I'd agree with the last part of your comment. Because at least India doesn't depend upon Starlink for broadband access. Even in remote regions, now that it has seen first hand what modern economic and tech blockade means (after struggling for decades with older sanctions including related to nuclear tests and thank goodness it did that), it really isn't very keen on Starlink and wants home-grown alternatives (which definitely will take time) and also is now indicating to multiple players that they are welcome (but within limits and regulations).

Musk isn't pushing Starlink for "upside" for the people or your "central EU", or Africa, or India, or the moon (let's just assume for the time being), Musk is hoping to saturate the market and remain the only player or only major player, and Musk wants that perceived dependency as a weapon, as a tool of control. I won't be shocked if Musk later lobbies for "ah, too many satellites up there already.. it'd be dangerous to send more… ". In fact I am counting on that.

> where they have <.1% the money

That's another part where, again, I'd agree with the last part of your comment. That country has so many people that just from one region if enough rich people (and sadly with the great divide there are way too many), if they need it, it will outspend too many countries from Europe single-handedly when it comes to Starlink or satellite Internet access.

Having said that, these things are not this black and white… but I've tried at least one part, or rather a fraction of one part I'd say.

Satellite Internet is one of the best things I'd say but I'd bet my spare kidney that not in the hands of Musk and Musk is trying hard that he/Starlink becomes the almost single player, first mover etc etc.

Here along the BC Coast, the organization I work for has an expansive sensor network. Weather stations, CTDs, custom equipment in watersheds, research facilities with all kinds of equipment to monitor, and so on. There is no broadband or fiber on remote islands along the coast. We used to use satellite internet, and getting data off of our main hubs (everything is relayed to the hubs by radio) was very slow and precarious. Since starlink it's a breeze. We will finally be able to get video feeds off of some of the stations; a totally untenable concept before.

> I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have <.1% the money to spend on such things.

India is rapidly expanding fiber internet connectivity, even in rural areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Broadband_Network

In addition, 4G/5G coverage is extensive: https://www.ookla.com/articles/india-mobile-connectivity-1h2...

See India in this 5G global coverage map: https://www.ookla.com/articles/5g-map-2026

The number of people who are not covered by above-mentioned fiber/cell network, and can afford Starlink as it is priced now, will be extremely small (likely making Starlink unviable as a profitable business).

From India here:

With their current pricing, they can't compete with local vendors. These local vendors charge like $10/month for 100-200mbps (vendor/bundle dependent) speeds, with no data-capping. For just $5 extra, they also bundle 20+ OTT channels, including netflix and prime video (HD only).

And yes, fiber connections are everywhere here for past 5 years... and I'm from a very small town here.

Family lives in Rio/Brazil. With the efforts from our government every year that passes, public safety becomes worse and suburban areas get more marginalized, it got to a point where the drug traffickers from my area start cutting the fibers and leaving letters on mailboxes saying that from now on, anyone who wanted internet had to get their illegal internet.

Which meant shitty speeds and if you have a problem with billing/service you cannot complain to anyone. Their service would go down for days and there is nothing you can do besides rely on shitty 4G. When Starlink became available in Brazil this was the lifesaver for my family

When COVID hit, I knew a lot of engineers who decided to move to rural areas / small farms because they could leverage Starlink to work remotely.

Last year, when I asked whether they still liked Starlink, all of them said it is amazing, but they had gotten fiber coverage in their area from a local provider, so they don't use it anymore, or just use it as a backup.

I think Starlink was a huge demand signal that there were people willing to pay a premium for faster-than-radio internet. So, unless they manage to be cheaper and faster than fiber, I don't think there is much of an endgame there.

But there are a few places that will need Starlink, like planes, cruise ships, and islands. I'm just not sure if that will justify that $1T valuation.

> EU funding brought fiber to my farm area

Yes, boondoggle subsidies allow you to un-economically bring fiber to a subset of random places. I say this as the beneficiary of one such boondoggle. It doesn't scale well

I have a friend who lives 1.5hrs outside Toronto and needs Starlink because ISPs don’t offer anything useful. Same with a family member with a house even closer to Toronto. These aren’t far off North Ontario rural houses and there’s tons of people living up there.

I don’t know why India is mentioned here.

I live in India and have used 1Gbps Fiber since almost 10 years and pay only 40$ for it. Internet access in India is quite cheap and fiber is quite easily available

Fiber deployment is bottlenecked by Baumol's Cost Disease: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect. There's basically no productivity gains being made in how quickly skilled laborers can deploy fiber. Like everything else involving skilled labor, the price keeps going up.

Here in Alaska it’s literally better than the cable internet (except apparently for gaming but I don’t really game), and $10/mo cheaper for a starlink roam.

At where we are building our cabin, it’s infinitely cheaper than the alternatives lol.

