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Today In Time Wasting: LEO satellites
Mar. 1st, 2024 06:58 pmNo, not law enforcement officers. Low Earth Orbit.
Once Upon a Time, in the Before Years, we were all excited about a bunch of networks of satellites in LEO that were gonna make broadband available broadly. Then things happened. Starlink _did actually happen_, and first we loved them because Ukraine and then we became deeply suspicious of them because Ukraine and WTFery.
Recently, Amazon launched their first test satellites for Project Kuiper and all went well and they announced they were gonna make a bunch of satellites this year and launch them and start beta testing by the end of the year. I was a little surprised by this, because I had honestly completely forgotten all about all of this. But I _also_ had this vague recollection that there were a bunch of other proposed systems, and I got to wondering where they are. But before I wondered that, I wondered, you know, if Amazon’s Project K actually works, what’s _that_ gonna be like? Here are some questions I had:
What’s the global market for internet supplied by LEO? How do you even calculate that?
People really, really hate Elon. And people hate billionaires in general. What is the relative hatred of Elon vs. Jeff? How does that hatred compare to how much people hate their current internet provider? Verizon? Comcast?
Is the progress of Project K currently incorporated into the valuation of AMZN? Because it’s not a Jeff project, or a Blue Origin Project. It’s under the AMZN corporation.
(If you would like to read a little about Project K from a plausible source, you could try here: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/amazon-project-kuiper-aws).
I went in search of answers, and I will just tell you straight up: I’m still looking. However, along the way, I found this absolutely _bizarre_ thread in an internet forum:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=47811.0
I originally entered it around screen 30, and then I went back to the beginning, because sometimes, you really want to see all the lead up to the car crash, not just the pile up itself.
As I read from the beginning, my first question was, who is Mr. Wyler?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Wyler
I think it’s safe to characterize Mr. Wyler as a person who defies easy summary.
Anyway. Back to that forum thread. There are some real _gems_ in the posts:
“ It will probably work similar to Amazon Whispernet now. Whispernet allows free access to Amazon.com and wikipedia. I guess this is the e-commerce equivalent of putting a brick and mortar in every city.”
“ This is interesting news. They're far enough behind OneWeb, SpaceX, and Telesat that I wonder if they'll be able to catch up. Definitely gives me another company to talk with about DogTags, MagTags, and our Bulldog servicing vehicle...
“That said, I also wonder how this is going to impact the desire of commsat companies to launch on Blue Origin in the future. Now one of the big things going for them relative to SpaceX (that launching on them wasn't funding a competitor) is no longer true.”
Some noted the obvious (StarLink is part of SpaceX) and got this in response:
“ The bolded is an assumption on your part. It might not be the same separation as Blue Origin and Amazon/Kuiper, but there will likely be some legal separation where Starlink is a subsidiary to SpaceX - or spun off with the same owners.”
I would be typing things like, LOL, No, but I’m assuming you can insert your own commentary here.
This first page has some of the earliest appearances of an argument that can roughly be characterized as, Starlink will “win” because SpaceX. This is a weird argument, because Iridium’s NEXT generation was all launched on Falcons.
Anyway. Back to that forum. There’s a long-ish post speculating about which constellations might pair up with which other corporate, tech behemoths. It’s really stupid, but worth noting because it’s an example of a type of thinking that occurs in other contexts as well, you know, like when people speculating about which celebrities are banging and/or reproducing and/or doing movie projects with which other celebrities. And whether this are ulterior motives for same.
Here is some commentary on launch cadence and competition:
“ If lifetime is 3 years, you have to replace 33% of the constellation every year, after a 3-year build-up.
Or, you try to accelerate the build-up by launching even more often.
That's where launch capacity and launch cost will really matter.
Bezos is doing all he can to make sure that if SpaceX slips, he'll be ready to take advantage of it. But if SpaceX doesn't slip, I think he's going to have a really hard time keeping up.”
Starlink satellite lifetime is 5 years. Project Kuiper is 7. And again, in 2024, we’re well into Everyone Launching On Whatever Is Available, so all this focus on SpaceX platform vs. alternatives lands super weird.
On to page 2!
“The constellation business will become a race. SpaceX has a much more capable launcher (either now, or in 4 years). This allows them to push a more capable constellation, with lower costs.
OneWeb and Amazon can't compete with that, except for making sure they can capitalize on a potential mistake by SpaceX.”
