I've no idea of the numbers, but it's possible they'd one one somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic — either St Helena or Ascension — for traffic from aircraft and ships.

Indeed, they recently announced a deal with OneWeb [0] as the first under their new Ground Station Policy [1]. From the incredibly slick (for SH) promo site [2], it looks like at least some contingent of Saints are really excited about the possibilities here.

[0] https://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/2023/news/lease-signed-with-o...

[1] https://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/2020/news/satellite-ground-st...

[2] https://www.earthstation.sh/

I wouldn't expect Starlink to serve remote ocean areas until after they have their space lasers working well and can transport the traffic to a continent.

They already do provide service to ships.

Base stations on remote islands are a routine thing to construct. The British Empire built the first global telegraph network using their island colonies, and some of these routes are still used for Internet cables. Ascension Island for example.

They have global coverage, including oceans:

https://www.starlink.com/maritime

https://support.starlink.com/?topic=9eb841b3-2e43-a6fb-ecc7-...

They don’t need a base station now with their sat to sat lasers. They serve McMurdo now