Tag Archives: StarLink

Starlink in the News

There is a lot of speculation that Starlink is positioned to get a lot more federal subsidy from the BEAD grant program. There are a few things that have to happen for that to come to pass, but that is not the only news about Starlink these days.

Starlink announced in September that it reached four million customers worldwide. What is most impressive about that announcement is the rate of growth, with the company just hitting the three million customer mark in May of 2024. The company served two million customers at the end of 2022, so the rate of growth is on a steep upward curve. The company currently has over 6,700 working satellites, up from 5,400 at the end of 2023. The company still plans to grow the first-generation constellation to 12,000 satellites. This growth puts the company on track to hit $6.6 billion in revenue for the year, which means the company will be able to internally fund its continued efforts to improve its reusable rockets.

At the end of November, the FCC’s Space Bureau granted the SpaceX application to construct, deploy, and operate a constellation of the next generation of satellites, which the company is calling its Gen2 Starlink constellation. The FCC authorized SpaceX to operate the Gen2 satellites at altitudes of 340, 345, 350, and 360 kilometers. The FCC also gave permission to connect to the new satellites using Ku-, Ka-, E-, and V-band frequencies. Starlink says it still hopes to eventually reach 29,988 Gen2 satellites, up from the 7,500 approved by the FCC so far.

In the application that requested the changes, Starlink said that “small-but-meaningful updates” can boost broadband speeds to 1 Gbps. Starlink’s website says that current actual speeds vary between 25 Mbps and 220 Mbps, with a majority of users experiencing speeds over 100 Mbps. Current upload speeds are typically between 5 and 20 Mbps. Current latency ranges between 25 and 60 milliseconds, with 100+ milliseconds in a few remote locations.

The company says the faster speeds would come from several changes. The company plans to use larger Starlink satellites, which are so big that only Starship can launch them. SpaceX has also requested to lower the altitudes of existing satellites, requesting to lower satellites at 525, 530, 535 kilometers to 475, 480, and 485 kilometers, respectively.” Another request to the FCC would change the elevation angles for satellites operating between 400 and 500 kilometers from 25 degrees to 20. This would increase the connection times to earth stations.

Finally, the FCC approved the request by SpaceX and T-Mobile to offer supplemental mobile coverage from space. The FCC ruling said this “will put an end to mobile dead zones.” For now, the approval extends to basic connection for texts or emergency communications using slices of T-Mobile’s spectrum in areas the mobile carrier’s terrestrial network can’t reach.

There is no guarantee that the FCC will approve everything Starlink is asking for. Companies like AT&T and Verizon have said that some of Starlink’s requests for frequency would interfere with and degrade service from terrestrial mobile networks.

One bit of negative news is that Starlink has reintroduced a wait list in some markets. Is this something that will be relieved as more satellites are launched, or will the rapid customer growth outstrip network capacity. This is the same kind of issue that every ISP that grows quickly faces.

Elon Musk’s close ties to the administration bodes well for the company to get much of its wish list. The company had a very good 2024, and the future looks even brighter.

What if Nobody Shows up for BEAD?

Charter CFO Jessica Fisher recently announced that Charter will spend substantially less on pursuing BEAD grants than the company spent on RDOF. This is big news, because a natural assumption in some state broadband offices is that Charter would likely be a big player in the BEAD grant process. Charter has been a major participant in pursuing and winning State broadband grants funded by ARPA and the Capital Projects Fund.

To put this into context, Charter won about $1 billion in the RDOF reverse auction. Substantially less than that would make Charter a minor participant in the BEAD process. Fisher said part of the reason for not strongly pursuing BEAD is the unfavorable BEAD grant rules.

This will be a problem for some states if Charter doesn’t play at all. Anybody who has looked closely at the RDOF award areas understands the issue that RDOF funding was often awarded in a way that the coverage could best be described as Swiss cheese. In states where Charter won a lot of RDOF subsidy, the company is the only sensible ISP to pursue a solution for the ‘holes’ inside the current Swiss cheese areas – because if they don’t, it will be virtually impossible for any other landline ISP to affordably reach the small pockets of BEAD areas surrounded by Charter fiber areas.

