Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Eventually, with satellite to satellite laser links, and full global coverage with this efficient number of highly inclined orbit satellites, they intend to capture the entire market that is right now addressed by various very expensive motorized tracking geostationary dishes mounted on offshore vessels, plus L/S band inmarsat, iridium, and others.

Offshore oil and gas, cargo ships, Cruise ships, coastal vessels, medium-distance ferries such as in Greece, business jets, airliners, portable military applications, data links to offshore scientific applications for buoys and weather, all sorts of stuff.



I understand that’s a lot of use cases, but is it a lot of REVENUE?

Verizon and AT&T built multi billion of dollars a year of sales from cookie cutter DSL (simplistically). All these crazy edge cases…are they material? Does it make sense to shoot thousands of satellites in space for ferry boats in Greece? Financially that is.

That being said it’s really cool what a “catch all” solution we’re getting as a humanity for basically free. This feels like Google Maps / Gmail / WhatsApp where all humans get like value for free (especially in the developing world) due to one company creating a massive positive externality due to their business strategy. So cool.


Go look at the combined revenue in billions per year from all the geostationary satellite owning companies like Inmarsat, thuraya, Intelsat, ses, eutelsat, arabsat, amos, etc. Most are publicly traded ompanies. LEO properly implemented will beat the pants off it in performance and speed.




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: