So plenty have been written about Starlink and the Guowang/G60 potential for military use and they honestly could have been funded purely off that use alone. But can we talk about their actual official use of global satellite internet? I'm doing some reading about and there's basically no details on Guowang/G60 as an actual business, which is not a good sign considering that the network is being launched on mass this year.
I will add my own 2 cents. For starlink, it's mainly for international use, America already has good internet coverage and the country is mainly flat land that's easy to have put up cell towers and fiber networks. In contrast, China still has a large rural population that doesn't have reliable internet access and considering that large parts of the country is remote, rural, mountainous, deserts and has a low population density, satellite internet is probably a much better altenative then trying to get a fibre network into every corner of Tibet for example. This could be what truly gets all of China online. In this regard, China probably has a huge domsetic market for Guowang compared to Starlink. For international markets, Guowang is basically dead in western markets, China might as well not try, or get Huawei-ed. And Starlink is gaining customers at a steady rate, China will want to go for a big push in centeral asia/Africa before the market gets snatched up by Starlink.
So what's the status on the ground terminals? Are they ready to be shipped soon? What size are they compared to Starlink's terminals? How much will they cost? What will be the cost of a monthly Guowang/G60 subscription? Will they mainly be using domestic semiconductors? What are their internet speeds? How many people can the network support? How will international customers sign up for Guowang internet? Starlink needs a ground terminal for now, but there's plans for next generation Starlink and phones to allow for Mb/s satellite internet without need for a ground terminal, is there similar plans for Guowang/G60?
As mentioned above, China still has huge parts of the population and parts of the country that don't have access to reiable internet, will they get subsidized versions of Guowang/G60?-I can think of no better way to combat rural poverty then that, giving every remote mountain village a free Guowang terminal and a free subscription. What about international customers, will China be subsidizing belt and road countries access to Guowang/G60? How will global satellite internet work with the great firewall? How else will China try to lure other countries into the network? What about countries like Russia, which will also benefit greatly from satellite internet, both in their remote far east region and also the war and how might sanctions play into that?
I think it's worryingly that we will see the first few hundred satellites get launched into space this year, and potentially thousands next year, but there's no concrete plans for something as basic as the pricing structure for a subscription or that we don't see any signs of the ground intrastructure like the terminals being mass produced. Really putting the cart before the horse here. I see it as a sign of the Guowang being heavily rushed to compete with Starlink, both for customers and for valuable LEO real estate, that or China really see it's commerical uses as a far secondary goal compared to it's military use and is barely putting in any work into the commerical side of things as a result.
