Satellite IoT dreams are crashing into reality

I'm nowhere near being an expert, but I have been dealing with a whole lot to do with things about Satellite - Geospatial Imagery and related data. We were intrigued and somewhat happy with all the cube-satellites and micro-satellites being launched. In-fact, we were contacted by many of these Satellite Startups and we are happy that we will have lots of options for our data sources. We could, however, never understood the cost though. We did know that the data is being commoditized more and more.

I cannot say much now but we are working on something super exciting and we might be able to turn, tune, tweak and bring some major change to the cost involvement with Satellite data.

The economic advantages of Apple to delay any satellite functionality of their devices until these IoT providers are desperate is the script playing out. It requires no coordination between the larger technology and tech service providers for them to realize the significant value they will realize by being slow to implement satellite related options to their devices and services.

> which is operated by the US military with an annual budget of roughly $1B -- and we can all use it for free.

Non-Americans, yes, but Americans pay taxes to use it. In fact, if you replaced tax-funded model with, say, a markup on each receiver, Americans would pay less than they already do, and only those that use it would pay for it. I find both of these things beneficial.

> Had the US not provided for civilian access to GPS, and instead there were several competing private systems, they would all be worse

Why, though? Why would they be worse? Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved.

> and every application which is today based on GPS would have an additional monthly fee to access whichever private constellation that application had built around.

You are lacking imagination. It’s like saying that if government stops providing internet connectivity for free, every application accessing the internet will charge monthly fee. Alas, government does not provide free internet, but nevertheless, apps don’t charge consumers for ingress/egress.

As it happens, businesses are pretty good at coming up with business models convenient to users. Google could, for example, easily cover the entire cost of GPS completely on its own, and offer free Google Maps, which would easily outcompete other map apps if they charged money for use. Considering how much they pay for being default search engine on Apple, $1B is a pittance.

The last time I went to the US there were roads, has that changed ?

>Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved.

It's hard to argue this is the case, especially for businesses that require a significant amount of upfront capital. The trivial example in utilities are ISPs. You can argue that ISPs are not a "free market" because of the government doing X, Y, Z, but if it's the case that government intervention is required anyways, then removing the profit motive and having the government just build seems preferable.

>Considering how much they pay for being default search engine on Apple, $1B is a pittance.

The $1B number is a red herring. It cost them $1B to maintain the system. The costs of acquiring rockets and designing satellites, as a private company, is likely far greater. Secondly in the case of Google Maps, that product doesn't exist as it's own standalone business, but as one that was largely subsidized by another, more grossly profitable business. The question you should ask would if a company like Waze (pre-acquisition of course) could have built the infrastructure for GPS. The answer is likely no.

Edit: Thinking about this more, there is a trivial counter-example to your point about being charged egress on the internet, and it's just Google Maps. Google did the work of mapping a huge amount of the US, and generally has the highest quality maps. If you wanted to use that data, much like a business uses GPS, Google charges an fee which has been often derided as exorbitant. Even in the face of new competitors like Apple Maps and OpenStreetMaps, Google has even increased prices. I feel we would be worse off if GPS was privatized like this as this would put companies like Uber, Flexport, and Waze at the mercy of a single profit driven "competitor". The "App Store" but for GPS doesn't sound like a better alternative.