While this will likely not be the case within another year, what matters in relation to this is what they can do right now, not in another year. This shouldn't be taken as criticism of Starlink, but rather an example of the possibilities as the fully featured constellation starts to become ready.
Eventually they wouldn't need to send over engineers to setup a base station, they'd just send over some dishes and adjust routing priorities.
Musk himself says there's not enough laser-capable satellites yet. This is why they're setting up a ground station in Fiji (because it has internet), to act as the relay.
Fiji is nearby so can act as a ground station for the satellites as it has internet.
Nobody (I hope) is trying to use the other options to stream Netflix at the moment.
Would a Starlink setup be better? Absolutely, but that has also had issues, which meant that it wasn't an option at all. Hopefully are now addressed and Tonga will have better communications options. I'm pretty impressed by their ability to get a new ground station up and running so quickly.
So right now Starlink won't work in Tonga since the nearest base station (Boorowra, NSW) is over the horizon for satellites visible to people in Tonga.
The base station in Fiji means that Starlink can work in Tonga.
Note that Inmarsat, iridium, etc. work just fine in Tonga in the meantime.