Amazon is focused on selling the direction connection of Project K and AWS, so that corporate and government customers don’t have to even touch the public internet. It’s an interesting selling point and surprisingly not imagined (so far?) in this debate, especially since some of the debate apparently already involved something along the lines of “server farms in the sky”, which, LOL no.
“ I expect Amazon to be pragmatic and launch the initial sats on a variety of existing launchers. One Web is already doing this and launch costs are not always the largest fraction of cost to doing any satellite project.”
Welp. That sounds kinda sensible and an accurate prediction. Finally!
A bit further down:
“ just look at Apple's self driving car project, it's also going nowhere fast.”
LOL. That was posted in 2019 and recently, Apple finally canceled that project. Accurate! Good job!
“ With constellation all data between servers and big customers can go via secure satellite constellation, with bonus of low latency.
This especially important with government agencies, big corporates and financial institutions.”
Prescient!
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/google-cloud-and-spacexs-starlink-to-deliver-secure-global-connectivity-301290801.html
There was a great deal of discussion in the thread about Project K offering direct-to-AWS connectivity, and predicting that partnerships with SpaceX would offer a competitive alternative. And indeed, that happened.
Along with a lot of discussion about who launches what at what price and whether that matters for really any reason at all, there’s a lot of weird posturing around vertical integration, and refusing to launch competitors stuff and so forth. This is perhaps the most amazing moment in that thread:
“So if you invest billions to develop a competitive advantage in a market, you can be forced to just share that with your key competitors? I think that can be legally challenged. Besides, launch services will be a minuscule part of SpaceX’s revenue once Starlink is operational. As in, less than 10%.
If that’s the route things go, they might as well stop offering commercial satellite launch services entirely and just use launch as part of their internal supply chain. Then no one can force them to launch anyone else’s sats.
Mars colonization can then be a distinct offering without any commercial satellite launch offerings. The gain is massive Starlink market dominance, and the loss is a mere $2-$3B a year in launch revenue. Again, a no brainer.”
I mean, ignoring the fact that SpaceX launch revenue is already over $8B and Starlink has yet to crack 1, I kinda like how this just _assumes_ Mars colonization is already a thing. Responses rapidly identified problems with exploiting dominance in one area to extend dominance to another market.
I may or may not return to continue this.
It’s Saturday and I Am Back At It!!!
“ Rural customers are orders of magnitude more numerous tho. Maybe true that these smaller customers are more price sensitive than ships and airplanes, but ultimately I think there’s more money in rural areas than ships and airplanes. Total addressable market is larger, and therefore companies capitalized enough to serve rural customers will also gobble up the more lucrative (but smaller total addressable market) airplane and ship market.”
I think this is my favorite comment so far. You have to be pretty savvy to say something this wrong. This has been (or at least was, maybe it is over now) the debate about the iPhone vs. other smartphone providers for over a decade, with people just relentlessly convinced that the iPhone was too expensive and all the money would be made in other parts of the market. And, you know, that definitely has not been the case so far. All the profit has been at Apple. I’m wasting my time on this thread because my original goal — so, what _is_ the market for Project K and what kind of revenue / profit / hassle factor is involved — has proved very resistant to attaining. And this precise argument is exactly wrong, but it’s at least on the correct topic. Also, no one is talking about internet on trains in this thread. Yet.
There is a lawsuit by Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters against Amazon and a bunch of people associated with Amazon for inadequate due diligence on the launch plan for Project K. This is an interesting lawsuit, and the response is interesting (request for dismissal, based on arguments that the initial suit misrepresented just how much due diligence the board did on the launch plan). I haven’t seen anyone in this thread dig into _why_ a union might be suing Amazon (I can think of reasons . . .); they are purely looking at this on the merits (quaint!).
Also!
“Kuiper is also being held back, schedule-wise, in a market that's very time-sensitive. Every year that Starlink is active and Kuiper isn't is a year in which Starlink is locking in customers and Kuiper isn't.”
This is a really interesting argument. Basically, what we’re looking at here is a bunch of discussion around to what degree companies _can_, _should_ or _should not_ vertically integrate. Some of the arguments in this area have been straight up wrong. Most of these arguments have revealed a real lack of thought about dependencies between competitors. The public, the regulator and companies themselves all have lots of reasons to think long and hard about allowing dependencies between competitors, because when competitors are interdependent, they don’t compete very vigorously.
