they're drilling new wells and installing a generator to support the fantasy while the bills pile up. When you bring modern conveniences to rural life it costs money.
So we should let companies do what ever anti-consumer practices they want, because you don't like the group they are doing it to?<p>Should a car company be allowed to charge you an extra fee every time you have a passenger?
It sounds like this was a bug where slight updates to geolocation data (his address updated its physical location, probably to be more accurate) triggered a "location moved" process. Annoying, but not indicative of a new policy.
Furnishing low-latency, broadband connectivity to private aircraft. The Challenger 350 noted in the article stickers north of $10M
They are attempting to juice revenue across all product cohorts, this is simply another datapoint. Customers are captive until there are more connectivity options.
“Juice?”
As in they have the best product by a wide margin and are charging a totally fair price for it that reflects demand.
Nobody flying private cares about the price of Starlink.<p>It’s worse if they are squeezing people in underserved rural areas… our monthly has gone down from €35 to €29 and still getting the same speed.<p>The second SpaceX offers direct-to-cell in our area we will switch to their service as we’ve never had any issues with it whereas the incumbent mobile/broadband providers regularly throttle even when we’re paying top tier prices.<p>Totally agree there needs to be more competition and preferably not from other billionaires … but until then, Starlink is great!
SpaceX has a monopoly on high speed satellite internet. They will extract as much as they can from customers with said monopoly until there is a competitor. Doesn't sound like we're talking past each other except perhaps you might be a fan and I am not (specifically, extractionist monopolist behavior).
[dead]
I’m pretty sure rest of starlink customers will get similar treatment in the future. Their potential customer base is limited and it’s only ISP that literately burns their backbone network every few years and has to replace to keep it running.<p>On top of that, their claims it’s profitable does some heavy lifting with how to account for the cost of launching rockets.<p>It’s extremely cool product and very useful for many customers. But sustainability of current pricing is very questionable.
it has already gone up in price two times since i got mine. i still happily pay for the convenience and safety of having internet on my campervan in the middle of a national forest. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What harm are you worried about coming to in the middle of a national forest that having the internet could possibly save you from? You're in a van, for heaven's sakes. You can roll up the windows, lock the doors, and/or drive off from most dangers save a breakdown or a wildfire, and the internet won't save you from a wildfire.<p>I've tent camped a lot on forest service land (and BLM land) both out west and in the east. Generally having arrived there by human power. Not once have I been confronted with a situation where the internet would've added to my safety in any way whatsoever.
You really can't think of ANY situations that might be helped with instant communication with the outside world? If that's true, please don't go into national forests or BLMs anymore, I don't want my taxes to be spent looking for your body.
It's more that if you're that far off the beaten path, you'd better be prepared to hunker down and live with any kind of emergency that comes up for several hours up to a couple of days <i>anyway</i>. Which, for the record, is my standard and expectation for myself.<p>On the other hand, if you're dealing with being eaten by a bear, having a dangerous encounter with another person, or are at risk of being overrun by wildfire or flooding, a phone isn't likely to help much with the next 30 seconds of your possibly soon-to-be-abbreviated life. That's the risk you (and I) take by being out in the woods. You can't mitigate all or even much of that with technology.
I won't suggest that you can't find situation where having Starlink wouldn't be nice, but as another comment suggests: It's increasingly a niche product. Starlink may not be able to survive on being a product that provides internet access for campers and rural populations. That market might not be large enough to sustain the Starlink satellite fleet. There are entire countries where even to most remote areas have at least 2G cell service and fiber is frequently available even out in the country side.<p>Defence contracts are more likely than anything to be what keeps the satellites in orbit.
also all the flagship phones have emergency satellite connections now, so it's not even the emergency bit, it's just about having full broadband internet
Same. I also have never been confronted with a situation where 911 would've added to my safety in any way whatsoever. Why does 911 even exist?
i can think of 1000 reasons to need to call for help. heck, two months ago i fell on my skateboard and shattered my femur at the hip. it sure was nice to be able to call 911 and have someone come pick me up given that i couldn't drive anywhere. my van was parked right at the skatepark and there was no way i was going to drive. obviously not skating in a national park, but it isn't out of the question to not have a major injury in a remote location.<p>but it isn't just about harm, as i said "convenience". i like being able to download detailed maps for trail hiking on-demand, and being off-grid and still able to be working (as my job requires me to be online).
