I occasionally get kicked down to 128 kbps for a few hours at the end of a month and a surprisingly large fraction of the internet still works.

They are targeting voice which can go really low, but a moderately optimistic ~100kps is vastly better than 0. Much below that and the number of people using it is going to drop near 0.

Yeah, it says so in my AT&T contract as well. And I was concerned when I first signed up. But I haven't ever actually seen it happen.

AT&T actually enforces it for tethering. If I really need something I can still use my phone, but it’s convenient to leave the phone where it gets reception and then use the tablet nearby.

> and "browsing" means something akin to slow dialup.

So it will be faster than my carrier..

This is a service being provided by your carrier.

Sorry if that was confusing. I mean that for instance: tmobile will be adding this to their coverage map, but they're not getting rid of the towers, and the primary way your phone is communicating with the world is not going to be via starlink satellites.

> browsing" means something akin to slow dialup.

I mean, I fire up and use lynx from time to time for a couple newspapers and magazine. Beyond evading some paywalls, it also presents it the way I want it: a wall of text. “Slow dialup” to me is 2.4kbps.

The HN crowd could get a lot done over a console.

> "This is not something that could, for instance, replace your cell phone carrier."

It's not meant to - it's an add-on for your existing carrier. When you're out of range of any terrestrial cell tower, the satellite constellation can be used as a fallback.

If I can get a plain text weather report, emergency notification or email then that is HUGE.

The difference between no communication and "take 5 minutes to get 1kb of text" represents a huge, huge jump.