The argument I’ve quoted — as well as a lot of other arguments involving the FCC permit, and the ITU timeline — are basically aimed at saying, Project K is progressing, but not fast enough, and if they don’t panic and turn to Elon Musk hat in hand, they are going to lose … to Elon Musk. Which is a very, very, very odd argument.
In general, as the thread moves through time and gets closer to the FCC half launch deadline in 2026, people are taking that date much less seriously. The assumption appears to be that it is very negotiable. There have been quotes from filings by SpaceX complaining about how Amazon said they can’t share altitude with SpaceX, and yet they haven’t said anything about the space they are gonna be sharing with Chinese satellites, and the Chinese are already launching (there had been some question for a while about when the Chinese satellites would launch, but that question is evaporating rapidly and being replaced with reality).
I actually have _no idea_ whether there’s any time pressure in getting Project K going. For the most part, when I talk to people about Starlink, I have to do some explaining. Starlink absolutely is working through the Make People Aware of the Product phase. On the other hand, as I noted very early on in this post, there is a lot of hatred of billionaires. Once people _are_ aware of the product, there is still a ton of confusion about whether Starlink is the only available option, and what alternatives exist. Hughesnet and Viasat have been around for a while and many people have experienced using them on flights. But they don’t recognize those names. Just last night, I was talking to someone who _has used_ Starlink, but who didn’t understand that Project K did not yet exist as a product. And they’ve been kinda inconsistent in how they represented their experience of Starlink.
There _may well be_ time pressure in getting Project K going, due to potential conflict with Chinese LEO satellites, or due to Starlink establishing powerful, positive relationships with consumers that are difficult for Amazon to disrupt. But Coke and Pepsi still exist as separate corporations.
“ It could make sense if you are in a location without adequate data transport (or in a foreign location where you don't trust the high bandwidth path), but that scenario is the exception rather than the rule, doesn't seem sufficient to justify its existence. Still don't see the specific benefit of kuiper over any other option.”
This _perfectly_ captures the question surrounding the initial business case. The “server farms in space” thing months before it was nuts. But if you can _write_ this paragraph, it seems _exceptional_ that you would not then immediately understand the answer.
“ One might as easily cast this conversation in terms of AWS laying its own terrestrial fiber or some other transport. They would do that because ...?”
This is _great_, because the thread has already gone over the observation that Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. already own about 2/3rds of the ocean connectors. If you can’t figure out why they would do that when they’ve _already been in this business for over a decade_ then on some leve, you have conclude you’re missing something, right?
This is very shortly thereafter:
“I work in telco and I don't know anyone who would care enough to spend this kind of extra $ (not even government agencies) - exceptions already have (much cheaper) dedicated secure physical infrastructure.”
Goddess, everything about this is the gift that keeps on giving.
What’s really weird is, they already have the press release about the size of the Project Kuiper receivers, and one is described as being “the size of a kindle”. Kindles are legendary for fitting into a BDU pocket very nicely. They ought to be able to visualize the kindle sized Project K receiver fitting into a BDU pocket.
“ I always thought that point to point would be a good market for leos, without data touching the ground or outside networks between points.”
Well, a moment of fresh air.
“ They may also have a captive market, namely the AWS servers. They can play games with integrating AWS service for customers who use their consumer-side dishes, and shift the pricing around so the satellite part is competitive with Starlink. Recall that their big network-side earthstations will be co-located with their AWS server farms, which presumably already have enormous connectivity to "the Internet" (i.e., to other tier-1 Internet providers). SpaceX did not already have a massive terrestrial Internet infrastructure.
It's still hard to see how they can catch up with Starlink for the typical customer, but we'll see.”
This is another amazing piece of reasoning. On the one hand, _so close_! Including the observation that SpaceX did not already have a massive terrestrial Internet infrastructure. And yet, _so so far_! “Which presumably already have enormous connectivity to “the internet” (i.e., to other tier-1 internet providers)”.
Does the writer of this imagine that Amazon is paying telcos to schlep all the bits around between their various locations? One suspects that the writer has not given it a lot of thought!
“ They could include Kuiper with Amazon Prime if they want - good luck with that, all customers that are too rural to have good ground based broadband (and by definition are also costly to deliver to) will get Amazon Prime and Kuiper and they can lose money on both sides - and make it up in volume).”