Nobody outside the company knows the real motivation and decision-making process inside a company like Charter. Certainly, the complexity of applying for the BEAD grants and then reporting afterward is a believable reason for walking away from BEAD. In comparison, RDOF has very few rules other than requiring a specific technology, meeting construction goals over a long timeline, and providing a letter of credit to support each project. Charter is probably considering other issues too. For example, the company has been losing customers to FWA and due to the end of ACP. A decision not to pursue BEAD might simply be a reaction to tightening its focus on current markets.

The real concern for State Broadband Offices is that Charter might not be the only large ISP thinking of ignoring BEAD. Most states are counting on large ISPs like Charter, Comcast, Frontier, Windstream, and Brightspeed to pursue BEAD.

After anticipating the matching fund requirement, the total awards for BEAD projects will be more than $50 billion. If the big companies don’t participate, there may not be enough financial capacity in the rest of the industry to take on the matching requirements for winning BEAD grants.

Consider Comcast, which said in 2023 that it remains return-driven and will have a high bar for participating in BEAD. Comcast didn’t participate in RDOF, but it did pursue and win a substantial amount of state broadband grants.

I doubt that anybody knows what the Verizon and Frontier merger will mean in terms of BEAD. Verizon said when the merger was announced that it wants Frontier to continue with any BEAD plans. But Verizon has historically been the most disciplined fiber builders in terms of staying within a defined construction budget. It wouldn’t be shocking to see Frontier pull back from BEAD to some extent.

A lot of industry folks have predicted that a handful of big companies would win the majority of the BEAD funding. Perhaps many of them will sit it out, making it even more likely that large portions of BEAD might go to Starlink or wireless ISPs.

The New Administration and BEAD

I’ve been peppered with questions about the impact of the change of administration on the BEAD grant program. I don’t have any better crystal ball than anybody else. But it’s not hard to speculate on the kinds of changes that might come.

There are a few facts that should be considered in any speculation. First, while the BEAD program has taken a long time, a lot of states will have open grant portals and will be reviewing grant applications before the inauguration. This doesn’t mean those grant applications can’t be shelved, but if one of the goals is to spend the money quickly, that could be a consideration. The second is that it’s likely that the decision-makers at the NTIA are already bailing, and the agency will be emptying out. That’s significant because the NTIA has been micromanaging the BEAD process, which plays a big part in the slowness of the program. I’m not sure what States with open issues at NTIA will be able to accomplish – it seems unlikely for any temporary administrators to go out on a limb to make tough calls.

What are some of the possible paths for BEAD:

More BEAD for Satellite Broadband. With Elon Musk being part of the administration, it seems inevitable that satellite broadband will get a bigger piece of the BEAD pie. Recall that the NTIA had already opened the door to Starlink in BEAD, but the process was voluntary for states. There are a whole lot of easy ways to include satellite, with the easiest being to assign all high-cost areas to the company. But it will likely be more complicated than that.

Changing the BEAD Rules. A group of Senators have been complaining about BEAD rules for more than a year.  The complaints against BEAD range from the way the money was assigned to states, the requirement in many states for low broadband rates, the big emphasis on building fiber, the requirement for prevailing wages, and using BEAD funding to build fiber to locations owned by the wealthy. Some of the things the Senators don’t like are baked into the BEAD legislation and would need Congress to change. There are two paths I can foresee for changing other rules. The first is to put the program on hold to incorporate any rule changes. The other option would be to tell ISPs about pending changes and to deal with them when BEAD grant contracts are negotiated.

Spend the Money Faster. One of the current criticisms about BEAD I keep hearing is that money won’t flow until late 2025. That is due to an NTIA requirement that a State must find a solution for every location before any grants can be awarded. Get rid of that rule and grants could be awarded and money could start flowing in the first quarter. The other way to speed up the spending is to do away with environmental studies for any project that will build fiber in existing public rights-of-way.

Cut the Size of the Program. I’ve seen some speculation about clawing back BEAD funding – which means not making the grant awards and keeping the money in the federal coffers. Industry insiders think broadband is too important for this to happen. However, if there is a big political movement to undo President Biden’s signature accomplishment, then infrastructure spending of all types could be curtailed, and it’s naïve to think that broadband spending couldn’t get swept into a bigger effort to cut spending. It’s not hard to imagine cutting the program to $10 billion, giving the money to Starlink, and declaring rural broadband to be solved.

