Satellite Internet August 09, 2024, 05:34:04 pm Perhaps the Neighborhood will find this cut and paste article of interest.“Viasat said in a shareholder letter that it had ended the first quarter of the fiscal year 2025 with 257,000 subscribers in the United States – a decrease from 603,000 reported in September 2020, just before the launch of Starlink services.SpaceX started offering Starlink services to first users in November 2020 and now has over 1.4 million customers in the United States, according to the company’s letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).Viasat’s latest figure is reportedly the first time the company has publicly disclosed its broadband subscriber number since May 2021, when it was already down to 590,000 users.”
Re: Satellite Internet Reply #1 – August 09, 2024, 06:37:11 pm Viasat requires a fixed location and is not designed or usable for mobile use.Quoted from Viasat’s website."At this time, Viasat residential service requires a stationary, fixed satellite dish installed at your home. We do not currently offer broadband internet service for mobile vehicles, which includes RVs, boats, service vehicles, and more.”Larry
Re: Satellite Internet Reply #2 – August 09, 2024, 08:04:14 pm Yes, ViaSat's broadband business is going downhill fast. Like HughesNet (remember them?), thirty years or so back, ViaSat made a big bet on geostationary satellites. Heck, back then I would probably have bet the same. Geostationary birds are always in the same place overhead. There's no need to track. Aim once and you're done. Convenient.But geostationary satellites are huge, shockingly expensive, take years to design and build, and require large (= expensive) booster rockets. A company can't afford to do that very often. It could take three years or more, so you can't adapt quickly if the market changes. "Agile" is what this big-bird business is most definitely not.Which leads to a flock of related problems. If newer technology comes along, these satellites can't be upgraded, and replacing them is a very long, very expensive process. And each one can only handle a limited number of customers at one time. The only way to expand that capacity is to launch another super-expensive geostationary satellite, preferably one with more transponders.Starlink goes the other way, with thousands of small, comparatively inexpensive satellites in low Earth orbit. They don't cost a lot, or take long to build and launch; they can be replaced with newer and better models quickly and inexpensively; and if you need more capacity, you can just keeping putting up more and more birds.So ViaSat made what turned to be the wrong bet--as did HughesNet--and now they're steadily losing customers, as Starlink lures them away with better service.
Topic: Satellite Internet (Read 111 times)
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Topic: Satellite Internet (Read 111 times)
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