Starlink seems like a premium service, even if it's sold at a huge loss to gain market share. Not sure if it's worth subsidizing if the terrestial networks can do better at providing low-cost internet to much more people.

If you live in rural America, Starlink is the only option for somewhat modern broadband internet. When I bought my house (not-even-that-rural Oregon), there was no landline internet available of any kind. I do have copper phone line, so I guess dial up might have technically been an option. The only real option was Hughesnet with its horrible latency and absurdly tiny data caps. Shortly before I got Starlink (late 2021), Centurylink "modernized" their infrastructure, bringing fiber to the node and enabling blazing fast speeds of 10Mbs (originally 20, but they quickly cut it in half). Brand new infrastructure offering 10Mbs. The idea that terrestrial networks are going to do better for anyone more rural than the "small city" level is laughable.

The potential for this service is absolutely massive on a global scale. I know four people personally who have it here in Eastern Washington and they are thrilled with it. It is literally a lifesaver for rural communities. This is only premium and niche if you are looking at it from an urban perspective. There are plenty of other options... that don't get built. Rural DSL is scary bad (1 Mbps max with dropped packets). Line-of-sight is available to some based on mountaintop visibility. TV band internet was tried by a local provider and didn't even pass their testing phase. Hughesnet and Viasat are insanely expensive and have horrifically high latency. Cellular is way, way oversold and terrible on data coverage. Starlink is here already and it works.

Potential is theoretically massive, practically miniscule, because of Starlink cost, it can target only 1) relatively rich people 2) living in nowhere.

That's actually very narrow niche.

SpaceX was told they could proceed at own risk, without any further guarantees on the 12GHz band. Seems like they understood it differently.

Starlink is already using it. The others seem to be more interested in stopped Starlink than using it for themselves. Dish... seriously? They will never do internet.

Wouldn't that band be very narrowly beamformed? You'd have to be pretty unlucky to find yourself in its path.

not in my understanding of modern beamforming

https://apenwarr.ca/beamlab/

This is so cool! I've gone ahead and submitted it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=31852403

Care to expand your rebuttal? I'm not really following.

there's no such thing as 'narrow beamforming'- the broadcast still goes pretty much everywhere, it's not anything like using a high-gain antenna

Is there no such thing as beamforming with high-gain antenna elements?

you can, but the beamforming aspect doesn't 'narrow' the broadcast in any meaningful way- the term has more to do with tuning the signal (in software) to an arbitrary location in space than its name might imply (not at all like laser beams)

each individual antenna radiates whatever 'shape' of signal based on its physical design, and beamforming is what we call it when multiple antennas reaching the same general area micromanage the phase of each broadcast so as to constructively interfere at a specific target in that area (at the expense of a generally muddier signal elsewhere)

so beamforming is cool because it can give you a few dB of extra signal entirely in software, but a proper directional (high-gain) antenna will get you tens of dB, the downside is that it must be physically aimed

as far as i understand the state of the art: if you want a 'narrower' signal, you pretty much need to use a 'more directional' physical antenna design

Perhaps I could have said "narrow and beamformed", I'm not sure, thanks for your responses.

Yeah, like how SpaceX Starlink satellites "block out" astronomers?

The amount of drama people make is incredibly.

Its more accurate to say that SpaceX (and every other sat company) slightly disrupts a few telescopes. Talking about "blocking out" astronomers is just hilarious claim.

With this claim from SpaceX, it seems that drama creation is a group activity :D

Outrage about drama, drama about outrage. Sounds like a drama feedback loop. A perpetual drama machine of the second kind.

Elon must love it.

The other companies were not launching nearly as many.

Course areas with a good 5g signal won't need starlink.