Starlink: Performance Excitement, Pricing Disappointment

 Like many I have held out high hopes for Starlink, the low-earth-orbit satellite constellation launched by Space-X.  It seems a figurative and a literal "over the top" solution to poor and spotty broadband options in Maine.  The service is currently in limited public beta test in northern states from Washington to the upper midwest, with extension to Canada and the northern latitudes of the eastern U.S. in the offing in the next month or two.  

The good news is that early adopters report download speeds in the 100 to 175 Mbps range, with uploads somewhere in the 10 to 30 Mbps range.  These are early and unsystematic reports and reflect a service that is still being refined as engineers tweak the complex algorithms that balance traffic across the 800+ satellites, each of which is in constant motion around the planet.  

And that is just the beginning.  It is likely that, everything else being equal, as the number of satellites increases, and the techies learn how to optimize things to meet increasing numbers of subscribers, there is more potential performance upside than downside ahead.

But while Starlink is technologically made for Maine's geography and its numerous pockets of unserved and underserved rural residents, the pricing is a poor match for the economics of a great number of non-connected Mainers.  The service costs $99/mo.  The hardware to receive and send broadband data costs $500 up front.    So first year costs are roughly $1,700 -- a pretty high barrier for many Mainers.  

If this pricing structure remains in effect, I fear that Starlink will fall far short of serving the rural market toward which it is ostensibly targeted, at least here in low-income Maine.  Call this a cold shower for those of us that have gotten a bit over-heated with enthusiasm for the underlying technology, and sheer audaciousness of the Startlink project. 

I am not in a position to quibble about the justification for the pricing.  By all accounts the technology in the ground antenna probably costs considerably more than $500 per unit at this early stage of manufacturing.  My suspicion is that part of this hardware cost is built into the monthly charge.  

The reality, though, is that adoption is going to be limited to folks with substantial need who also have some financial means.  Which means that Maine's broadband deserts and broadband sinkholes will need to stay grounded, literally and figuratively, in seeking means to extend fiber and other local initiatives, mile by mile and neighborhood by neighborhood until/unless the economics of the Starlink model come more closely within economic range of our populace.  

There are efforts underway in many communities to do this.  Increased broadband funds have been promised by politicians and state and federal levels.  This year's Covid crisis has made clear the importance of broadband for work and for education like nothing else could have.  However, the economic toll for 2020 disruptions has not yet been totaled.  When it has, this may slow action of broadband.  Time will tell.

I am hopeful that economies of scale, plus a fine-tuning of the pricing model that goes along with the fine-tuning of the underlying technology, will result in lowered costs for Startlink as time goes by.  The bottom line, though, is that Starlink should not been seen as a near-term panacea, and that those moved to work toward improvements on the ground should know that such efforts are still worthwhile to improve the global connectivity of ourselves and our neighbors.