Do Nothing. There is always a chance that no changes will be made to BEAD and it will play its course this year. But this seems unlikely with $42 billion in spending dangling for the taking. At the end of the day, any changes to be BEAD will be about who gets the money.

More Low-orbit Satellites

The City of Shanghai entered the low-orbit broadband satellite market. Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST) launched 18 satellites in August and a second batch of 18 satellites in October. The satellites are being branded as Qianfan, or ‘Thousand Sails’.

SSST satellites are being launched by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) using the Long March 6A rocket. SSST plans to launch 108 total satellites this year and 648 satellites by the end of 2025, which are part of a first constellation of 1,296 satellites. Future launches are expected to carry from 36 to 54 satellites. The completed network will consist of 14,000 satellites, with ultimate plans of perhaps 30,000 satellites by sometime in the 2030s.

The venture is being backed by the municipal government of Shanghai which is hoping to foster a commercial space industry.

This is not the only Chinese satellite venture. The China Satellite Network group, established in 2021, plans to launch a constellation of 13,000 satellites, with the first launch expected soon. This venture has the backing of the Chinese government. The government has been working on a new generation of reusable medium-lift rockets which it expects to be ready in 2025. The first launchpad has already been constructed on Hainan Island. The government’s goal is to reach 100 rocket launches per year.

China also recently launched ten satellites for Geely Group Automotive. These satellites are the first part of a constellation that will be used to build a communications network for autonomous vehicles.

OneWeb is still putting satellites in orbit. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine War forced the company to stop using Russian Soyuz launches, and the company is now using its competitor, SpaceX, to get into orbit. OneWeb currently has 660 satellites in orbit, which meets it’s initial goal announced years ago. At this point, One Web is offering satellite services to governments and selling excess broadband capacity to residential satellite providers like Hughesnet, Viasat, and Starlink. One Web’s advantage is the use of a polar orbit that allows it to reach locations in the far north.

Starlink has continued to launch satellites and had over 30 launches this year. At the end of September, the company has launched 6,426 satellites, with 6,371 that are functional. The company still has plans for reaching a goal of 12,000 satellites in its initial constellation, and 30,000 as a long-term plan.

Project Kuiper, backed by Jeff Bezos launched two test satellites in 2023 and the company says it still has plans to launch a first constellation of 3,200 satellites.

According to GSA, which tracks the satellite industry, 34 countries are either planning, evaluating, or testing broadband satellites. There have already been satellites launched by UK, Mexico, Japan, Papua New Guinea, the United Arab Emirates, and Timor-Leste.

The skies are clearly going to be filled with satellites in a few years. It’s not hard to imagine 100,000 broadband satellites in orbit in a decade or so. One has to wonder what this will mean in terms of price competition. Starlink has one of the highest broadband prices in the U.S. Companies like SSST and Project Kuiper are likely to be serious long-term competitors, which will likely eventually bring prices down.

Starlink and Broadband Subsidies

The House Oversight Committee recently decided to investigate the FCC’s decision in 2022 to deny RDOF funding to Starlink. Anybody who has been reading this blog knows that I don’t take political positions, and the timing of this announcement clearly has political overtones since it was announced as Elon Musk took the stage at a campaign event with one of the presidential candidates. However, there were a few technical and policy issues raised recently about Starlink that means the issue is worth discussing.

I should make my own position on Starlink known upfront. I happen to live in a city, but if I was in a rural area with no good broadband option, I would have been one of the first people on the Starlink waiting list years ago. I think the broadband they bring into areas with no other options is awesome. Their products aimed at folks who are largely mobile are also unique and valuable.

The House announcement praised Starlink for helping the areas destroyed by Hurricane Helene. I live in western North Carolina, and Starlink got some good press here from its willingness to bring broadband to help areas without it. Starlink offered a free month of service, and I’m sure they gained new customers through that offer. But a new subscriber still had to pay for the receiver, and the logistics of getting a receiver delivered to rural areas post-hurricane were daunting – there are still many places that can’t be reached by vehicle. Also, unfortunately, the areas that need broadband the most are still without power.