In much of the US, internet companies run a racket. While there are often multiple providers to choose from, if you want reliable service at good speeds, you end up with two, or if you're really lucky, three options. One of those options is Starlink.

I think that while Starlink is a technical innovation its primary benefit is as a political innovation: it lets you sidestep a lot of politics.

Rural communities in the US should have high speed internet, just like efforts were made to give them electricity back in the day. But the layers of politics and dysfunction in the way are deep.

I have fiber (I can get up to 300 Gbps at my home in the Seattle area, but I got opted for the 2Gbps) and I have Starlink as backup/failover. I previously used my mobile service for that but learned the hard way that when there's a large internet outage in the area, as it did when we had a bad storm, so does mobile service, either power loss or it can't support the influx of everyone using their phone internet. So now I have starlink as a backup. It's a very small portable unit that I can also take when camping. It's a great service. Also it's powering a lot of airlines now, it's fast and reliable to the point I can watch youtube and tiktok on my flights.

Australian here. We generally have 1st world internet for most towns. The moment you are outside suburbia, speeds are embarrassingly slow. On my own farm, we dont even have power, or city water, and little to no mobile / cellular reception. We are like hundreds of thousands of other people with rural property here. I suspect the same is true in New Zealand, much of South America, Pacific Islands, Indian Ocean Islands, rural Canada, and often times rural USA.

There's many isolated communities abroad that benefit from this coverage. Plus, when I begin my solo sailing adventure, I intend to use Starlink as my primary method to maintain contact, of course with traditional methods serving as backup.

I have a good friend who relies upon Starlink for connectivity for his home in southeastern Ohio (USA).

We've worked through all of the other alternatives there, including using cellular modems with directional antennas mounted up high on a mast pipe and multi-carrier aggregation tricks like Speedify. There is no local WISP serving the area, no fiber, no coax for DOCSIS, and xDSL is either a bad joke, basically basically abandoned, or both in much of the US in 2026.

So far, Starlink is the win.

(I'm pleased to hear that things are better than that for you in your neck of the woods.)

I have a really good friend who used Starlink for his cottage in Canada and as soon as there was broadband he switched away. Starlink was unreliable and slow compared to what he has now.

In my country today the people who use it the most are in northern cities that don't even have roads going to them.

Here in rural USA, we were paying $150 for very slow DSL, and now we're paying about $50 for quite fast Starlink.

In Asia I was paying $50 for very fast fiber, but that was in a major city; out at the farm you're on the mobile networks. So if I build a house out there and can do Starlink, I will do it.

Plus, there's the whole Starlink Roam thing: in California this summer, I see more and more vans with the little Starlink rectangle on top. "Work from Campsite" is pretty compelling, honestly.

In Europe, even rural areas tend to be fairly close to cities, whereas in North America, lots of farms are really remote. This map from NASA [0] should give you an idea of how remote some areas can be.

Now, 99% of these areas have electricity from the grid and analogue phone lines, so there's no reason why we couldn't also run fibre out to them, but for political reasons that's fairly unlikely to happen anytime soon.

[0]: https://assets.science.nasa.gov/content/dam/science/esd/eo/i...

Many places have incompetent government that can't/won't build proper infrastructure. For example, the US has allocated around $50B for rural broadband and almost nothing has been built.

Maybe it’s about the power to control the internet (and what is does and doesn’t serve) worldwide.

India really has very deep penetration of 5g, and at very low cost. There might be a rare place that starlink might be needed but really I cannot image starlink having much consumer/retail uptake in india. Not needed, and too expensive. There might be commercial users - offshore rigs etc, but india is too densely populated for there to be many 'truly remote' locations.

India has still not permitted starlink to start ops.

Its also a pricing thing; in Australia our nationalised provider keeps getting more expensive, starlink is now getting cost-competitive.

People who live out in rural areas. Think farmers, or just people who love living out on their own lands, common enough in the US. I have a friend who lives off Starlink internet, it would cost way too much to get internet all the way to his property, not really worth it.

It works on planes, ships, and in remote areas with no coverage. I live in Canada where the whole of Europe would fit many times over, nothing else would work in the remote areas at that scale. My parents live in Panama and use starlink to get reliable high speed internet at the beach. Even when the power goes out, their solar panels keep the internet online.

One place where fiber cables cannot reach would be... way up in the air. Think about how many people fly each day and then remember how poor internet connectivity and speeds are at 40,000 ft.

So Starlink in flights seems like a perfect fit.

Most people hate Comcast’s and att duopoly so much that’s reason enough to get starlink. I just got it in ca and it works very well

> I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have <.1% the money to spend on such things.

Starlink has a Military arm called Starshield. If strategically important to US military and other militaries who are partners of the USA, that will be many millions/billions.

https://www.spacex.com/starshield

Recently I flew on a long-distance (so at least a dozen hours of flight time) low-budget airline that had 60 Mbps download/12 Mbps upload and it specifically called out SpaceX Starlink for being able to provide this for free. A video call went smoothly. There was connectivity from takeoff to landing with no interruption in between. This was the best airline experience I've had yet.

