[lccarrasco]

I live in Bolivia, South America, the impact a global ISP would have cannot be overstated, in developing countries internet prices are still extremely expensive, up until a month ago I was paying around USD 60 for 10Mbps, and that was the best price I could find in my city, the second largest in the country.

[BenjiWiebe]

And that's slightly better than what's available in Kansas, 30 minutes from the nearest Walmart, i.e. no large nearby cities.

[vidanay]

I live less than 100 km outside the third largest city in the United States (Chicago), and I pay $100USD per month for 5/20 terrestrial wireless (my only option other than satellite.)

[napsterbr]

Yep, same here (Brazil).

I suppose SpaceX plans to start with us-only offerings. I also suppose it will take a while until it reaches developing countries.

Does anyone have a better take on this?

[Tuna-Fish]

The satellites are not stationary, but go around the earth. This means that to get good coverage in the US, they actually have to provide good coverage everywhere near the same latitudes (on both sides of the equator). Since the satellites in the southern hemisphere will have nothing better to do and have less demand, they are probably going to start rolling out service everywhere they can at the same time.

Most of Brazil is actually a bit out of luck in that it's too near the equator, so satellite density overhead will not be that great anywhere but the very southernmost areas until there are lot of the birds in the sky, so you won't have service immediately. But places like Chile and Argentina will have great access pretty quickly.

However, as a caveat to that the receiving antennas will be expensive at the start and SpaceX still has to negotiate access to spectrum in every country separately, and in poorer countries this will most likely have to be paid for, so that will hike the prices up.

[baq]

Frequencies aren’t free, spacex will need to buy the rights for each country separately and that costs serious money. Unless they somehow don’t have to do that for whatever reason...

[nickik]

Well, I mean if you have network orbiting up there anyway so you can probably make a business case that the frequency is worth it in most cases. But its probably complicated regulatory process in each country.

[elihu]

The satellites will be everywhere, so not having offerings outside the US seems like it would be leaving money on the table. I could imagine it might take them awhile just to manage the logistics of selling a product in many countries, though. Maybe they'll partner with established companies for that part?