But back to the issue of RDOF. The subsidy was awarded using a reverse auction, where the ISP willing to take the lowest amount of subsidy winning the funding. RDOF had two key requirements – the ability to deliver broadband of at least 100/20 Mbps, and the ability to serve every home and business inside a Census block that got the award.

The FCC finally decided to reject Starlink on the speed issue. When Starlink applied to enter the RDOF reverse auction, it said it could meet the 100/20 Mbps speed goal. And it looked for a while like it might. In the first quarter of 2021, Ookla says Starlink had an average U.S. speed of 66/16 Mbps but improved to 91/11 Mbps by the second quarter of 2022. However, since then, the speeds have slipped, and for the whole U.S. Ookla says speeds were 67/8 Mbps at the end of 2023 and a little slower in the first quarter of 2024.

Starlink has done a phenomenal job launching satellites and now has 6,371 functional satellites in orbit. But Starlink is like any ISP might be a victim of its own success – the slower speeds over time probably reflects that the number of customers has outpaced the number of satellites. The FCC was justified in rejecting the RDOF on the speed issue – the FCC 100/20 Mbps goal was not aspirational, but a real technical requirement.

The FCC could also have rejected Starlink on the coverage issue as well. One of the benefits of winning the RDOF subsidy is that winners were protected from any other ISPs receiving subsidies to build in the same Census blocks. For all practical purposes, RDOF winners in rural places were granted a monopoly – but for that award they were expected to be able to serve everybody.

In the early years, when it didn’t have a lot of satellites, Starlink put prospective customers on a wait list. The wait lists have disappeared, and Starlink is now willing to serve almost everybody in the U.S. – although there are a few places with geographical challenges where the company doesn’t claim the ability to serve.

The issue with coverage is that not everybody is a good candidate for Starlink. I live on a steep hill and am surrounded by other hills in all directions. I would guess that 35% to 45% of my view of the sky is blocked. My situation is not unusual in Appalachia, and much of the mountainous West and Southwest. If Starlink had only applied for RDOF in relatively flat areas, this would not have been an issue. However, Starlink won a lot of geography in RDOF in places like western North Carolina and the rest of Appalachia.

Starlink reception is also hindered by heavy foliage. The suggested solution for this is to put the receiver where this is not an issue. But there were places in the RDOF award areas that are fully covered by a forest canopy.

Interestingly, Starlink is back in the conversation in the BEAD grant process. Those awards are supposed to bring a broadband solution to every unserved and underserved location in the country. In every market, there are some locations where building other technologies is infeasible. NTIA prudently decided recently that Starlink is probably the only realistic solution for such places.

Unfortunately, some states say they don’t have enough money to reach everybody with fiber and/or wireless, and Starlink might get the final laugh by winning more subsidy from BEAD grants than it was denied for RDOF.

Will Starlink Harm the Ozone Layer?

There was a paper published in June in the peer-reviewed Geophysical Research Letters titled Potential Ozone Depletion from Satellite Demise During Atmospheric Reentry in the Era of Mega-Constellations.

As can be deduced by the lengthy title, the scientists have uncovered a new risk coming from the reentry of low-orbit satellites through the atmosphere. Scientists at the University of Southern California Department of Astronautical Engineering are reporting the increased risk to the ozone layer by the upcoming massive increase in the number of satellites that will be returning to earth each year.

Low-orbit satellites contain a lot of aluminum, and when a satellite falls to Earth it creates aluminum oxide, which results in a chemical reaction that kills ozone. The issue doesn’t just arise at the time that a satellite falls to Earth, because the aluminum oxide particles can linger for up to five years as the particles slowly fall out of orbit.

The scientists estimate that in 2022 that 18.7 tons of nanoparticles of aluminum oxide were released into the upper atmosphere by falling satellites. They looked forward to the planned obsolescence of satellites, and predict that could climb to 397 tons per year, which would do massive harm to the ozone layer.

One of the key aspects of low-orbit satellites is that they fall to earth at the end of their useful life. This feature stops low-orbit space from being oversaturated with obsolete satellites. Keeping unused satellites in orbit increases the risk of satellite collisions and the accumulation of space debris that can make it difficult to launch new satellites into orbit.

