Maybe I'm too pessimistic but at first I only see a big corporation (with an history) putting the blame on the local management.
Maybe it's due to my bad English, but I'm not able to find any sign of actual "overrule" of this decision. Is the WUC was finally accepted at this Hotel?
Sorry but i have difficulty to understand Starlink business : who are really their potentials customers ? It seems there is only a few possibilities :
- rural area (with sufficient incomes to afford the price)
- urban area with highly expensive/bad quality landline internet (but still with sufficient incomes to afford the price)
With the development of fiber in most urban area (usually fist in high income part) and the small number in the first category, I don't see how deploying tens of thousands of satellites could be profitable.
The only option will be to be able to lower the price but it will need a lot of customers...
Could you help me understand ?
This is a global network. Population of the world is around 8 billion. Even if some countries like China ban Starlink for political reasons, you should be able to find tens of millions of customers among the rest.
There are a lot of places where local providers act like robber barons.
> There are a lot of places where local providers act like robber barons.
I agree, this may be the best effect Starlink can have : create competition.
> Population of the world is around 8 billion
Yes but which part is able to afford 99$/month (+antenna) + bad local provider which refuse to adapt to competition (first at price/offer level before even infrastructure) + no political reason for a global-us based provider ?
"bad local provider which refuse to adapt to competition (first at price/offer level before even infrastructure)"
They may find themselves unable to. Cable (including optic cable) networks are not that easy to build everywhere, including some tightly packed cities. And wireless has its limitations too.
"which part is able to afford 99$/month (+antenna) "
Easy. People will share connections, regardless of what the contract says. And Starlink will likely tolerate it in poorer countries.
The sort of design starlink has means that it is not going to able to provide a reasonably high bandwidth at a high density. Starlink will be able to support a handful of people in a city, but nothing close to good coverage of households.
I suspect the segment that I'm in is pretty huge. I recently got Starlink. I got it mostly because it was alright internet and I really fucking hate Comcast. They're the only landline option that I have in a suburban area, and fiber internet is unlikely to come here any time soon.
I mean sure, I'd rather our legislators actually do their job and pass a law enforcing local loop unbundling, but until that point Starlink is a breath of fresh, competitive air.
Add airlines to it. Imagine, if every large passenger airplane carries a Starlink terminal... (of course paying the elevated fee for mobiles applications faster than 500mph)
And once it starts to get rolled out to airplanes, which airline can afford not to offer Starlink connections?
Musk said that Starlink is (or will be) in talks with lots of local telecom companies which are required to offer nationwide coverage. They are required by law, to keep their licenses, or to fullfill commitments.Starlink will have lots of B2B customers and partnerships then.
In France (and probably in other European countries), private health insurances from employers are complementary to the government health care and don't replace it. That's why it is much cheaper. And so even highly paid professionals still use the government paid health care.
Moreover, if it wasn't the case it would make the national health care system a lot less efficient.
> Was in the emergency room with my son a few months back, not overflowing or anything, but I wasn't there to track Covid cases.
In most (all?) hospitals, Covid cases are separated from general emergency because you don't want your emergency room transformed in a constant cluster.
A mere 125 years ago it required the majority of the US workforce to farm enough food for people to eat. The mechanization of agriculture enabled much of the technological and cultural progress of the past couple centuries.
You're right for the vast majority of news organization on internet but we can't say that it's "never was" (or "is" for the matter).
I have at least 3 examples [0] in mind of news organizations for which advertising is not part of their business model (or a very insignificant part compared to "consumers of news" part). And I'm sure we can find similar example all around the globe.
Of course such organization generally relies on subscription and/or donation. And of course for this to works "consumers of news" need to pay for it.
[0] Sorry all French : Le Canard enchainé (paper) ; Le Monde Diplo (paper and web) ; Mediapart (web)
Maybe it's a fantasy on headphone (as for most electronic). But I think the idea is more global : buy expensive stuff to keep them longer.
On headphone, the switch to Bluetooth-only with addition of batteries don't help on this scale.
But we should probably compare similar products (bluetooth headphone vs bluetooth headphone).