It looks like my footnote on Starlink didn’t make it over the forum version; will fix that! In the interim, these are my thoughts: “in the near future, satellites in low orbit will make it possible to access broadband in almost all parts of the world in the near future. However, satellite internet is quite pricey. Starlink terminals are currently $500 loss-leaders for the company, plus a monthly cost of $99. While this makes coverage possible throughout the world, it does not mean that this is actually useful to the majority of the world (let alone the ~7% of the world that does not have access to mobile broadband yet).”
Most experts we talked to were skeptical on Starlink for the average person in a LMIC, just because of the cost.
I think the relevance of Starlink here is not for serving individuals in LMICs, but for providing backhaul for towers in places too remote to easily backhaul via fiber or line of sight microwave links.
It looks like my footnote on Starlink didn’t make it over the forum version; will fix that! In the interim, these are my thoughts: “in the near future, satellites in low orbit will make it possible to access broadband in almost all parts of the world in the near future. However, satellite internet is quite pricey. Starlink terminals are currently $500 loss-leaders for the company, plus a monthly cost of $99. While this makes coverage possible throughout the world, it does not mean that this is actually useful to the majority of the world (let alone the ~7% of the world that does not have access to mobile broadband yet).”
Most experts we talked to were skeptical on Starlink for the average person in a LMIC, just because of the cost.
I think the relevance of Starlink here is not for serving individuals in LMICs, but for providing backhaul for towers in places too remote to easily backhaul via fiber or line of sight microwave links.