Starlink has by far the largest number of low-orbit satellites in orbit, with 6,281 in orbit at the beginning of July. Starlink plans on a useful life of around five years for a satellite. Starlink started launching low-orbit satellites roughly five years ago, so there will be an ever-increasing number of them satellites leaving orbit each year. The real concern comes with Starlink’s future plans. The company plans 11,000 satellites to complete the first big constellation and has long-term plans to have a 30,000 satellite constellation. There are currently about 2,000 satellites launched by others, with plans for many more by companies like Project Kuiper from Jef Bezos.

Depletion of the ozone layer is a serious problem, and a complete destruction of ozone would end most life on the planet since the ozone protects us from cosmic radiation and ultraviolet light coming from the sun. Even a partial depletion means increased skin cancers, cataracts, and damage to marine organisms, plants, and plastics. The planet has come a long way towards stopping depletion of the ozone layer with the Montreal Protocol in 1989 that phased out CFCs and other chemicals that deplete ozone. This treaty resulted in reducing harmful chemicals by 95%. In 2013, scientists predicted that we were a few decades away from the full recovery of the ozone layer.

This issue points out that there are often unintended consequences from any major deployment of a new technology. It’s impossible to deny the huge benefits of low-orbit satellites, and it seems likely that nobody saw this coming. This is obviously an issue that must be addressed, now that the problem has been identified. Perhaps it will be as simple as reducing or eliminating aluminum from low-orbit satellites. But the time to fix this is before there are tens of thousands of satellites in orbit.

Loving and Hating Starlink

I’m such an industry nerd that I sometimes read customer reviews of large ISPs just to see how the public perceives them. Most ISPs have more negative reviews than positive ones, and that’s to be expected since people are more likely to complain when things go wrong than give praise when things are working as promised.

One of the most interesting ISPs is still Starlink. The company is doing well and announced in March of this year that it has 2.6 million customers worldwide. A lot of reviews come from people who love Starlink and sing its praises, particularly those who are in rural areas with no other realistic alternatives. Starlink seems to have a higher percentage of positive reviews than other big ISPs.

The people I know who use Starlink say that broadband speeds have slowly been improving. This makes sense since there were 6,219 Starlink satellites in orbit at the end of June. A lot of the complaints about Starlink in the early days was due to having a much smaller fleet of satellites in the sky. There are now enough satellites that there should always be several satellites overhead for folks who have a decent open look at the sky.

It’s worth noting that Starlink is still only about half the way through deployment of its first constellation and has approval from the FCC to deploy almost 12,000 satellites. The company still says that it has an ultimate plan to reach 30,000 satellites. Something to to start watching is that the satellites are supposedly going to last roughly five years. The company started deploying in May 2019, so there will be an increasing number of replacement satellites needed in the coming years – meaning a lot of launches will be for replacements rather than new satellites.

The Starlink negative reviews are interesting because the company has different issues than other ISPs. Here are some of the most common and interesting complaints about the company.

A lot of people hate the $120 monthly Starlink subscription, but some customers came to Starlink from more expensive broadband like hot spots or high-orbit satellites, both of which have stingy data caps. Starlink prices are competitive with many of the largest rural WISPs.

The high price means that Starlink must be one of the ISPs feeling the impact of the competition from FWA wireless from T-Mobile and Verizon. Those companies got their 8.6 million customers from somebody. It’s hard to think that Starlink customers don’t jump to prices that are half the Starlink rates. FWA customers within two miles of a cell tower see faster speeds than Starlink. But the real challenge to Starlink in the U.S. will be when the many broadband grants are finally built in rural areas.

Probably the most interesting complaint about Starlink is the unpredictability of IP addresses and location identification. Customer’s are not identified by their own receiver location, but by the location of the ground station where the signal from the constellation lands. For most Starlink users, the ground station, and their apparent location varies. I know a lot of people who would be happy for the Internet to not know where they are, but Starlink users says this creates odd problems.

The complaint that sounds like other ISPs is about Starlink customer service. Starlink customers can’t talk to a live customer service rep, and everything must be done through the Starlink app. People say that this can work reasonably well, but customers say that if they hit a dead-end with the app, they are stuck without a solution.

A lot of people hate the self-installation. But Starlink now offers a professional installation for $199 for many parts of the country.

Users also get frustrated with technical support since they can’t talk to a live person at the company. It’s nearly impossible for a user to know if a problem they are having is at their end or with Starlink.

