It absolutely makes a difference. Rural/isolated communities are being left behind in terms of access to what are now basic staples of modern life: inexpensive, high-quality VoIP and video telecom, diverse sources of streaming video and audio media, real-time online gaming, telecommuting, etc.
The satellite internet available to most consumers today is cost-prohibitive garbage. Most options are doing satellite downlink paired to dialup uplink, and even the stuff that does two-way satellite links provides abysmal performance. All of it usually has a $100+ USD per month cost. Compared against 3G mobile, the latter is a far better deal.
I'm not sure if you're talking about the U.S. or not, but my parents have satellite internet and they don't even notice a difference unless the dish is full of snow, which I'm not sure is a problem Starlink will solve. They stream, use Skype, and wifi calling. I don't notice much of a difference when I visit. If I try to log into a remote terminal, sure, but I'm not doing that. Internet might be more expensive, but rural properties are cheaper.
Hi, I'm your counterexample. I held out moving to a rural area until the internet situation got better. It's great out here with a yagi on the roof.
Definitely not true. It is a big decision point for a lot of people.
We're going to find out and that's the most interesting part.
I don't have it available and I live in an urban area. Hell, I don't even have a viable alternative to my cable company. There's a ton of bureaucracy around all of it.
Political nonsense aside, we rarely see the use for something when it first comes out. That includes really useful things. e.g. all of the super important inventions that were straight up accidents.
Sure, it could take years, but I can't imagine having faster communication between more people not having a huge effect.
Personally I pay $30 a month for 15 Mbps. I remember EarthLink or Prodigy being like $15-20 a month for 56Kbps. I remember leaving the modem on all night to download a 30MB demo of Monster Truck Madness in Elementary School. Now speeds are ~250 times what they were and the price has only doubled in the past 20 years? That's f-ing amazing. Prices are not getting out of control if you stick to the bottom end. I'm not even sure what I'd do with gig internet.
For areas going from no internet to satellite internet it's probably going to be amazing, but going from high latency satellite internet to low latency satellite internet will not be a huge game changer.
Adoption of http2 would probably help the quality of existing satellite internet more and be cheaper than this endeavor. As everyone started moving to HTTPS, the handshakes take much longer on a high latency connection and multiplexing would help alleviate that issue.