The founder and Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk virtually attended the Mobile World Congress (MWC), held in Barcelona (Spain) on Tuesday. Elon pushed back against the idea, by stating that “the satellite internet could ever develop viable business model, as the main market it targets is people living in remote areas who are few in number to support the huge investment cost.” Additionally, Starlink could support in filling the gaps in 5th generation mobile and fibre-optic networks. Furthermore, he added that ‘his new venture Starlink is growing quickly, as he forecasted total investment costs in the satellite internet business in between $20 billion and $30 billion.’ The rocket ship venture of the Tesla Inc. CEO and SpaceX founder aims to colonize Mars. The up-front investment costs before Starlink had achieved substantial positive cash flow of around $5 to $10 billion.
Starlink is basically an array of low-orbit satellites offering high-speed connectivity for people living in remote areas. The venture is already offering a trial service and further aims to near-global coverage of the populated areas in the year 2021. Starlink has more than 1,500 satellites, which are operating in approximately a dozen of countries and adding new country every month as well. Elon Musk has forecasted that the total number of customers would reach more than 0.5 million in a span of a year, from current 69,000 customer base. According to the analyst and President of TMF Associates, Tim Farrar, Starlink will require few million subscribers paying $99 per month each to redeem the $5 billion investment in a year’s time. In addition, Musk said, “Starlink has 2 significant partnerships with major country telcos, which could help the SpaceX division.” Although he has not disclosed the information and details about the partnership.
Elon Musk made this announcement through a video interview from California with the Mobile World Congress (MWC). The MWC is the telecoms industry’s largest annual gathering across the globe, which has been held in Barcelona, Spain this year. Starlink is facing the competition from Amazon.com Inc. subsidiary named as OneWeb. OneWeb is a collapsed satellite operator which was rescued by the British Government and India’s Bharti Group, as well as Telesat and number of other Telcos. For this, Paolo Pescatore, an analyst at PP foresight said, “Starlink need to which would lower costs and hence will require to partner with other telecom service providers across the globe.”
