23/06/2025
It's great to see a competitor to Starlink, but it's concerning that two very large American entities are the only operators. As we've seen with other tech like cloud services, a common strategy is to run services at a loss to build a customer base, funded by investors. Once a customer base is established, the subsidising of services stops and the price goes up in order to make money. Although it's very expensive to build a satellite constellation capable of providing high speed broadband, it would be nice to see an operator from somewhere else in the world, or a multi-country effort.
Aside from ownership, another concern with the strategy of running services at a loss especially where the operator is a massive tech company willing to burn a lot of cash, is that entering the market in this way can wipe out alternatives. Although Vorco doesn't directly seek to service the rural market, the economics for Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISP's) and deeper pe*******on of fibre into rural areas, become hard to justify and can lead to investment being stopped altogether. Behind the scenes Vorco does work with a number of WISP's to help them get better access to more bandwidth so they can offer service that's better than the likes of Starlink. If you're tossing up between staying with a WISP or moving to Starlink and you think Starlink might be better, consider asking your WISP if you're on the latest equipment they offer and if they're on a bad bandwidth deal and it's the difference between them being able to compete with satellite, a cheeky suggestion they ask Vorco might help...