Starlink Now Has 2.6 Million Subscribers \ stacker news ~charts

Starlink Now Has 2.6 Million Subscribers

1842 sats \ 10 comments \ @kr 11 Mar charts

Great progress. And yet chart hasn’t even gone exponential yet. A future Starlink monopoly is still to come. More on that in this SN post

304 sats \ 0 replies \ @kristapsk 11 Mar

There will never be Starlink monopoly, due to laws of physics (speed of light), they can't provide same latency and stability as fiber optics.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @kr OP 11 Mar

yeah it still feels like the very early days for starlink. what do you think their total addressable subscriber market is?

do they get more than 1 billion subs at some point?

718 sats \ 0 replies \ @davidw 11 Mar

Good question. That sounds like a lot but is probably on the low side, given that the number of connected devices and plans will drastically increase.

Already 275m U.S. mobile devices, 832m in Europe, 80m in U.K. and much more elsewhere.
There are double-digit internet connected devices in Western Europe and North America per person.
8.9bn worldwide cellular subscriptions already and continues to increase. Very speculative but I believe 60% of those customers could end up utilising starlink infrastructure, even if not directly, via their existing providers. I just don’t see any of their competitors really getting close for the foreseeable, but I hope I’m wrong.

442 sats \ 1 reply \ @cointastical 11 Mar

A single cablemodem serves all in that household. A single fiber connection serves all in a company.

A single dish can serve multiple users. So while there may indeed be a billion people some day who communicate using LEO satellite constellations (which includes Starlink), it's very unlikely a billion subscribers -- unless you also include their LTE (Direct to Cell) subscribers.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @davidw 11 Mar

I would absolutely include LTE, since most networks in the west are keen on using Starlink for the time being to “fill in” blind spots.

In a few years however they may be in direct competition with Starlink, who are also building base stations on the ground.