I checked a random Kenyan address on starlink.com, and it would be around 386 USD for the dish there (with service for 50 USD/mo), so not cheap. In Poland I see that they're giving the dish for free with some 1-year contract (58 USD/mo). Maybe it'll become cheaper, they're making millions of them. And you could share it with neighbors - if you can get 300 Mb/s, you could connect like 5 families if the alternative is nothing.

I found a nice website with prices by country: https://www.starlink-prices.com/personal/residential/usd/low

But it may be outdated, because it shows $90/mo price in Poland, while it's much cheaper as I said, even with the free dish.

And some recent articles about Starlink prices in Africa:

https://techlabari.com/average-starlink-prices-across-all-af...

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualized-starlink-vs-lead...

Anyway, Starlink is mostly for places where you have no ISPs or cell service (or they are very bad), so not for 95% of Europe, and probably not for most of India, especially in the future.

So how many books have you given to kids in remote places in the 3rd world?

This sort of arrogance where suddenly everyone remembers all reasons why some technology is bad once the "poor masses" get it (while they themselves had the technology for years), is hypocritical and frustrating.

The reality is that getting online makes a massive difference for someone in some remote poor area. Not just in terms of education but also economically.

Wow. Everything in life has good and bad consequences. It is important that we remember to look towards the light.

What you describe at its worst is still better than the exploitation many of the children in the Philippines endure today by westerners. Hopefully, being able to communicate on the 'evil Internet', the rest of the world, like you, can truly understand what they endure.

Nah books distract kids from reigning their horses and crop in fields.

He says, on the internet.

Yes unfortunately.

My parent's in law live on small farm 10 minutes out of a small town in NSW and on the best days, when the sky is clear, they get 1 bar of phone reception on their cell phone and they have to stay within a 10 sqm perimeter within their house in order to make phone calls otherwise calls drop out.

Video chat is basically out of the question unless you want to talk to pixelated blobs on a screen.

After waiting 10 years for the NBN to be rolled out to their property, they decided to bite the bullet and bought a Starlink terminal and now we can have normal conversations on the phone and they can use streaming services whereas that would have been impossible before.

But it is not just them that have issues. When I was living in Brisbane many moons ago, I remember how pitiful the internet speed was so much so that I ditched my home internet and started hot-spotting from my phone instead.

Things have improved in the cities since then I am sure, but for the people out there living in the country side, not much as changed.

Not literally no signal/service, right? More likely “I have a few bars but data doesn’t seem to work… calls often won’t initiate unless 911?” thing you get when there’s too many devices connecting to an overburdened tower, in a network that needs more cells or something, and QoS/qci says no?

If it’s a population center someone would probably have put up a tower on their land ll

Yes, I do realise that, which is why I recognise it makes a huge difference, I just want to put it into context as not being very cheap.