I actually gave some thought to this; I don’t think it pencils out on any level, but who even knows. I could imagine using Prime to get a big _discount_ on Project K; that probably does make sense. I can also imagine scenarios like, to what degree does Amazon already know where all the rural customers who can afford to spend money are and is already planning the mix of fiber and satellite to get all of them well-connected in a way that delights them and helps Amazon make money? Amazon’s pretty allergic to being perceived as a telco (and getting that degree of regulation along with it), but you never really know what they will do next. (Yes, I know about the Vodafone and Verizon deals for Amazon to provide Project K backhaul for service in areas that otherwise don’t have it. Shades of Ukrainian postal service.)
I think this might be my favorite post:
“ First, if Amazon can be a juggernaut on anything they wish to be a juggernaut at, explain failures like their phone effort (clearly it was super important since such a large fraction of shopping is done via phones).
Second the slides boast that their ad revenue compares to that of youTube, but ot neglects to show how small it is compared to Google or Facebook - and again, not for lack of trying.
[walkitout notes: Amazon is not primarily in the business of advertising, unlike Google or FB. Despite that Amazon’s advertising revenue is about 20% of alphabet’s, and an even bigger percent of Meta’s.]
It also shows that advertising remains a small portion of their overall business.
[walkitout: and that literally is all that poster had to say on that topic.]
So yeah, maybe it'll grow in the future and maybe not, but those slides certainly don't demonstrate the claims.
Amazon, to date, has dominated online retail, amd has kept a reasonable lead in cloud services. Other than that, most other efforts were not successful (e.g. Alexa, air delivery, phones). Oh - they did a reasonable job standing up home delivery, but I'm not sure whether it's a financial success yet.
[walkitout: I love that “reasonable lead in cloud services”, altho the “reasonable job standing up home delivery” completely fails to recognize that they Amazon is now the biggest parcel delivery operation in the country, I think at this point larger than UPS and FedEx combined.]
I would certainly not say that Kuiper has a good chance to succeed just because of its corporate parent. They're super late to a market that's very time sensitive, they do not have the cheap ride that the leader has and will be far inferior in price/performance when they eventually deploy. Their decision to avoid SpaceX rides is downright stupid.”
I’m still really fascinated by the idea that this is a time sensitive market. Many people in this thread are unconvinced there _is_ a market here at all. I, personally, kinda suspect this is the sort of market that starts small, grows for a while, and then really becomes a juggernaut that eats all the things that thought they were, by their very nature, better than. We won’t know for at least a decade.
Once Upon a Time, in the Before Years, we were all excited about a bunch of networks of satellites in LEO that were gonna make broadband available broadly. Then things happened. Starlink _did actually happen_, and first we loved them because Ukraine and then we became deeply suspicious of them because Ukraine and WTFery.
Recently, Amazon launched their first test satellites for Project Kuiper and all went well and they announced they were gonna make a bunch of satellites this year and launch them and start beta testing by the end of the year. I was a little surprised by this, because I had honestly completely forgotten all about all of this. But I _also_ had this vague recollection that there were a bunch of other proposed systems, and I got to wondering where they are. But before I wondered that, I wondered, you know, if Amazon’s Project K actually works, what’s _that_ gonna be like? Here are some questions I had:
What’s the global market for internet supplied by LEO? How do you even calculate that?
People really, really hate Elon. And people hate billionaires in general. What is the relative hatred of Elon vs. Jeff? How does that hatred compare to how much people hate their current internet provider? Verizon? Comcast?
Is the progress of Project K currently incorporated into the valuation of AMZN? Because it’s not a Jeff project, or a Blue Origin Project. It’s under the AMZN corporation.
(If you would like to read a little about Project K from a plausible source, you could try here: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/amazon-project-kuiper-aws).
I went in search of answers, and I will just tell you straight up: I’m still looking. However, along the way, I found this absolutely _bizarre_ thread in an internet forum:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=47811.0
I originally entered it around screen 30, and then I went back to the beginning, because sometimes, you really want to see all the lead up to the car crash, not just the pile up itself.
As I read from the beginning, my first question was, who is Mr. Wyler?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Wyler
I think it’s safe to characterize Mr. Wyler as a person who defies easy summary.
Anyway. Back to that forum thread. There are some real _gems_ in the posts:
“ It will probably work similar to Amazon Whispernet now. Whispernet allows free access to Amazon.com and wikipedia. I guess this is the e-commerce equivalent of putting a brick and mortar in every city.”
“ This is interesting news. They're far enough behind OneWeb, SpaceX, and Telesat that I wonder if they'll be able to catch up. Definitely gives me another company to talk with about DogTags, MagTags, and our Bulldog servicing vehicle...