Overall, customers seem a lot less annoyed with Starlink than do the customer of the big cable companies, big rural telcos, or other ISPs serving rural areas. But like with most big ISPs, it’s still somewhat of a love/hate relationship.

Has Starlink Won the Farming Market?

In a recent press release, John Deere announced an agreement with Starlink to provide broadband for smart farm equipment in areas where cellular coverage is not strong enough. Anybody familiar with rural America understands that there are gigantic holes in cellular coverage, so this arrangement puts Starlink in a strong position with farmers.

The decision means that John Deer will include a Starlink receiver in smart farm equipment along with a 4G LTE receiver. This technology will be available for both new and older Deere machines. They expect the satellite connectivity to be effective in the second half of 2024.

John Deere says that smart machines will first try to connect to LTE and then automatically roll over to Starlink as needed. This means that a farmer with a large property might be connected to LTE on one end of the property and to Starlink on the other. Today, the lack of 4G coverage makes it hard for this farmer to take full advantage of precision agriculture.

The press release doesn’t explain how farmers pay for the wireless broadband. My guess is that farmers must subscribe to the local cellular carrier and connect in the John Deere app. I envision that John Deere is paying for the satellite broadband and will bill farmers for the usage. A farmer doesn’t need connectivity all year long, just in those months when they are working in the fields.

The John Deere press release cites a lot of advantages to this new arrangement. They say that this finally enables full connectivity for all smart machines made by the company. Deere says that the broadband connection will enable technologies like autonomy, real-time data sharing, remote diagnostics, and machine-to-machine communications.

John Deere was recently recognized for its innovations with smart agriculture when it was awarded an honoree designation at the CES Innovation Awards this year. Smart farming equipment already contains a lot of technology. Machines are equipped with cameras and sensors that transmit information to John Deere through the AWS cloud. Critical data is processed in real time and sent back to farmers. Deere also provides mountains of analytical data on issues like the need for watering and fertilizing fields in specific locations.

Having guaranteed bandwidth will enable another big goal for John Deere. The company already has a few applications where smart machines can do tasks like plow and till field with no human driver. Deere has the goal to fully automate all steps of smart farming like tillage, planting, fertilizing and harvesting by 2030.

This arrangement does not solve the broadband needs for the farm operations outside of the smart machines. In my experience, farmers engaged in smart farming want as much broadband as they can get for their homes and farm offices. Many farmers already subscribe to Starlink, but they are the first in line to move to FWA cellular broadband or fiber when it becomes available at their location.

My consulting firm interviews a lot of farmers every year. One of the most interesting things we hear repeatedly is that farmers today often feel like they are IT guys as much as they are farmers. They utilize a lot of software to manage many aspects of the modern farming business.

An Update on Satellite Broadband

Ookla recently published a blog that looks at the speed performance of satellite broadband, focusing mostly on Starlink. I haven’t looked at this broadband sector for a while and thought it was time for an update.

Starlink has had a busy year. At the end of November, the company had 5,500 satellites in orbit, up from over 3,200 at the end of 2022. The first constellation is still slated to reach almost 12,000 satellites, and the company has tentative permission from the FCC to extend to 42,000. We’re about to start seeing the balancing act of launching new satellites while replacing older ones, as some of the original satellites are being decommissioned and are falling from orbit. The company has upgraded its satellites, and the newest ones weigh three times more than the original fleet.

Customers are obviously liking the bandwidth, and Starlink passed 2 million worldwide customers in September 2023. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that the company has started to make a small monthly profit, an important step in long-term viability. The FCC recently, in response to a challenge by the company, reiterated that it will not be giving Starlink any of the $900 million the company won in the RDOF reverse auction at the end of 2020.

Ookla provides interesting statistics.

  • Starlink’s median download speed in the third quarter of 2023 in North America was 64.5 Mbps. That is a significant improvement over 2022 where the median speed was 53 Mbps. This is still significantly lower than what the company had promised in its original RDOF filing where the company said it could easily provide speeds to everybody of at least 100 Mbps.
  • Ookla noted that the speeds reported on speed tests had a relatively narrow variance, which distinguishes the technology from DSL and fixed wireless, which are both dependent on the distance between a customer and the network transmitter.
  • Ookla noted that 60% of Starlink speed tests were coming from urban areas. They can’t know the relative penetration rates of urban versus rural due to Starlink selling so many roaming units that can be installed on the roof of a camper or moved from place to place.

