SpaceX began accepting advance orders for its Starlink satellite internet service on Monday night, while the company expands its beta program to “a limited number of users per coverage area”. Members of the public can now enter their home address and pay $ 99 for an antenna router package that the Starlink website says will be sent “on a first-come, first-served basis, depending on location.
The $ 99 deposits are fully refundable and “can take 6 months or more to complete,” says the website. Some sites on the site return a warning saying coverage will not be available until “mid to late 2021”, while some say 2022. The complete Starlink kit costs $ 499 and includes a mountable pizza-size satellite dish. , Wi-Fi router, and power supply.
The expansion comes as SpaceX reports a user base of approximately 10,000 from the “Better Than Nothing” beta period for guests only that started last year and a mix of ongoing pilot partnerships with local governments in the United States. SpaceX also has regulatory approval to operate in Canada and the United Kingdom, with plans for global expansion. The company launched more than 1,000 satellites in low Earth orbit and is competing to make Starlink a profitable consumer-focused business line, and its revenue would help finance the Starship rocket from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Mars.
The idea for the Starlink depot follows a familiar model from Musk’s Tesla manual: the electric car company invited potential customers to pre-order cars that are not yet fully available, collecting money from modest, refundable entries to help support the company’s balance sheet. The fine print on the Starlink website says that placing a deposit “does not guarantee that the Starlink Kit and Services will be available to you”. It reserves potential customers a priority point whenever Starlink is available in your region.
SpaceX must go through a deep abyss of negative cash flow next year or later to make Starlink financially viable. Each new satellite constellation in history has failed. We hope to be the first to do so.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2021
When the pre-order update aired on Monday, Musk tweeted: “As soon as we can predict cash flow reasonably well, Starlink will do the IPO” – presenting the same prospect of spin-off and going public as the president and SpaceX COO, Gwynne Shotwell, told a crowd of investors over the past year.
“SpaceX needs to go through a deep abyss of negative cash flow next year or later to make Starlink financially viable,” Musk tweeted on Monday, responding to a Twitter user questioning the price of Starlink. “Every new satellite constellation in history has failed. We hope to be the first to do so. “
The deployment of SpaceX’s Starlink is far ahead of rival networks planned by Jeff Bezos’s Amazon Kuiper project and Canadian telecom operator Telesat. Telesat’s Lightspeed constellation will be launched in 2023, with plans to offer broadband internet to an important government and corporate customer base. The Kuiper de Bezos constellation, a proposed network of more than 3,000 satellites that have not yet reached space, is expected to compete with SpaceX for both consumers and government customers.
Musk and Bezos have pledged to invest $ 10 billion in their respective satellite constellations, cementing direct competition for a slice of the lucrative telecommunications market. Officials at Starlink, Kuiper and other networks have been struggling for months on regulatory lawsuits over spectrum rights and orbital security issues, with Musk’s ire at the Bezos network spreading openly last month.
Musk has not shied away from admitting that his Starlink business faces major challenges ahead. In 2020, after Shotwell first presented the IPO plans, Musk stepped back on questions about the timing of a public action, saying that SpaceX is “thinking about that zero” and “we need to make it work”. On Monday, Musk tweeted that “Starlink is an incredibly difficult technical and economic venture.”
“However, if we don’t fail, the cost to end users will increase every year,” he said.