“That said, I also wonder how this is going to impact the desire of commsat companies to launch on Blue Origin in the future. Now one of the big things going for them relative to SpaceX (that launching on them wasn't funding a competitor) is no longer true.”
Some noted the obvious (StarLink is part of SpaceX) and got this in response:
“ The bolded is an assumption on your part. It might not be the same separation as Blue Origin and Amazon/Kuiper, but there will likely be some legal separation where Starlink is a subsidiary to SpaceX - or spun off with the same owners.”
I would be typing things like, LOL, No, but I’m assuming you can insert your own commentary here.
This first page has some of the earliest appearances of an argument that can roughly be characterized as, Starlink will “win” because SpaceX. This is a weird argument, because Iridium’s NEXT generation was all launched on Falcons.
Anyway. Back to that forum. There’s a long-ish post speculating about which constellations might pair up with which other corporate, tech behemoths. It’s really stupid, but worth noting because it’s an example of a type of thinking that occurs in other contexts as well, you know, like when people speculating about which celebrities are banging and/or reproducing and/or doing movie projects with which other celebrities. And whether this are ulterior motives for same.
Here is some commentary on launch cadence and competition:
“ If lifetime is 3 years, you have to replace 33% of the constellation every year, after a 3-year build-up.
Or, you try to accelerate the build-up by launching even more often.
That's where launch capacity and launch cost will really matter.
Bezos is doing all he can to make sure that if SpaceX slips, he'll be ready to take advantage of it. But if SpaceX doesn't slip, I think he's going to have a really hard time keeping up.”
Starlink satellite lifetime is 5 years. Project Kuiper is 7. And again, in 2024, we’re well into Everyone Launching On Whatever Is Available, so all this focus on SpaceX platform vs. alternatives lands super weird.
On to page 2!
“The constellation business will become a race. SpaceX has a much more capable launcher (either now, or in 4 years). This allows them to push a more capable constellation, with lower costs.
OneWeb and Amazon can't compete with that, except for making sure they can capitalize on a potential mistake by SpaceX.”
Amazon is focused on selling the direction connection of Project K and AWS, so that corporate and government customers don’t have to even touch the public internet. It’s an interesting selling point and surprisingly not imagined (so far?) in this debate, especially since some of the debate apparently already involved something along the lines of “server farms in the sky”, which, LOL no.
“ I expect Amazon to be pragmatic and launch the initial sats on a variety of existing launchers. One Web is already doing this and launch costs are not always the largest fraction of cost to doing any satellite project.”
Welp. That sounds kinda sensible and an accurate prediction. Finally!
A bit further down:
“ just look at Apple's self driving car project, it's also going nowhere fast.”
LOL. That was posted in 2019 and recently, Apple finally canceled that project. Accurate! Good job!
“ With constellation all data between servers and big customers can go via secure satellite constellation, with bonus of low latency.
This especially important with government agencies, big corporates and financial institutions.”
Prescient!
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/google-cloud-and-spacexs-starlink-to-deliver-secure-global-connectivity-301290801.html
There was a great deal of discussion in the thread about Project K offering direct-to-AWS connectivity, and predicting that partnerships with SpaceX would offer a competitive alternative. And indeed, that happened.
Along with a lot of discussion about who launches what at what price and whether that matters for really any reason at all, there’s a lot of weird posturing around vertical integration, and refusing to launch competitors stuff and so forth. This is perhaps the most amazing moment in that thread:
“So if you invest billions to develop a competitive advantage in a market, you can be forced to just share that with your key competitors? I think that can be legally challenged. Besides, launch services will be a minuscule part of SpaceX’s revenue once Starlink is operational. As in, less than 10%.
If that’s the route things go, they might as well stop offering commercial satellite launch services entirely and just use launch as part of their internal supply chain. Then no one can force them to launch anyone else’s sats.
Mars colonization can then be a distinct offering without any commercial satellite launch offerings. The gain is massive Starlink market dominance, and the loss is a mere $2-$3B a year in launch revenue. Again, a no brainer.”
I mean, ignoring the fact that SpaceX launch revenue is already over $8B and Starlink has yet to crack 1, I kinda like how this just _assumes_ Mars colonization is already a thing. Responses rapidly identified problems with exploiting dominance in one area to extend dominance to another market.
I may or may not return to continue this.
It’s Saturday and I Am Back At It!!!