High-orbit geosynchronous satellites are not performing as well as Starlink. The median speed test in the third quarter for HughesNet was 15.87 Mbps, and Viasat was 34.72 Mbps. The real differentiator between these companies and Starlink is the latency, with the high-orbit satellites having a median latency well above 500 milliseconds, while Starlink performance is similar to cable companies.

The biggest problem that I hear from Starlink users is the price, with a base price of $110 per month, but many people are paying $120 since they live in regions that have a lot of Starlink subscribers. I also know several folks who tried the technology and abandoned it – all lived in heavy woods and were never able to find a configuration that would deliver reliable broadband. I’ve also been seeing reports during the year on surveys where customers say the broadband suffers during rainy weather.

An interesting new player will soon enter the market – Project Kuiper, backed by Jeff Bezos. After multiple delays, the company finally launched its first two test satellites in 2023. The company is still optimistic about selling broadband in two or three years and has reserved numerous launch windows with rocket companies. The company has been moot on broadband pricing, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see the company come up with interesting bundling packages that include Amazon.

The biggest threat to U.S. satellite broadband is still a few year away. Much of the rural areas that the satellite ISPs do well in will see new broadband networks constructed with BEAD and other broadband grants. It’s going to be hard to keep customers priced at $110 per month when faster alternatives will be available for less. Of course, the rural U.S. is only a tiny portion of the worldwide market for Starlink and other satellite providers, and in the long run it probably doesn’t matter how they do here. We live in a world where several billion people still don’t have any access to broadband – so the growth potential is gigantic.

Starlink Promising Satellite Cellular Service

Starlink recently launched a new webpage that advertises the future ability to deliver text, voice, and data to 4G cell phones via satellite.

The texting service is supposed to be available in 2024 with voice and data coming in 2025. The service will require a user to have a view of the open sky. I would also guess that a user will have to be stationary and not in a moving vehicle. The service is likely going to be aimed at people who spend a lot of time outdoors, in places out of reach of cell towers. There is no talk yet about price, but this seems like a premium service and will probably be priced accordingly.

T-Mobile’s service will be able to connect through any of its many satellites, and reports have said that speeds will be relatively slow, at perhaps only a few Mbps.

Starlink says that users of the service will be able to connect to users in cellular networks that participate in the program. The initial list of network partners includes T-Mobile in the U.S., Rogers in Canada, Optus in Australia, One NZ in New Zealand, Kodi in Japan, and SALT in Switzerland.

There is already an early version of satellite texting. Apple provides texting to 911 through a satellite connection to those using an Apple 14  or newer iPhone. The text connection to 911 is slow and takes about 15 seconds to complete a transaction. The service allows very limited follow-up texts between public safety and the person initiating the 911 call. Apple is providing this service for free today but will eventually likely charge for using it.

AT&T claims to have made the first broadband connection with an unmodified cell phone and a satellite in September. The company used AT&T’s 5G spectrum and a Samsung Galaxy S22 to connect a caller from a dead cellular zone in Maui, Hawaii to one in Madrid, Spain. This test was done in conjunction with AST SpaceMobile. The first test achieved a download speed to the phone in Maui of 10 Mbps, but AST has subsequently been able to boost the speed to 14 Mbps. AST plans to launch five BlueBird satellites in the first quarter of 2024 to support the cellular satellite effort.

It’s unlikely that any of these services are going to be competing with mainstream cell phone connectivity. The speeds will be slower, and the satellite constellations will not be equipped to process the amount of data associated with normal cellphone service. There is no need to pay extra to use a satellite connection for anybody in reach of a cell tower or a WiFi connection.

I’m not sure if most people appreciate how much of the land mass of the U.S. has little or no cell service. Practically every county I’ve worked in has large dead cellular zones. Providing even rudimentary cell coverage in remote areas is a valuable new service for the many people who work in remote places. I can picture that farmers, park rangers, and anybody who spends a lot of time in unconnected areas will want this service as soon as it is available. I envision the satellite companies and cellular companies generating good revenue while filling this needed market niche.