SpaceX began accepting pre-orders for its Starlink satellite internet service late Monday, as 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 deposit $ 99 for an antenna router bundle that, according to Starlink’s website, is sent “depending on the location,” on a first-come, first-served basis.
The $ 99 deposits are fully refundable and can take “6 months or longer to fulfill”, according to the website. Some sites listed on the site give notice that coverage will only be available until ‘mid to late 2021’, while some say 2022. The full Starlink kit costs $ 499 and includes a pizza-sized dish antenna, A WiFi router, and power supply.
The expansion comes as SpaceX reports a user base of about 10,000 from the “Better Than Nothing” invitation period it launched last year, and a mix of ongoing trial partnerships with local governments in the United States. SpaceX also has regulatory approvals to operate in Canada and the UK, with plans to expand worldwide. The company has sent more than 1,000 satellites into low Earth orbit and is making Starlink a lucrative consumer-oriented business, and its revenue will help fund SpaceX’s Mars rocket Elon Musk.
Starlink’s deposit idea follows a well-known model from Musk’s Tesla playbook: the electric car company has invited potential customers to order cars that are not yet fully available and collect cash from paid, refundable balance payments. of the company. The fine print on Starlink’s website states that a deposit ‘does not guarantee the availability of the Starlink Kit and services.’ It provides potential customers with a priority place for when Starlink is available in their region.
SpaceX has to go through a deep chasm of negative cash flow over the next year or so to make Starlink financially viable. Every new satellite constellation in history has gone bankrupt. We hope to be the first to do so.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2021
While the pre-order update went into effect Monday, Musk tweeted, “Once we can predict the cash flow fairly well, Starlink will give an IPO,” which has the same prospect of splitting and becoming known as the SpaceX. President and COO Gwynne Shotwell told a crowd of investors last year. year.
“SpaceX must go through a deep chasm of negative cash flow over the next year or so to make Starlink financially viable,” Musk tweeted Monday, responding to a Twitter user questioning Starlink’s price. ‘Every new satellite constellation in history has gone bankrupt. We hope to be the first to do so. ”
The implementation of SpaceX’s Starlink is far ahead of competing networks planned by Jeff Bezos’ Amazon Kuiper project and Canadian telecommunications operator Telesat. Telesat’s Lightspeed constellation will be launched in 2023 with plans to provide broadband internet to a key government and corporate customer base. Bezos’ Kuiper constellation, a proposed network of more than 3,000 satellites that have yet to reach space, is expected to compete with SpaceX for both consumer and government customers.
Both Musk and Bezos have promised to invest $ 10 billion in their respective satellite constellations, which will increase head-to-head competition for a share of the lucrative telemarketing market. Officials at Starlink, Kuiper and other networks specialized for months in government dossiers on spectrum rights and security issues, while Musk’s anger at Bezos’ network spread publicly last month.
Musk has not shied away from admitting that his Starlink business faces challenging challenges. In 2020, after Shotwell let the IPO plans fly for the first time, Musk pushed back on questions about the timing of a public documentation, saying SpaceX thinks of a ‘zero’ and ‘we need to get the thing working. Musk tweeted on Monday: “Starlink is an incredibly difficult technical and economic endeavor.”
“However, if we do not fail, the cost to end users will improve every year,” he said.