How much downlink capability they have. Its more per dish, and more dishes, so its 20x per launch compared to today. I think each satellite is 10x
Edit: they've also been lowering the shell a little, so i think that also shrinks the area slightly? It'll definitely help with latency.
Edit: i don't know if they're increasing the satellite density per cell with the v3 dishes in general once the v2 come down. e.g are they fitting all the extra dishes into the same dispersal area as a v2 launch or are they getting spaced out more due to being more dishes?
Their new UI made it godawful to find anything. It's got to be one of the worst UI updates I've ever seen in a modern service.
You can only see 4 things at once on my large screen TV. Then if you have the audacity to scroll down to see more, you're almost always greeted with one of the same ones in that group of 4. Then they throw games in there to just fuck up your attempt to find anything, and then because you watched one thing 10 years ago, it decides to still show you this category of show you don't like "because you watched xyz show".
You used to be able to pause your service for free. Then they changed it to $5/m but you got unlimited 256kb/s bandwidth and the dish would always be up to date. Just before the IPO they doubled that to $10/m and removed the ability to use it while in motion.
I'd love to see how many people dropped the service after that 2nd price jump which wouldn't have been apparent until after the IPO. Both changes happened within a year.
I mean don't get me wrong, it's 100% pure capitalism to do something like, we can confidently service 1000 people per cell region and maintain our advertised service, but once we reach 950, we're going to charge super high fees to connect. They don't have to be doing what they're doing, but they saw a way to make money.
Edit: And this is all assuming the congestion is even real.
Neither of those options would support everyone living in a high density urban area, bandwidth would drop to nothing and no one would want to buy it, and people generally hate inconsistent bandwidth, or random peak hour usage charges on their bill.
Edit: Their overall bandwidth per cell is just too low to be able to support everyone in high density areas like that.
This is for new or re-activating customers in a congested area.
This isnt a random usage fee, this is for areas they claim are too busy, so you gotta pay if you want to gain access.
Its like when you call a contractor and they quote you a stupid high number. Its often because they're too busy, but if you'll pay the stupid high number theyll do it.
There was no world where SpaceX could support unlimited customers in a cell region.
They already provide cell service via a different set of starlink satellites with special antenna, but its very bandwidth limited, for cellular deadzones. You can get it in many countries around the world today.
They recently acquired more spectrum though, and with the v3 dishes will likely start to offer some sort of better sevice once they start launching.
Those satellites are all earning profit everywhere else around the world they can service. That line to a 100 person community taking decades to be profitable is money the ISPs dont want to spend because it'll take decades.
It isnt worth it, but at least in Canada and USA we've given the ISPs billions of dollars to service them, and they keep adding a token amount of people and saying shucks all the money is gone we couldn't do what we said, and then we give them more. Rinse and repeat.
Rural, cellular dead zones (eg desert, mountain passes), air, ocean/seas/large lakes.
To cover rural reliably though you end up having to be over dense areas as well, but they cant really compete in the dense areas as they'll be cheaper options, but you can make some money there since you already cover it. The area they could best compete there would be critical backup service.
Theyre still improving bandwidth with each launch as the newer hardware goes up, they haven't approached the flat line of 1 dish comes down for 1 dish going up which would be at the 5 year mark of no improved hardware or launch capabilities.
Once starship is operational, its 20x the bandwidth per launch, and cadence will increase so there's still tons of room to scale, and its not like those dishes wont improve either.
I'm in the same boat. For years I'd been excited to potentially own some SpaceX shares if they went public. No interest at all now due to xAI merger. I did gamble a bit of money on day 1 just because the odds of a pop were real, but i just got in and out and I was done.
All that money figuring out how to make Falcon 9 Reusable, led to them catching super heavy on their first try and being able to reuse it though, so the benefits keep moving forward.
That being said, they're plowing billions into making the whole rocket reuseable this time, so they will have a big hole to dig out of again if they succeed.
Falcon 9 launches that contain starlink are also profitable because of starlink.
How much downlink capability they have. Its more per dish, and more dishes, so its 20x per launch compared to today. I think each satellite is 10x
Edit: they've also been lowering the shell a little, so i think that also shrinks the area slightly? It'll definitely help with latency.
Edit: i don't know if they're increasing the satellite density per cell with the v3 dishes in general once the v2 come down. e.g are they fitting all the extra dishes into the same dispersal area as a v2 launch or are they getting spaced out more due to being more dishes?