> obviously not skating in a national park, but it isn't out of the question to not have a major injury in a remote location.<p>It isn't out of the question to have a major injury in a remote location.<p>But the fundamental problem would be being on your own in a remote location, not being unable to call 911.<p>Yes in your skating example, you "only" fell and shattered your femur.<p>But what if you fell and hit your head or landed and hit your spine ?<p>Or what if you had a heart attack ?<p>You would not be in a position to call 911 then, would you.<p>Being on your own in a remote location is not a risk problem that you can solve with any amount of technology.
If American infrastructure is in such a bad shape that it requires starlink to make emergency calls, then I think we have bigger problems.<p>And please, when you go hiking, download and print all the maps you need before you depart, and share a detailed plan with somebody able to call help, including a time estimate where you will make contact.<p>As for work. Please just take time off and take a proper vacation. By being constantly on call you will burn out at a much faster rate.
> download and print all the maps you need before you depart<p>If I'm living and traveling in my campervan for months on end, which is something I love to do, having starlink enables me to not have to plan. I can download the maps, hop out of my van and go. That's my own ideal freedom, I'm not tied to planning the same way you are.<p>> Please just take time off and take a proper vacation. By being constantly on call you will burn out at a much faster rate.<p>Wow, thanks for the advice. It is wild to me that you've got enough of an ego to say this to someone you don't know.
I also don’t get the convenience part. If you are in a national forest, put on your boots, open the door and go for a walk, breathe the fresh air and touch some grass. Why is a low latency high speed internet connection convenient in this setting, you should be happy to be able to send text messages and make phone calls, as I assume you‘ll be spending most of your time enjoying nature or sitting around the campfire.
At some point, everyone becomes price-sensitive.
Their potential customer base is literally everybody because they are the only ISP that can cover the entire globe. Everybody’s potential customer base is technically limited because there are only so many humans, but they have the least limited potential customer base of anything that exists.
For any dense populated area, starlink cost explodes exponentially to support customers there, while fiber/5G is linear.<p>You cannot just put more satellites on top of cities, as they aren’t geostationary (which is why they’re fast), so you need to add insane amount of satellites, that would do nothing most of the time, when they’re not on top of densely populated area.
First, they would need global coverage for that. Because looking at this map tells a different story: <a href="https://starlink.com/gb/map" rel="nofollow">https://starlink.com/gb/map</a><p>It’s still the best option, but far from “global”. Also Iran is an obvious lie with that “coming soon” color, so god knows what else isn’t true on this.
Yes, but the primary reason for Starlink is for areas with poor traditional ISPs.<p>If you had a choice between Fiber or Starlink, you’d choose Fiber.<p>So as traditional ISPs improve service and coverage, Starlink becomes less in demand.
The killer app is military usage, so they just need enough consumer and b2b demand to keep what they charge governments within what they can justify to taxpayers
Sounds like a great long-term investment.<p>Starlink would only make sense if the world was not getting more and more concentrated around densely populated areas.
At some point in next decade they can literally be the biggest ISP by far, insane potential always. It's all about how long it takes to get there
if you're in a city (where most people live) it'll never be cheaper to get this than fiber
At the other end they recently doubled the cost of the Starlink Mini standby plan, from $60 to $120 per year.
I have a Starlink v2 dish and I pay $10 per month for a residential "standby" plan.<p>I only get 10G per month of bandwidth but I rarely use it since I have a fiber connection that is mostly reliable.<p>It might be a grandfathered plan because they don't list it anywhere I can see:<p><pre><code> - https://starlink.com/service-plans
- https://starlink.com/roam
</code></pre>
Edit: turns out this is a feature/mode and not a plan:<p><a href="https://starlink.com/na/support/article/37bb3b47-9525-7224-5f0a-6d016ce26975" rel="nofollow">https://starlink.com/na/support/article/37bb3b47-9525-7224-5...</a><p>And, apparently, I now have to reactivate the service to one of the published plans if I want to use more than low-speed data. Previously, I still had high-speed bandwidth for $10 a month just not a lot of it.<p>They apparently changed things recently. And, now that I'm thinking about it, I probably skimmed an email that said something about this a month or two ago but, since the charge was staying at $10 a month, didn't pay much attention to the details.
> At the other end they recently doubled the cost of the Starlink Mini standby plan, from $60 to $120 per year.<p>I kinda wanted to get one of those for standby, but the price seemed too good to be true, so I figured they'd either eliminate it or raise the price.
