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Comment by gpm | Hacker News Reader

On the flip side I would argue that low marginal costs + high fixed costs = a natural monopoly, there is no room for a competitor to step in. A monopoly + lots of demand = lots of profit.

It doesn't surprise me that OneWeb is going bankrupt, but that's because SpaceX is doing it better, and there is only space for one (profitable) company in this space.

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For most of the people in the world, Internet is already available through land lines or cellular service. OneWeb has very little ability to extract monopoly rents from them.

But both sides are not relevant to the article - whether the business case is solid or not in the long run, they are running out of money in the short term.

Properties served by land lines and cellular service just aren't potential (highly profitable) customers for oneweb. That's ok, there are plenty of other customers. Ships, air planes, the military, even more remote places, backbone for remote cell towers, and so on.

It is very relevant, if the business is solid they should be able to attract more investment in the short term.

We're talking about the telecom industry-- if any group of competitors can stomach high fixed costs to reap future margins it's them. Launch new satellites, build new towers, lay new lines, whatever-- it's all the same Internet. Really, the story of Global Crossing's failure is instructive-- similar strategy of "low marginal cost, high fixed cost."

The future margins only exist if only one person succeeds in a given area, and the telecom industry is perfectly aware of this. It's the same reason why there are so many places in the US served by only one internet provider. I wouldn't expect there to be serious competition with the satellite provider for customers best served by satellites.

SpaceX isn't necessarily doing better. They had more funding, but the OneWeb technology was better. You can't beat the musk reality distortion field, though.

Why do you say the OneWeb technology is better?

The consumer antenna I consider the most difficult part that could make or break any of these projects. OneWeb claims to have been making the most progress on this front in terms of cost. SpaceX has publicly announced there's would not be cost effective for most end users.

I thought OneWeb wasn't even targeting consumers, and was just planning on acting as basically a backbone for cell towers in the consumer market?

All of them at one point said it was to serve underserved consumers. They changed their tune after the antennas and satellite cost was higher than they thought.

If SpaceX had a conformal antenna, it would open a new market of bizjets and commercial aircraft for them.

I'm not sure about that. Most people on planes use it for streaming media, and the current solutions are good enough for that. Also, it would take them many years to win that business and get certified.

Huh? Starlink satellites are supposed to be capable of something like 20Gbps (per satellite) as of a few years ago. A 4k livestream uses something like 15Mbps, 20Gbps / 0.015Gbps = 1333 livestreams per satellite.

This seems like it should be capable of supporting business jets just fine.

I didn't say they aren't capable of it. I said the existing solutions are already good enough and will be lower cost. You need some kind of differentiator if you want to display streaming media on an airplane. The only differentiator they could have is lower cost, but it looks like their costs will be far higher given the cutthroat industry of the airlines.

Sorry, I misread.

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