I wonder about the economics, though. Intuitively it doesn't seem like it can be more efficient to launch constellations of satellites than run kilometers of cables, even if you have to run 20 km for each customer. That's, what, $10k a pop? So around two orders of magnitude cheaper than a satellite? Something isn't adding up for me.
> even if you have to run 20 km for each customer. That's, what, $10k a pop?
I don't know if we're still talking Africa or in general, but $10k doesn't get you anywhere near 20 km around me. I got municipal fiber recently, and our agency passes through the costs. On a 7 drop project of about 1 mile, aerial on existing poles, my share was $5k; plus I had to pay my own way to get conduit installed from the pole to my house, that was nearly $7k. Underground utilities are expensive!
Starling is 10k satellites shared across the entire planet.
A satellite will serve thousands of customers, whereas a fixed line only serves one. I think 10k is also severely understating the cost per customer. There's like hundreds of metres between these houses at a minimum, and in some areas possibly Kilometers from house to house.
Intuitively, what's the cost to get to orbit? SpaceX's Falcon reusable rocket lowered the cost to get to space by an order of magnitude or so, so you have to factor that in.
I only counted the cost of the satellite itself. I assumed you can get it into orbit for free, so if it costs a cent more than that, it's a further argument against.
Starlink is manufacturing the satellites at scale. They’re likely to cost not much differently from large ground based 5G towers at some point. The antennas are “digital” so no expensive mechanical systems needed.
