Only $5k a month! What a bargain.
Yea, I found the price point really disappointing. This only makes sense for large commercial users - leaves cruisers and small commercial customers high and dry.
Starlink Maritime
21–30 of 530 posts
Re: Starlink Maritime
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Starlink for RVs is not designed for use while in motion." Marine starlink needs to compensate for rolling, pitching, and forward motion.
Sounds like they added a gimbal or something?
The antenna is electronically steered. The pictures do not show any gimbal but they probably had to add an IMU to measure the motion of the boat (antenna) and adjust the antenna beam steering to compensate.
Re: Starlink Maritime
#23Is anything know about the power consumption of the Starlink antenna? Does the maritime version use less power than the conventional unit? The fixed-location version of Starlink consumes around 60 to 100 W constantly which is problem if you want to e.g. use solar panels on a sail boat to supply the device.
I think at those prices you'd have a boat big enough to have the power budget. It's clearly aimed at commercial or scientific use with a side of super yacht.
I'm guessing a more affordable version more like the RV product will become available for cruising sailors in time. I think the mammoth price delta over RV is because it'll be usable offshore (starting Q4 this year) and presumably that requires some more complex satellite-to-satellite data exchange (which at a guess they want to limit usage of until it works well.
Re: Starlink Maritime
#24The writing is on the wall.
RIP Garmin, Iridium, etc...
As to why it is expensive? Well, they did their homework and found out is a lucrative market (one doesn't need a lot of hindsight for that, though).
Re: Starlink Maritime
#25"$5,000/mo with a one-time hardware cost of $10,000 for two high performance terminals." wow! Why cant you just take your normal starlink with you on your boat? Don't people do that with RVs?
- This is a more niche product (just due to sheer numbers). Therefore, supporting it for each user will have higher overheads.
- Competition is expensive, e.g. BGAN at $284/GB of data transfer or more, while offering lower speeds (700 Kbps for a $6.5K Cobham Explorer 710, Vs. 350 Mbps for this).
- Competition likely won't be able to directly compete on offering for a while.
The next step will likely be commercial aircraft over the ocean. "Because they can [charge this]" is obviously the primary reason, but if you go look at what is available in this space right now, this isn't nuts, far from it.
Internet over the ocean is an incredibly hard/expensive problem. You cannot directly compare it to over-the-land offerings where the consumers are 1:1M.
Re: Starlink Maritime
#26"$5,000/mo with a one-time hardware cost of $10,000 for two high performance terminals." wow! Why cant you just take your normal starlink with you on your boat? Don't people do that with RVs?
Would only work near shore, this must mean they have some capability to go beyond the one hop to a station. Edit: from the coverage map it looks like this is only coastal waters…
I think that offshore is Q4 2022, though very hard to tell from those colors in the coverage map. Really unhelpful visual design there!
Re: Starlink Maritime
#27"$5,000/mo with a one-time hardware cost of $10,000 for two high performance terminals."
Definitely aimed at the champagne caviar, St Barts crowd rather than the hard scrabble, cruiser on a fixed income.
In other terms, Iridium Go is still the best value around and truly global for the time being.
Re: Starlink Maritime
#28"$5,000/mo with a one-time hardware cost of $10,000 for two high performance terminals." Definitely aimed at the champagne caviar, St Barts crowd rather than the hard scrabble, cruiser on a fixed income. In other terms, Iridium Go is still the best value around and truly global for the time being.
> Definitely aimed at the champagne caviar, St Barts crowd rather than the hard scrabble, cruiser on a fixed income.
More like: commercial and military vessels
Re: Starlink Maritime
#29Only $5k a month! What a bargain.
Definitely subsidizing the losses in the consumer business. Without Starship Starlink is on a path to bankruptcy like the companies that came before.