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out_of_protocolyesterday at 7:04 PM1 replyview on HN

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


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kibwenyesterday at 11:06 PM

Ships and jets are different segments from residential. Planes are definitely a textbook use case for satellite internet, but just like airlines are in a race-to-the-bottom for everything from in-flight snacks to legroom, they're not going to spring for premier high-quality internet service, they're just going to scrape by with the bare minimum. The market potential is not spectacularly impressive. Meanwhile, for residential services, rural areas continue to shrink, the people remaining in rural areas tend to be poorer, and the rural areas where rich people live have fiber, because the rich people can pay for it. Satellite internet will remain a crucial service for certain rural populations, but it's not going to take over the world, and it's not going to justify an order of magnitude more launches. Let's stop beating around the bush: the bull case for both Starlink and SpaceX is that the US military sees them as indispensible military assets, the former for global logistics, and the latter for the rapid weaponization of space.

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