Continuing the mini-hijack about musk’s grandiose plans to Rule ze Vorld!
Starlink has been very popular with business jets. Equipment is small and not too draggy, lots of bandwidth for the honchos to play games or watch porn on, worldwide coverage. What’s not to like?
Well, Starlink just doubled the price. Because they can. And also switched from a model of global service to regional service. But you can only have one region. So a jet that only operates in the USA will pay twice as much per month and has been switched from global to US-only coverage. Want to go to e.g. the Caribbean for a few days? Gotta switch regions for a fee. There is no dual- or multi-region option. Or you can buy global coverage which is now 10x as much as it was.
Obviously all this is simply a way to cause most operators to switch to global coverage. Same exact product now for 10x the price.
The equipment alone costs $300K to install & takes the jet out of service for a weekish. So once you’ve got it, the cost to switch to any competitive service gets steep quick. If there is a competitive service.
Welcome back to robber baron monopoly capitalism.
Here’s an article that may still be free, or may now be paywalled:
SpaceX Doubles Starlink Service Prices For Bizav | Aviation Week