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@ArjinFerman
Looking at the previous thread that roystgnr linked, I see you arguing that HughesNet of all things has comparable speeds and prices to Starlink.
Speed is hardly the only important factor for an internet connection. HughesNet has latency in the 600-800ms range, making online gaming impossible and phone calls an intolerably laggy mess. It has hard data caps that make watching streaming video in any significant quantity a non-starter. And it has a horrifically slow upload speed, something like 3 Mbps, which would make my (and many other people's) work from home jobs impossible.
Starlink has none of these limitations. I gotta agree, into the Gell-Mann amnesia bucket you go.
Yeah, I know. My question is, do I really need gaming-rate latencies, when I'm in the middle of literal nowhere? I'm sure there are cases where the answer is a resounding "Yes!". Drone operators probably hate being fragged as much as gamers, and it's only so many times that your CO is going to take "lag" as an excuse. This is why I'm also willing to believe there is a lot more money in it, than a naive analysis of the civillian market would let on, and possibly how SpaceX was sustained for so long.
But for everyone else? Bro, move somewhere close to a cell tower. I don't know how things are in the US, but in Europe you pretty much have to go underground to escape cell coverage.
Either that or live with the lag, and that's the whole question here. How many people absolutely need to low latencies, because if they don't the ISP's that are in geo-synchronous orbit are going to slaughter you on costs. For every one of their satellites, you're going to need... scores? hundreds?
I had cellular internet (also p2p wifi at one point) before Starlink, and while they sucked less than high-orbit, they suck more than Starlink.
It is extremely impressive that in a few short years Musk has been able to offer a service... lets say an order of magnitude better than literally any legacy telecom in the world -- these are extremely big companies with all sorts of infrastructure already in place, and he has totally slain them. I do believe that in the next year or two you will be able to connect a phone to his constellation from literally anywhere -- this is also very impressive tech-wise, and it happened super-fast.
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It's not about need, it's about want, and even when it is about need HughesNet can't meet the need and paying $100 a month for Starlink sounds a hell of a lot better than your suggestion of... buying a different house in a less rural location?
Clearly. Look up population density for the US compared to most European countries and you'll understand, maybe. You also might understand (one of the many reasons) why public transit in the US is so much more difficult.
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