Great, but the overwhelming majority of money is made from the place people actually live. Those places are called cities. Only about a few % of earth are built on, and even among those the top 1% is where most people live.

Don't get me wrong, that fucking great business, but its not 'replacing terrestrial ISP' level great.

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pnw 8 hours ago | parent [-]

They said the same thing about cell phones vs landlines back in the day. Based on Starlink's revenue doubling year on year, and a six fold increase since 2022, I don't think anyone really knows what the upper bounds for global access is yet. And traditional telcos are usually limited to a region whereas Starlink is global. Just the top 20 global telcos alone are almost $2 trillion in market cap and $1.35 trillion in revenue. Starlink has captured less than 1% of that revenue to date.

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raw_anon_1111 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Absolutely no one said that.

	▲	laughing_man an hour ago \| parent [-]
		There were a lot of people back in the early '90s who thought cell service would never be widely adopted because of the cost. It was clear you didn't need a mobile phone -- we'd all gotten long just fine without one.

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hattmall 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>They said the same thing about cell phones vs landlines

Did they? I don't really remember that tbh.

	▲	pnw 25 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		McKinsey estimated the global market for cellphones would be 900,000 units in 2000. They were off by 100 million. Even until the 90s some telcos believed that cell usage would never eclipse landlines which would remain the base of their business. It sounds ridiculous today because cell numbers outnumber landlines almost ten to one and have been dominant for over two decades.
	▲	serf 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		my most altruistic view : they said it through actions. Rural areas were the last areas to join the mobile networks. This is just a practical thing though; why would you build a tower for a community of 900 people when there are still gaps in the major metropolitan areas? It can't all happen simultaneously regardless of how badly we wish it could.