| AIUI per-satellite bandwidth is power constrained. The beauty of a five-year lifespan for the satellites is that when, for example, multilayer PV panels (i.e., more efficient/higher output) get cheap enough, it'll be simple to roll them out. Likewise with more power-efficent routing chips, and everything else. It's not 10,000 satellites. Starlink has FCC support (with the ITU) for over 40,000 satellites.[1] With a steady-state demand of about 10k/year, Starlink will be able to get fairly good prices from semiconductor fabs for ASICs. Is the market for Juniper MX2020s the same size? (I honestly have no idea.) No doubt Starlink will be researching furiously to optimise transmit power, modulation schemes, antenna design, et cetera as well. A final point is that Starlink's markets are additive, not mutually exclusive. They can do low-latency links over the North Atlantic and North Pacific for HF traders/arbitrageurs, and when the satellites are over other parts of the globe, they can serve village WISPs, or individual consumers (and the US military if you insist). The one market Starlink can't serve well is exactly that which is best served by fibre: urban areas in the developed world. Looking at the business case, the risk is all upside for Starlink. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink On 15 October 2019, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) submitted filings to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on SpaceX's behalf to arrange spectrum for 30,000 additional Starlink satellites to supplement the 12,000 Starlink satellites already approved by the FCC. |