[danpalmer]

This is break-even on just one cost aspect though. If you add satellites, bandwidth/internet connectivity (a significant portion of the cost to service a user for traditional ISPs), renting/maintaining ground stations, marketing, and eventually R&D/offices/etc, that all rapidly increases.

Additionally, $200/m is not price competitive compared to traditional ISPs in most of the world, $20-50 is more typical for many areas, less in Africa/Asia. Yes Starlink has a USP over traditional services, but that USP won't benefit users who are already well served by traditional ISPs, so to expand outside the remote market they will need to drop prices to compete.

The maths could easily end up being $12bn/year / ($30/mo * 12m) = 33.3 million users. Is that a reasonable goal? That's a lot of paying users. That's a 4% market share in Europe and the US where there are highly developed telcos with decades of experience in this. That's a hard one, particular to achieve it in the near term (~5 years or one replacement cycle).

[LargeTomato]

I should have been more clear. I agree with you 100%.