Everyone at sea, uses them now.

I suspect what is going on is just a matter of relative density. I'm not sure what you mean exactly by "central EU," but just guessing from a map I get Romania as the least population dense country that I would think of as Central Europe at 83 / km3. That is more than double the US pop density and if it were a US state only 15 out of 50 would be more dense. So then taking the least population dense region of the least dense country I get Tulcea with 23 / km3. That's 66% of the density of the US (37) which would come in at 34 / 50 if it were a US state.

So the most sparsely populated region of the most sparsely populated country in Central Europe is just a bit below average for the US. Our least dense state is Alaska at 0.5 / km3 or almost 50x less dense than that. But that's almost cheating. So lets take mainland only and that's Wyoming, with 2.3, so 10x less densely populated than the outlier in Central Europe.

So basically the US is just really damn empty to the point there just isn't any comparison in Central Europe and that's why it's so hard to get internet access out there.

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

This was always the sour economics of satellite internet.

Satellite internet works for a low density of customers spread evenly across the globe. But customers are not spread evenly they mostly live in megalopolist regions that can be served more efficiently with land infrastructure.

Worse most of the people not in the megalopolists have less money to spend on internet services.

So your customer base are limited to people who aren't already served by better/cheaper terrestrial internet, but who can pay for better internet.

Those people exist but the history of satellite internet service hasn't been a massive money printer. Most providers have struggled to stay solvent let alone produce great returns for shareholders.

Paul Allen wanted to build a megaconstellation back in the 1990s but then Iridium went bankrupt twice.

Iridium ended up being rescued by the US military. I wonder if this is ultimately SpaceX's plan.

This is a military tech.

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

India can lay some fiber. The secret is that every time a road gets repaved it gets dug up a week later so easy conduit pathway.

(Citation: lived in Gurugram for a few years where I witnessed the same 100ft of sidewalk get rebricked and torn up monthly at least 20 times)

My parents live in New York State, 8 miles from the main east-west transportation and data corridor. They still have no high speed wired internet options. No fiber, no cable, no DSL, and dialup ISP has been retired long ago. Their only option is satellite. This is in 4th most populous state in the US, and #1 highest GDP/capita. Internet across the United States does not have the penetration many think, the US is vast.

Elon is probably setting sup the infra for space data centers.

I live not to far from NYC and I think it’s fantastic. Comcast was charging me 75 a month and Starlink charges me 40 for the same service which is generally excellent

You are in a dense population. A large chunk of the world (and many people even in the US) are in low density environments where fiber rollouts are too expensive.

You’d be surprised how poor broadband Internet coverage is outside of major metropolitan areas in the United States. Some places are simply off-grid, or have to rely on dial up. All you have to do is drive an hour out and there’s no more Internet.

24/7 high fidelity radar of the entire earth’s surface. Probably used by NRO’s sentient system and similar classified skynet projects

But would that have happened that way if Starlink hadn't come about?

It's good to have option in case your own government turns rogue.

People in rural parts of America where ISPs don't want to expand into.

You’re not dumb. It has come up in extremely sophisticated valuations of SpaceX pre-IPO, if I recall off the top of my head, the only business that actually had any value, StarLink, assumes an irrational TAM.

You’ve clearly never lived in the US! Big place, not a lot of fiber.

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Surely funding cell towers in Africa / India is cheaper and easier to maintain than 100k satellites in space.