I noticed this too, but decided to keep my mini because I downgraded my max plan (I was defaulted to this as a customer since they started) to a bitrate I still won't reach, and by doing so am saving $480 per year.
It is an reckless business practice to not have the monthly price locked down, with strong contractual protections. Sounds like Correnti didn't negotiate well and are now finding out.
Agreed with this, and it also doesn't seem like this is the case but I'm generally a fan of charging B2B as high as possible to lower costs for regular consumers - other companies will generally pay a lot more even if it just includes the potential of getting better support, and that profit can be used to give access to more people at a lower price.<p>A lot of open source software uses this model - free for everyone, but if you're a company that wants support then you have to pay for it, and that covers the development for everyone
> Sounds like Correnti didn't negotiate well<p>Are you sure this is negotiable?
Everything is potentially negotiable.<p>Price on things like kitchen appliances, furniture often negotiable - you just have to ask.<p>My wife: (good customer) if I guy two pairs of shoes I want 2nd pair at 50% - them "ok"<p>My wife: what will you give me if I buy this (expensive briefcase)? - them "$100 gift card"<p>I got an extra $150 of a sheepskin coat at a going out of business sale just by asking
If price protection for something like this isn't negotiable it's a huge business risk, which would also be reckless to take on.
What’s even more concerning is that the current government changed their requirements for the rural broadband program so companies like StarLink can bid to bring internet to those remote areas instead of using wired or fiber connections. Not far-fetched that StarLink wins this contract and then squeezes those customers over time. ISPs will have little reason to expand in those underserved areas without government subsidies.
There is a nuance missed in the discussion so far - Starlink is creating a new product level, differentiating service between continental and intercontinental aviation connectivity. Previously these were a single category.<p>If you are operating in North America for example, your service is going from $10k to $12.5k. Still a 25% increase, which is not fun, but I think a lot of the customers affected by this will fit into this category. You only need the $20k plan if your aircraft travels between their roughly-continental regions.<p>Nicholas Air, quoted in the article, appears to have no need for the $20k plan and should not use it.
Hard to not look at the crazy valuation of SpaceX and not see a correlation. At some point, something's gotta give.
Unfortunately, their valuation has almost nothing to do with starlink revenues. It’s almost entirely speculative oribital data centers that have not been invented yet. They could double their starlink revenues and it would have no impact on the valuation.
Might as well base the valuation on SpaceX getting a colony to Alpha Centauri and then billions living there and needing regular SpaceX shuttle services from Sol.<p>Then we could properly value the IPO in the quadrillions. (I know you know this is ridiculous. But investors clearly are riding high on the tulip mania).
I disagree, but not for the reason you think. They need to fund R&D to justify their high valuation. A new stock issue would decrease the valuation, and they will have a difficult time borrowing the money with their poor bond valuations. So this will (maybe) slow the bleed.<p>Musk doesn't need to deliver to keep valuation up. We've seen him doing pretty well stringing people along indefinitely with "3 months maybe, 6 months definitely" self driving capabilities.
In the meantime, until Musk comes up with the next big "idea" to switch to, all the current revenue levers need to be pushed to max to try to make it to that next stage, since public companies demand revenue every quarter.<p>A lot of their revenue is also from renting out GPUs to more productive AI companies, so depending on how long that game can keep on going (getting access to GPUs before other companies), it could last for a while too.
Wasn't it Jeff Skilling who once waxed poetical about hypothetical future value?
Even if invented, what is the advantage of orbit data centers?
No planning restrictions. Throw up as many as you can afford to build and launch. No grid strain because they're self-powered.<p>And they're likely out of national jurisdictions, so you can generate all the porn you want.<p>Technologically? Maaaaaybe a slight ping time reduction in certain configurations compared to terrestrial fiber, because even with multiple hops lasers can still be faster than fiber.<p>Super-expensive, questionably economic way to do it though.
Regulatory problems are doing the heavy lifting. Sure power is "free", if you can launch it, station keep it and cool it and if the data services are useful at the modem latencies of geosync and lunar orbits. But if datacenter projects can't be built/powered fast enough due to permitting, this is an expensive workaround.
The best I have heard: It makes you fully independent of the terrestrial energy grid. There is also some nebulous freedom from governmental authority possibilities.<p>Both of which strike me as poor arguments. We are in a short term energy crunch. I expect within five years that most of the energy problems will be resolved and the eye watering financials of launching a GPU into space will look absurd<p>Governments also do not like to cede authority, so I find it hard to believe that they will not claim jurisdiction over any business operating within their borders (all of those ground stations).
if you launch enough solar panels to power the data center into space, its easier to put them on the ground. Yeah there's some less power, but also have six times the lifespan so just build twice as many and it's still more efficient. Getting land in Texas can't be that hard.
