Factual status as of 30 Nov 2025

• Starlink has nowhere near 500 million paying subscribers. Public figures show ~8 million users as of November 2025, up from about 4 million in September 2024 and ~6 million by mid‑2025. 【1search13】
• Several telecom services already exceed 500 million paying subscriptions:
  • China Mobile has around 1.0 billion mobile subscriptions as of September 2024. 【2search0】 
  • Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are also in this range: Jio passes 500 million mobile subscribers around September 2025, 【1search2】 and Airtel exceeds 600 million by September 2025. 【2search13】
• Among the typical consumer digital subscriptions discussed on tech podcasts, none is at 500M yet: Netflix has about 302M paid memberships as of January 2025, 【3search19】 and Spotify has about 281M paying subscribers as of September 2025. 【3search26】

Why this makes the prediction ambiguous

Jason’s normalized prediction is that Starlink could become the first product in history to reach ~500M paying subscribers.

1. If “product” includes telecom/mobile services, then the statement about being first is already impossible: mobile operators like China Mobile had well over 500M paying subscribers long before this podcast episode (and still do), so Starlink cannot ever be the first 500M‑subscriber product under that broad definition. On this reading, the prediction is effectively wrong. 【2search0】【1search2】
2. If he meant a narrower class of “consumer subscription products” (e.g., Netflix/Spotify‑style digital services, but excluding telcos), then no one has yet reached 500M, and Starlink is still far below that level (~8M). Whether Starlink eventually becomes the first in this narrower category is still unknowable as of late 2025, so the prediction would be too early to score. 【1search13】【3search19】【3search26】

Because we cannot tell which category Jason intended (broad “any paid subscriber product,” where it’s already clearly false, vs. a restricted “tech subscription app/service” category, where it’s still open), the truth value of the prediction cannot be determined even though enough time has passed to falsify one interpretation.

Hence the prediction is best scored as "ambiguous" rather than definitively right, wrong, or merely too early.