Amazon to acquire Globalstar and expand Amazon Leo satellite network

Post by brandon272 » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 9:40 PM UTC

readitalready wrote: post #104

testing22321 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more and more rural regions around the world are wired for fiber. Ecuador has the highest rate of cell phone ownership in the world, because they never built landlines and just went straight to wireless. Same with electricity in many African countries -no grid, straight to local solar. When I see comments like this it’s obvious you’re talking about West Virginia or Nevada as “rural regions around the world” Go spen…

ok but that just makes Starlink even more unprofitable, as now you're limited by the number of customers. The moment these people incorporate into a village, it becomes more profitable to build a fiber connection. Fiber will eventually get to Ecuador.

Post by wolvoleo » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 11:17 PM UTC

krisroadruck wrote: post #72

crowcroft wrote: post #54

Naive question - let's assume this all becomes a really competitive market and 10+ companies are pumping satellites into orbit. Are we going to run out of space? At some point it probably makes the most sense for there to be one wholesaler of satellite connections and then many retailers right? The market skews towards being an international natural monopoly, right?

It would be incredibly unlikely for there to be enough competition at a grand enough scale for it to become a problem. Space is just very big. Earth's surface is ~197 million sq miles. If you move up to a LEO shell at around 550 miles up, the surface area of that sphere is 34% larger than that. If you were to distribute 100,000 satellites across that shell, each one would have 2,600 square miles to itself. That's lik…

Post by wolvoleo » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 12:59 AM UTC

zwily wrote: post #78

krisroadruck wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be incredibly unlikely for there to be enough competition at a grand enough scale for it to become a problem. Space is just very big. Earth's surface is ~197 million sq miles. If you move up to a LEO shell at around 550 miles up, the surface area of that sphere is 34% larger than that. If you were to distribute 100,000 satellites across that shell, each one would have 2,600 square miles to itself. That's lik…

But Starlink satellites are low enough that we don’t worry too much about Kessler Syndrome at that altitude, right?

Post by readitalready » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 2:59 AM UTC

testing22321 wrote: post #110

readitalready wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok but that just makes Starlink even more unprofitable, as now you're limited by the number of customers. The moment these people incorporate into a village, it becomes more profitable to build a fiber connection. Fiber will eventually get to Ecuador.

Starlink was never supposed to be for anyone that can have fibre. There are billions of potential customers.

Post by bigfatkitten » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 4:23 AM UTC

philipwhiuk wrote: post #43

bigfatkitten wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t have any advantages at all. People point to the cost of land, but if being physically inaccessible isn’t a problem, then there are lots of cheap places on Earth you can deploy data centres too at far lower cost than launching them into orbit.

For now there's a regulatory oversight advantage (or rather lack of same).