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Amazon Leo is currently launching satellites. They have 396 in orbit but haven't started service. The constellation is going to be lots smaller than Starlink with 3236 total.

AST SpaceMobile is planning cellular in space. I think it is supposed to be faster than Starlink Direct-to-Cell but slower than regular Starlink. It uses fewer, 12 currently, 45 in 2027, and 248 total, larger and higher satellites.

China has two large 10,000+ constellations planned with hundreds already launched.

by saturn86014 hours ago|

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Amazon needs to move faster, do they have good people? Other legacy sat companies seem hopeless, too much cruft. Attended a talk at Bsides a year or two ago with one of them talking about ways they have tried to improve security and I was aghast at how behind the curve they were.

I heard Amazon is actually launching their stuff on Falcon 9 right? Putting side the embarrassment, it is more expensive base cost if you have to piggyback on your main competitor. They will never reach cost parity.

China will likely catch up. They are motivated. But I assume that wont be available to Americans?

by daemonologist6 hours ago|

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Amazon is working on their own constellation (which they renamed LEO for some reason); it's looking like it will have some availability ~next year. There are lots of others (Qianfan, OneWeb, AST SpaceMobile) somewhere along in development/deployment but none of those seem likely to offer consumer internet any time soon.

by numpad06 hours ago|

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  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_internet_constellation?#Constellations

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Funny how everyone said Starlink would fail, that it couldn't be done. Elon took the risk and it's so successful that you want to reward someone else for achieving it.

by wewtyflakes6 hours ago|

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I think the other poster just does not want to support the dude (take your pick of reasons); that's the end of the story and that's fine; you don't need to invent stories around them just to get yourself mad.

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Oh in that case there are lots of options, such as Viasat and Hughesnet.

by origini6 hours ago|

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I do not remember anyone saying Starlink would fail.

I really really despite Elon Musk for plenty of things but i don't think Space-X is not successful, i just think its not worth its share price.

But i'm for sure not liking that one person can just decide to put stuff into our space and disrupt research and my view without paying for it somehow.

And the biggest issue ish Elon Musks behaviour: he is for sure no one who would take something like atmospheric poisening serious until its too late or someone forced him to do so.

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Everyone did because Iridium and Teledesic went bankrupt attempting it. To the geniuses here, global satellite constellations had been tried and failed multiple times. Elon was a con-man only putting it out there to pump up the valuation for investors. Sound familiar? Same with his crazy charlatan act of claiming rockets could be made reusable. The users of HN were smarter than that.

by origini5 hours ago|

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Nope not ringing any bell.

by jmull6 hours ago|

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Whether people want to do business with Elon Musk seems entirely separate from whether some people in the past were able to correctly predict the success of Starlink.

by runarberg6 hours ago|

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Hater here, hoping to clarify: I never said Starlink would fail, however I did say repeatedly I was rooting and hoping for their failure.

The reason I gave, and am still giving for rooting against this technology is that it gives local politicians an excuse to skimp out on building out traditional infrastructure which I still think is superior by a wide margin. I believed back then, and I still believe that as long as local governments fail to deliver traditional infrastructure then Starlink might succeed, and it would be worse for everyone except SpaceX. I just hope they don’t succeed.

by saturn86013 hours ago|

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But they had years to build out that infra. Other countries actually did more than the US in this area. Its entirely on the US politicians and subsequently on the people that elected them. You can't expect others to just sit by doing nothing while what you want is stalled due to who is in charge.

by tootie6 hours ago|

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Who said it couldn't be done? I think the confusion has been over how viable of a business it would be which is a surprise. Also Elon has doubled down on being reprehensible.

by yed6 hours ago|

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Did they? I don't recall any significant voices saying it couldn't be done. Mostly doubts about the commercial and financial viability, but that comes with every venture not just Elon's.

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They sure did. They said it wasn't possible/economically feasible to launch that many times. Reusability still wasn't a thing, and people here said that wasn't possible as well. They said even 600 sats would be too many. That everyone that had tried satellite constellations before had gone bankrupt, which was true. The deck was stacked against SpaceX. Everyone thought Elon was lying as usual. That he was trying to pump up the valuation for false promises.

Hindsight is now 20/20 that Starlink is a huge success. I guess all you guys forgot, and now think that the success of Starlink was obvious all along. Bitcoin and TypeScript are also things I remember HN being dismissive of at first that have both been very successful since.

by rvz6 hours ago|

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Ask Claude to build one for you for free.

by runarberg6 hours ago|