I think the idea is easy energy availability and no push back from the locals. Those both seem to be to be fairly simple to solve on the ground compared to the unsolved issues doing it in orbit.
[dead]
It is possible they delayed this rise as they didn't want bad news in the run-up to going public; but the is absolutely no way this can touch their fundamental numbers.
Note that the objection is as much to the abruptness as the scale of the price increase.<p>Large customers sinking millions into (here aviation) assets rightly expect that their vendors respect their market lifecycles.<p>Starlink's behavior creates a credibility gap that could drive such customers to the 2-3 upcoming competitors with poorer service and even higher costs, but perhaps more reliability as partners.<p>I'd see this as an opportunity.
> Note that the objection is as much to the abruptness as the scale of the price increase.<p>When companies buy a service, they normally agree a bespoke contract for 5 years or so and a fixed price for additional units, often with an option of a further x years period too.<p>So sounds like there wasn't a bespoke contract as lawyers should have picked it up.
The "upcoming" is doing a lot of work. There is not currently a viable alternative to Starlink with the same capability, speed, or latency. Amazon Leo will be the next to go online and it won't be fully operational until sometime in 2028. No one in the aviation industry will want to wait for that.
This is so par for the course for Elon's companies.<p>He will extract as much as possible, whenever possible.
And he will tell you beforehand, in clear manifestos, why and how it fits the mission.
He’s like the God. Always needs more money!
Gotta pay the massive coupons on SpaceX's bonds, whose yields are heading towards junk territory:<p><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/3a023b95-66c3-41e1-b0ce-df752a499541" rel="nofollow">https://www.ft.com/content/3a023b95-66c3-41e1-b0ce-df752a499...</a><p>Having just flown some flights with Starlink internet connection, I <i>really</i> love the service, it's just amazing. But the rugpull here might actually break through the distortion field of Musk. It's really interesting to compare the reality distortion fields of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs. It took a looooooong time for Apple stock to get properly valued in the 2000s, after it was clear that they would take over consumer computing. Jobs' RDF worked amazingly well on aligning engineering towards consumer needs, and towards convincing consumers and (some) reviewers that they had created the right sort of products for the future. Elon Musk seems to have mastered RDF on investors plus consumers, and when you're chasing sky high valuations by always piling your prior failed "ideas" into your next big thing (i.e. next big gamble), it only takes a few bad gambles to bring down the entire house of cards.
At the end of the day, there's the people who can make a vastly superior product time and time again, and they all like to work with other people who can do the same. They like to be pushed, they love solving hard problems, hate bureaucracy, and will find leaders that can accommodate all that. Elon provides that the same as Steve did.
> people who can make a vastly superior product time and time again, and they all like to work with other people who can do the same<p>These parts are likely pushing the best minds away from Musk these days. Not sure when that turned, perhaps Cybertruck?
Blue Origin's Terawave [1] can't come soon enough.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.blueorigin.com/terawave" rel="nofollow">https://www.blueorigin.com/terawave</a>
>SpaceX has also increased the price of its Starlink Aviation equipment to $200,000 per business aircraft, up from $145,000 last year.<p>ouch.
You don't get to be all of the USA's GDP without a buck or two more per month, you know?
I am traveling in Europe currently and got a Saily SIM card - 5g coverage is really good and seems to be expanding fast - a small village I visited 2 years ago that had no cell coverage at all I was getting 250mbps download, faster than than the wired internet at most of the places I was visiting. This prompted me to actually look into Starlink speeds and apparently 5g is generally faster than Starlink...<p>This made me wonder if Starlink is a much more niche product than I thought - I actually thought it was significantly faster than cell data - but it seems it's just for folks in super remote areas at this point?
Theoretical max speed of 4G/5G are like 5Gbps down/1Gbps up, without going into mmWave. Actual link speeds of Starlink terminals don't seem to be published in the open, but it's at least throttled to up to 310Mbps down/44Mbps up for Priority plans. Looks like it's supposed to reach 1Gbps down with V3 sats, but then again, cellular is like up to 5Gbps yesterday, at least in the spec.<p>It's just that Starlink being a new thing and with zero users tended to be less congested, hence it tended to do better in somewhat of an unfair comparison in a remote cabin side by side against an LTE equipment. It was NEVER faster in theory compared to terrestrial cellular.