There are many places, even in the US, where your only alternative is--believe it or not--dial-up modems. Others had painfully slow--1 Mbps up, 5 Mbps down--Internet.

Starlink is a problem that solves itself. If enough fiber rolls out that there's no more customers, they'll scale back satellites (since they only last 3-5 years).

I live in an area of the US where the only alternatives are 3.5 megabit DSL which stops working when it rains or Hughesnet, so basically no real competition at all.

It's very popular in rural US where running wired broadband is cost prohibitive.

There are many parts of the US that are very spread out, and thus running wires to every home is expensive without subsidies.

In America for my lifetime I have never been able to get fiber and it’s because America is too large and I live in an affluent suburb.

Same. I bought a cabin, which had the equivalent of pretty good DSL. I got starlink and immediately cancelled it when 2gbps fiber arrived 9mo later. Fiber is rolling out faster than a lot of people think.

Eeh even ther its a stretch , when people talk about Africa - they should really specify where exactly. PLaces like SouthAfrica [1] already have a robust Fiber network with accelerated buildout of FTTH. Ditto for most of Eastern Africa countries which have FTTH to most of the major cities and subururbs with accelerated buildouts ongoing. Unless its a conflict area most regions are getting wired up pretty fast to enhancce business connectivity - the speeds and bandwith for starlink make noe economic sense once a developing pop are factored in.The only major push for many countries approvals is basically strong armed and shaken down by the US admin on behalf of Musk[2].

[1]https://ctcommunications.co.za/blog/south-africa-fiber-rollo...

[2]https://tech.yahoo.com/science/articles/us-pushes-nations-fa...

Everyone at sea, uses them now.

I feel like no-earth orbit is always going to beat out low-earth orbit in the long-term. I live an area that the USDA classifies as rural and I now have multiple fiber options, including municipal. This isn't to say that Starlink doesn't have its place and I only see it becoming more niche over time and facing more competition in the LEO segment.

I am also in rural EU and have 1 house that has fiber, and another, 10 minute drive away has nothing, not even cell signal and it won't get anything any time soon. Starlink is basically the only option.

Europe is too well-run (even the poorer parts) for Starlink to be as relevant.

Having lived in Central America, imagine all the workers that are laying the internet cables going back at night and digging them up to sell. A government that, 50% of the time, won't actually build anything when given the funding, and usually can't get the funding anyways. Plus, in some parts, weather can result in internet going out and, given the government, staying out for quite a while.

It's a fair point that those in poorer places will have less money, but for instance, Mexico's Starlink pricing is pretty standard, it's like 50-100 EUR per month. They pay it anyways because they need it, and because it's the best option.

Starlink is a great decentralization for anyone living under corrupt dysfunctional governments, where they can't rely on that centralized system.

The obvious is the cost of deploying. You don't need to dig to add cable. Full country coverage. Worldwide customers.

Elon turning off Russian access to Starlink by whitelisting only authorized terminals in the region was a turning point for Ukraine's success. The conflict has proven that modern warfare depends on Starlink and its mimics.

There's a lot of places without fiber, e.g. all the ships/jets etc. there's a lot of low-density areas, there's islands with no internet or VERY expensive internet

one difference is that fiber isn't mobile.

Though all these satellites might give fixed-location folks higher bandwidth, they could also service many more concurrent mobile customers. Connectivity would probably be better too because more satellites would be in view.

Also, don't underestimate the benefit of robust competition, even if you don't use starlink.

i live a few miles west of core Palo Alto (technically, still in Palo Alto); Starlink is my only real choice for broadband, and it's great.

the next generation of satellites base stations that are currently going up remove the need for base stations

you’ll have similar throughout and latency direct to your phone

but since this dream has been mired by delays, the starlink base station is still convenient

lots of people that would otherwise be stationary for reliable internet can go on the road

week long festival campsites have lots of people who aren’t taking any PTO that connect to their teams during the day time, while everyone else has nonexistent cellular service solely due to the overloaded networks

I would wager that most don’t unsubscribe to starlink in between time they just increase their mobility since its suddenly practical

speaking of PTO, if they are accumulating it but now travelling and never using it then its functionally a raise, all because they keep a starlink subscription

bigger satellites will bring that to everyone

I live in the suburbs in the bay area in California, and starlink offers a significantly better quality of service than charter spectrum cable service, which is my only other option. Considering the current state of our government, I don't see things improving anytime soon.

Not all of us live in places with EU funding. I worked at a rural farm in California and the EU refused to fund our network infrastructure. We had few reliable options, and Starlink turned out to be the best.

India has one of the fastest and cheapest internet in the world. In fact you can get an extremely fast download atop Himalayan mountains in comparison to remote USA