30 paying customers over the 5-year lifetime of a satellite is $180k. This is more than the estimated cost of a satellite plus the cost of lifting it into orbit assuming they have a fully reusable launch vehicle.
However, even if they don't achieve that you are ignoring a rather important point: that is, most of the time the satellites are not over the US, and there are paying customers elsewhere, too. Even though the profit is not going to be as great elsewhere (generally, in most of the world you have to pay for spectrum, and the customers probably can't support as high a price), each Starlink satellite will spend roughly 50% of it's time within reach of a populated area it can serve. (Even over the southern pacific, with a low angle to the horizon the satellites will be in range of a populated island quite often.)
Is there some sort of mental block on americans? Do you think that other countries don't exist?
I believe this is to do with the difference in speed of light in the cable and also indirect path that light takes as it bounces along a cable. Over inter-continental distances, the benefit is magnified.
Some governments would be happy to let a foreign company run internet services for their people if they can guarantee the data must flow through a ground station within the country. If the satellites have lasers though, the government cannot guarantee that, and therefore may ban the service entirely.
They also mention “thousands of customers”, so I guess that reading may be correct.
Also, as to economics, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink) says there will be up to 30,000 of these satellites. Even if (from https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/1020316268311/Starlink%20Servic...) “hundreds of thousands of individuals spread over diverse locations across all 50 states signed up to register their interest at Starlink.com even without any formal advertising” turns into a million paying customers, that’s about 30 customers per satellite. Can 30 families in rural locations (so, presumably, not in the highest income brackets) really afford to pay for launching and maintaining a satellite in low-earth orbit? (Real number of satellites probably will be lower, initially, but so will the number of paying customers)
Edit: thinking a bit more about it. These satellites weigh about 260kg. That would be 10-ish kg/customer. They fly, mostly, at 340km, or 30-ish as high as jets. Not trying to model this precisely (to say it mildly), let’s guess, with highly reusable rockets, it’s as expensive to move a kg up a km as with a commercial jet. If so, it’s 30 times as expensive per kg to bring such a satellite in its orbit as it is to use a jet airplane to take a kg to cruising height. So, each customer would have to pay the equivalent of moving 300-ish kg by long-distance jet. That’s 3 personal flights with luggage. Guessing at a satellite lifetime of 6 years, that’s ½ a flight a year. Seems affordable for many in the USA, even taking into account that the satellites have to be built and managed.