Remote areas of USA (and other third world countries when it comes to the communication infrastructure) + companies that operate in remote areas (logistic, resource extraction, etc) + military are main customer base.
There are plenty of super remote areas in Europe as well. Even more in the US, where population is more clustered to population centers<p>But the big selling points of Starlink are either as a backup connection (which the consumer plan actively enables: in months where you use less than 10GB you pay $10/month) or as a connection for ships and airplanes
Just look at the price and you see it’s for those without other alternatives
> but it seems it's just for folks in super remote areas at this point?<p>TBF that's like 70% of the US, large parts of the Southern Hemisphere in general, much of China, India, Russia, etc.<p>But yes, StarLink is best when it has <i>some</i> user density but not too much user density. It will be this way until... probably forever.<p>If I go camping? StarLink. Otherwise no cell/internet service.
70% seems a little extreme? Here is a helpful mobile coverage map: <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/BroadbandData/MobileMaps/mobile-map" rel="nofollow">https://www.fcc.gov/BroadbandData/MobileMaps/mobile-map</a><p>A few years ago I actually traveled all around the US and worked remotely with a 4g unlimited data sim card and was pretty amazed at the coverage, only very few places was I left without coverage. I'm guessing it's even better now?
isn't Amazon LEO now available or very soon at $60/month?<p><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/AmazonLeo/comments/1uupd3w" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/AmazonLeo/comments/1uupd3w</a><p>will they offer aviation suitable plans?
Won’t somebody please think of the luxury private aviation consumers?
A lot of people on this forum actually have investments in SpaceX, directly or indirectly, and they're interested in this stuff as a signal of the health of the company.<p>Not everything has to be some little gripefest.
I reckon a lot of people on this forum have poorer health thanks to man-made pollution.<p>The more money a person has, the greater the chance they spend it in ways that increase environmental harm. (Travel is a big one, and buying large homes, remodeling homes, heating and cooling those homes, well beyond the private sufficiency that would be enough for us if we also supported public luxuries instead of playing Smaug)<p>Rather than corporate health I'm more concerned with ecosystem health (actual eco-system, as in interconnected living beings, not the word applied to software...), and care much more about investing in the performance of the ecosystems (based on land, water, and air) that sustain life in the region I have this tiny bit of influence on.<p>Corporations are fictions, a game we're playing. After they go up in smoke, the land will still be here.
Rich people are screwing over the slightly less rich, get out the silver pitchforks.
[dead]
As I write this, I'm disputing a charge from Starlink because when I activated mine, they automatically started the free trial for me, but nowhere in the receipt or on their website did they say they would switch me to the most expensive plan after the free trial was over. And they made it extremely confusing to cancel my free trial. So I ended up being charged $120 for something that I had just opened out of the box. I disputed it twice through Apple Card and it still got rejected, even though I have the invoices. So I'm disputing it a third time, and I know one thing is clear: I am never going to purchase anything that Elon has made ever again. They also lied to me about the cost of keeping the Starlink. Their app said the satellite would need to stay "alive," and to do so I had to pay $5 a month. But then I recently realized that that was also a lie—you don't have to pay to keep the service or the satellite alive.
Apple Card aka Goldman Sachs is notoriously bad at handling disputes. They were fined $89 million for mishandling disputes, yet they continue to reject disputes offhand [1]. I no longer use Apple Card other than for Apple Store purchases.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/archive/newsroom/cfpb-orders-apple-and-goldman-sachs-to-pay-over-89-million-for-apple-card-failures/" rel="nofollow">https://www.consumerfinance.gov/archive/newsroom/cfpb-orders...</a>
Who's your target audience for this... misinformation?
> charged $120 for something that I had just opened out of the box<p>It does not work out of the box, you need to install an app, add a payment method, and sign up for a plan, free trial or not.<p>>you don't have to pay to keep the service or the satellite alive<p>Not sure what you mean by keeping a satellite alive, but you do need to pay for the service. There is no "Free" or "Pay as You Go" plan. Also, the Standby Mode $10/mo, not $5.<p>As for it being "extremely confusing", that's highly subjective so I won't comment, but it's definitely standard UI and I think it took me less than 8 clicks to first downgrade then cancel my plan.
As a matter of personal policy I never sign up for free trials, for just this sort of reason.
[dead]
Surprise, surprise, surprise. Well, well well. The honeymoon is over. It's just so predictable.