Prior to Starlink, the residence of some of my family was rather poor DSL. The network performance for rural midwest hadn't gotten any faster in 20 years. There is no cell phone coverage because of the hilly terrain (the closest reliable cell phone location is 4 miles away). Barely acceptable video (which was necessary for tele-learning for my niece and nephew (different simultaneous zoom calls) in the past two years was accomplished by using a Firewalla two load balance two DSL connections (the "what do I need to do to make it better" isn't something that most neighbors have familiarity with nor the understanding to manage).

Starlink drastically improved the network performance. Quite frankly, without Starlink, I would have had most of my family spending their daylight hours in my house (while I did remote work too)... which again, isn't an option for most people.

As much as I'll grumble about Starlink for my night time long exposures getting less impressive and its CEO, using the 550km orbit to provide fairly reliable network connections at an acceptable speed to my family is probably worth it.