Comment by gpt5
5 hours ago
One nice thing about Starlink is that they force the airlines to offer it for free. I’m not sure why SpaceX is doing this, but it was surprising enough to me that my international WiFi was not only fast, but completely free that I researched it.
> I’m not sure why SpaceX is doing this
One word: marketing.
A few more words: they’re struggling to find a niche where their ungodly expensive product makes more sense than the readily available alternatives. In this case, fair play it’s objectively better.
>A few more words: they’re struggling to find a niche where their ungodly expensive product makes more sense than the readily available alternatives
pretty obvious you never worked for an ISP and forgot about all the `middle of nowhere` customers who have no high speed internet.
even for me, in houston texas, we cant get fiber to the home and were stuck with AT&T DSL which was like $60 per month and ungodly slow. Also my GF and I both work from home and she does massive file uploads.
had xfinity not been available starlink would be an easy choice. ive tried 5g hotspots and they are not super reliable.
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It's not that expensive. The Starlink Mini is around $200, and service is $50/mo for 100gb.
I've been somewhat skeptical of the addressable market (doesn't fiber + cell tower network offer good enough coverage?) but I know so many people who have put it on their RV, their boat, or are using it rurally that I've started changing my mind. And the service really is better than cell phone networks, which are far too patchy to provide reliable service at decent speed.
And you can put it on standby mode for $5/mo, so you're not even really locked into $50/mo if you're occasionally doing travel where you want to stay connected.
And in places like Africa, they've had to tightly rate limit new customers because demand is so high.
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> their ungodly expensive product
Do you have any idea how much other satellite operators charge per megabyte or Mbit/s?
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In the (relatively) rural area that I live in, the only ISP options available were something like $75/mo for 10mbsp speeds. Starlink was an incredible blessing when it became available. Legitimately feels like magic in comparison to the existing options we had.
They have several niches where the alternatives are more expensive and worse. Half the RVers in any park have it now. RVing teaches you how much of the country is not covered by cell signal. Boats.
Another one I know first hand: food trucks. I do several events a year where cell signals get overwhelmed and cease to function, but I still have to process my credit cards. I’d say a solid 25% of food trucks are running these now.
$39/month for 100Mbps in the middle of nowhere is spectacularly cheap.
Starlink costs around the same as business mobile Internet.
Or see T-Mobile away
Most of the airlines I have been on charge per megabyte. Having internet for the whole trip is a huge value add for the airline.
Really ironic given that they pulled the rug on general aviation usage.
United gives you free access only if you are a mileageplus member I think?
Regardless, having free high speed internet on a flight will motivate me as a consumer every time.
Joining United MileagePlus is completely free, you just sign up.
About the same work as filling out a hotel wifi login.
Completely free as in you don't have to give them money.
But you need to give personal information which also has value.
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And show ads for it on the inflight entertainment
The built in entertainment systems are so full of ads, that I much prefer the planes with no seat back screens. I've always already got my own devices which I use to entertain myself, whether the airline is providing advertainment or not.
Nobody wants their brand associated with price gouging and half-broken in-flight credit card payment portals, and Starlink is better enough than any alternative that they can play hardball with airlines.
Delta is still stubbornly refusing to adopt Starlink.
I've got status with them and have started booking with other airlines b/c it doesn't matter how nice the seats are if you can't get any work done. Most airline revenue comes from business flights, I don't think they realize how important this is to their customer base.
Starlink failed it's Delta Demo.
The article is online.
Delta uses Viasat and has been rolling out free wi-fi on more and more of their planes. Is it not usable?
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It could just be the ESPN/gym membership/AAA business model. $ from every single passenger is more revenue than $$ from just those who click buy.
> Nobody wants their brand associated with price gouging and half-broken in-flight credit card payment portals
The airlines have no problem with this. T-mobile has no problem with it either.
Nobody had a problem with flip phones that play snake or Blackberry physical keyboards until the iPhone was demonstrated, and then nobody could conceive of ever going back (except in niche cases, e.g. journalists loved those keyboards)
T-Mobile also offers free Wifi on airplanes.
On the flip side, the "private" aviation customer is 100% forced into the pricey plans privately with (physical) speed enforcement on the terminals.
There's even two tiers of aviation speed limting: 300MPH ($250/mo) and 450MPH ($1000/mo). They know who they're targeting at both speed points (the guy flying for fun in a prop VS the guy in a Gulfstream that wants to Get There Now).
https://starlink.com/support/article/9839230e-dc08-21e6-a94d...
What sucks is that normal "for fun" prop pilots used to be able to use the basic $50 roaming plan, and then Starlink pulled the rug out from under them by taking it away, instead offering the new plan 5X the cost with 1/5 the bandwidth limit. Total scumbags. Even your hated local cable company doesn't have the balls to 5X your monthly bill suddenly out of the blue.
> One nice thing about Starlink is that they force the airlines to offer it for free
There are many ways to circumvent that, even while claiming to offer it for free.
give the customers the complete experience and they will subscribe.
IF carriers were allowed to charge, they would piecemeal or handicap the service, and passengers would leave with a bad impression.