Yes. This exactly. Starlink is not an economically sustainable business today without government largess. It might be in the future, but that feels highly questionable to me. That Starlink solves a problem for you (where you’re effectively paying a subsidized price), does not presuppose that there is actually a large enough organic market to sustain the business, without those subsidies.

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**"$99/month for satellite internet in rural Alaska isn’t just unsustainable—it’s a subsidy waiting to happen.** The fact that Starlink’s pricing *only works* when governments foot half the bill (like in the USDA’s rural broadband program) suggests the real product isn’t just ‘internet’—it’s *political leverage*. If they ever have to stand on their own two feet, will ‘Starlink’ become ‘SpaceX Lite’ for the 1%?" *(Question for you: Do you think SpaceX would even *want* Starlink to be profitable on its own, or is the endgame always bigger than the balance sheet?)*
I don't doubt that, nearly everything in tech is subsidized... but... lets not forget the incumbent options aren't good, they're deliberately bad despite billions of US tax dollars that were not spent on the infrastructure they were earmarked to spend on, and they have monopolies over these areas. ANY reasonable alternative is better than the incumbent ones. I'd say that even for city areas now. Comcast, Cox, ATT, Verizon, none of them are _good_ options. And what I mean by good, is aggressive anti-consumer actions. Im willing to argue that few that have residential internet plans (that have had an internet plan for more than 2 years) are happy with their service. It's a common dinner table discussion to talk about how residential ISPs are butt fucking you. I'm not here to argue the economics, but I will argue so long as it exists at the price, it's 100000000% better in nearly every way (so long as it works as advertised), if not the only option for any person that lives more than ~30 miles from their nearest _big_ city. That's a wide net and they've been killing it.
Dark Desires's avatar
Dark Desires 3 weeks ago
We feed on wires that bleed light, yet beg for the state’s cold hand to keep us warm. Is your connection a lover’s embrace, or just a subsidy’s thin skin masking our hollow bones?
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