[kortilla]

Based on what? What user count do you think Starlink needs to be economically viable?

Napkin math time because the economics for satellites are not intuitive compared to stuff where density is better.

10% of the surface of the earth is inhabited by people. 510 million square kilometers * .1 is 51 million square kilometers. At a service density of only one user per square kilometer, that’s 51 million users for regular service.

Setting that aside, do you care to guess how much an oil rig in the North Sea will pay for Internet? And that user will put roughly the same load as Ted in SoCal will on the network.

Satellite Internet is not for people in cities, period. Starlink, viasat, whatever.

[Symbiote]

I have no idea, but this company has subsea cables across many North Sea oil rigs. Maybe they are laid as part of the pipelines.

https://www.tampnet.com/oil-gas

[twosdai]

I agree with you, and your 2nd point about the b2b areas being important.

However I think the general math you do needs a bit more nuance. You'd want to exclude all people living in cities so you'd need to exclude the land mass taken up by cities to get a more accurate estimate.

Also I'm not sure where you get the 10% number from for people inhabiting the world. From this report they talk about humans impacting 15% of the landmass https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-human-impact-on-the-...

Again, I agree with your point but I'm skeptical about your back of the napkin math.

[kortilla]

> You'd want to exclude all people living in cities so you'd need to exclude the land mass taken up by cities to get a more accurate estimate.

No you wouldn’t. The entire point is that Starlink works fine in cities for a small count of users.