Per Musk and the official starlink detail document, it's available for existing and new customers in affected areas.
Starlink on X said they sent ~500 kits as of 10/1, not 2000. Do you have a source for the 2k number?
Today's the 8th things change
There have been no updated tweets. Seems like something they'd want to keep updated, given they are still tweeting about new countries being added to their service.
> I have 1k from the starlink engineer on ground and he said they've sold about the same amount to others.
Who? Where? How much congestion do they expect with the influx of so many new users (they're already upcharging/slowing down users due to congestion in the US)? With all due respect, this is frustratingly similar to "Trust me bro".
I have no doubt that Starlink - especially their rank and file employees - is trying to help, but we need to keep our expectations realistic on how much they can or will do. Especially with Musk as the helm. Musk lies on X, especially when it comes to who and what has access to Starlink, and doubly when it comes to politicized situations, which I'm sad to say Hurricane Helene is.
As someone here in the heart of it let me elucidate:
1) Residents here on the ground were told Starlink is already active in your area. Just connect through the site with your address. No one was worried about getting "retail dishes" they were told Starlink was providing free satellite internet across the devastated areas, all they had to do was open a website, enter their address and type $0 and boom, they're connected.
2) No one here even COULD get a dish delivered on the fly if they wanted to. Most roads are still to this day broken and impassable.
3) NO ONE HERE THOUGHT THIS WAS A STANDARD "FREE TRIAL" SITUATION. THEY THOUGHT IT WAS ACTUAL RELIEF, NO STRINGS ATTACHED, NO PERSONAL HARDWARE OBLIGATION.
Ultimately, you're making the mistake of thinking this is an article explaining a free trail for those with power, existing internet, passable roads, or existing hardware. The point this piece is making is that it was false advertising to people desperate to let their families know they weren't dead.
It's probably easy from the comfort of your mother's basement out of Helene's wake to spout all of this but a) you missed the point of the article and b) no one gave a fuck about retail dishes. They were told it was available via a website as HELP. As a kindness.
I'd love to see your source on 2000 free dishes. Ask anyone local here when the storm hit if they knew that, how to connect to them (without internet already). I guarantee no one knew until days later.
2k from the SpaceX engineer on the ground. 1k from SpaceX itself.
I can understand if somehow by a game of telephone people got that idea. But the offers are here
https://x.com/Starlink/status/1841567233417576497
https://x.com/Starlink/status/1841503492445176151
Notice the service talk
It even seems to me you'd think people would just get Internet without any hardware
It was very explicitly a free service offer and isn't what you get elsewhere from Starlink.
This was an offer for people on the ground who had already bought hardware in stores (vs directly) & had issues activating.
When you get a new Starlink dish from a shop and turn it on you have ~1 hour of free Internet to sign up an account out of the box. The starlink hurricane offer makes it 30 days
Starlink's regular 30 day offer is only available direct & doesn't match the description given in the article. It doesn't give you a month free period. It's an offer to refund your dish and service if you don't like it after a month. You always pay in full for service upfront.
There's also at least 2000 free dishes in the area, at least half of them provided via SpaceX (i.e SpaceX gave them for $0) so the talk about no hardware is crazy.