“ Rural customers are orders of magnitude more numerous tho. Maybe true that these smaller customers are more price sensitive than ships and airplanes, but ultimately I think there’s more money in rural areas than ships and airplanes. Total addressable market is larger, and therefore companies capitalized enough to serve rural customers will also gobble up the more lucrative (but smaller total addressable market) airplane and ship market.”
I think this is my favorite comment so far. You have to be pretty savvy to say something this wrong. This has been (or at least was, maybe it is over now) the debate about the iPhone vs. other smartphone providers for over a decade, with people just relentlessly convinced that the iPhone was too expensive and all the money would be made in other parts of the market. And, you know, that definitely has not been the case so far. All the profit has been at Apple. I’m wasting my time on this thread because my original goal — so, what _is_ the market for Project K and what kind of revenue / profit / hassle factor is involved — has proved very resistant to attaining. And this precise argument is exactly wrong, but it’s at least on the correct topic. Also, no one is talking about internet on trains in this thread. Yet.
There is a lawsuit by Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters against Amazon and a bunch of people associated with Amazon for inadequate due diligence on the launch plan for Project K. This is an interesting lawsuit, and the response is interesting (request for dismissal, based on arguments that the initial suit misrepresented just how much due diligence the board did on the launch plan). I haven’t seen anyone in this thread dig into _why_ a union might be suing Amazon (I can think of reasons . . .); they are purely looking at this on the merits (quaint!).
Also!
“Kuiper is also being held back, schedule-wise, in a market that's very time-sensitive. Every year that Starlink is active and Kuiper isn't is a year in which Starlink is locking in customers and Kuiper isn't.”
This is a really interesting argument. Basically, what we’re looking at here is a bunch of discussion around to what degree companies _can_, _should_ or _should not_ vertically integrate. Some of the arguments in this area have been straight up wrong. Most of these arguments have revealed a real lack of thought about dependencies between competitors. The public, the regulator and companies themselves all have lots of reasons to think long and hard about allowing dependencies between competitors, because when competitors are interdependent, they don’t compete very vigorously.
The argument I’ve quoted — as well as a lot of other arguments involving the FCC permit, and the ITU timeline — are basically aimed at saying, Project K is progressing, but not fast enough, and if they don’t panic and turn to Elon Musk hat in hand, they are going to lose … to Elon Musk. Which is a very, very, very odd argument.
In general, as the thread moves through time and gets closer to the FCC half launch deadline in 2026, people are taking that date much less seriously. The assumption appears to be that it is very negotiable. There have been quotes from filings by SpaceX complaining about how Amazon said they can’t share altitude with SpaceX, and yet they haven’t said anything about the space they are gonna be sharing with Chinese satellites, and the Chinese are already launching (there had been some question for a while about when the Chinese satellites would launch, but that question is evaporating rapidly and being replaced with reality).
I actually have _no idea_ whether there’s any time pressure in getting Project K going. For the most part, when I talk to people about Starlink, I have to do some explaining. Starlink absolutely is working through the Make People Aware of the Product phase. On the other hand, as I noted very early on in this post, there is a lot of hatred of billionaires. Once people _are_ aware of the product, there is still a ton of confusion about whether Starlink is the only available option, and what alternatives exist. Hughesnet and Viasat have been around for a while and many people have experienced using them on flights. But they don’t recognize those names. Just last night, I was talking to someone who _has used_ Starlink, but who didn’t understand that Project K did not yet exist as a product. And they’ve been kinda inconsistent in how they represented their experience of Starlink.
There _may well be_ time pressure in getting Project K going, due to potential conflict with Chinese LEO satellites, or due to Starlink establishing powerful, positive relationships with consumers that are difficult for Amazon to disrupt. But Coke and Pepsi still exist as separate corporations.
“ It could make sense if you are in a location without adequate data transport (or in a foreign location where you don't trust the high bandwidth path), but that scenario is the exception rather than the rule, doesn't seem sufficient to justify its existence. Still don't see the specific benefit of kuiper over any other option.”
This _perfectly_ captures the question surrounding the initial business case. The “server farms in space” thing months before it was nuts. But if you can _write_ this paragraph, it seems _exceptional_ that you would not then immediately understand the answer.
“ One might as easily cast this conversation in terms of AWS laying its own terrestrial fiber or some other transport. They would do that because ...?”
This is _great_, because the thread has already gone over the observation that Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. already own about 2/3rds of the ocean connectors. If you can’t figure out why they would do that when they’ve _already been in this business for over a decade_ then on some leve, you have conclude you’re missing something, right?
This is very shortly thereafter:
“I work in telco and I don't know anyone who would care enough to spend this kind of extra $ (not even government agencies) - exceptions already have (much cheaper) dedicated secure physical infrastructure.”
Goddess, everything about this is the gift that keeps on giving.
What’s really weird is, they already have the press release about the size of the Project Kuiper receivers, and one is described as being “the size of a kindle”. Kindles are legendary for fitting into a BDU pocket very nicely. They ought to be able to visualize the kindle sized Project K receiver fitting into a BDU pocket.
“ I always thought that point to point would be a good market for leos, without data touching the ground or outside networks between points.”
Well, a moment of fresh air.
“ They may also have a captive market, namely the AWS servers. They can play games with integrating AWS service for customers who use their consumer-side dishes, and shift the pricing around so the satellite part is competitive with Starlink. Recall that their big network-side earthstations will be co-located with their AWS server farms, which presumably already have enormous connectivity to "the Internet" (i.e., to other tier-1 Internet providers). SpaceX did not already have a massive terrestrial Internet infrastructure.
It's still hard to see how they can catch up with Starlink for the typical customer, but we'll see.”
This is another amazing piece of reasoning. On the one hand, _so close_! Including the observation that SpaceX did not already have a massive terrestrial Internet infrastructure. And yet, _so so far_! “Which presumably already have enormous connectivity to “the internet” (i.e., to other tier-1 internet providers)”.
Does the writer of this imagine that Amazon is paying telcos to schlep all the bits around between their various locations? One suspects that the writer has not given it a lot of thought!
“ They could include Kuiper with Amazon Prime if they want - good luck with that, all customers that are too rural to have good ground based broadband (and by definition are also costly to deliver to) will get Amazon Prime and Kuiper and they can lose money on both sides - and make it up in volume).”
I actually gave some thought to this; I don’t think it pencils out on any level, but who even knows. I could imagine using Prime to get a big _discount_ on Project K; that probably does make sense. I can also imagine scenarios like, to what degree does Amazon already know where all the rural customers who can afford to spend money are and is already planning the mix of fiber and satellite to get all of them well-connected in a way that delights them and helps Amazon make money? Amazon’s pretty allergic to being perceived as a telco (and getting that degree of regulation along with it), but you never really know what they will do next. (Yes, I know about the Vodafone and Verizon deals for Amazon to provide Project K backhaul for service in areas that otherwise don’t have it. Shades of Ukrainian postal service.)
I think this might be my favorite post:
“ First, if Amazon can be a juggernaut on anything they wish to be a juggernaut at, explain failures like their phone effort (clearly it was super important since such a large fraction of shopping is done via phones).
Second the slides boast that their ad revenue compares to that of youTube, but ot neglects to show how small it is compared to Google or Facebook - and again, not for lack of trying.
[walkitout notes: Amazon is not primarily in the business of advertising, unlike Google or FB. Despite that Amazon’s advertising revenue is about 20% of alphabet’s, and an even bigger percent of Meta’s.]
It also shows that advertising remains a small portion of their overall business.
[walkitout: and that literally is all that poster had to say on that topic.]
So yeah, maybe it'll grow in the future and maybe not, but those slides certainly don't demonstrate the claims.
Amazon, to date, has dominated online retail, amd has kept a reasonable lead in cloud services. Other than that, most other efforts were not successful (e.g. Alexa, air delivery, phones). Oh - they did a reasonable job standing up home delivery, but I'm not sure whether it's a financial success yet.
[walkitout: I love that “reasonable lead in cloud services”, altho the “reasonable job standing up home delivery” completely fails to recognize that they Amazon is now the biggest parcel delivery operation in the country, I think at this point larger than UPS and FedEx combined.]
I would certainly not say that Kuiper has a good chance to succeed just because of its corporate parent. They're super late to a market that's very time sensitive, they do not have the cheap ride that the leader has and will be far inferior in price/performance when they eventually deploy. Their decision to avoid SpaceX rides is downright stupid.”
I’m still really fascinated by the idea that this is a time sensitive market. Many people in this thread are unconvinced there _is_ a market here at all. I, personally, kinda suspect this is the sort of market that starts small, grows for a while, and then really becomes a juggernaut that eats all the things that thought they were, by their very nature, better than. We won’t know for at least a decade.