There is limited bandwidth so they will have to charge for it or it will be overloaded. This would be true whether it's public or private. It's not like GPS, which is broadcast only and any number of devices can use it.
Same could be said of roads. Toll free. Rush hour sucks. We will adapt. There can still be commercial alternatives, like planes today if you want higher rates of travel.
Yes, it’s plausible, and charging money isn’t the only possible congestion control mechanism. But there don’t seem to be any serious plans to spend the tax money to do this.
"Defeatist" implies that it is somehow up to us but, realistically, we are just observers here, commenting on Hacker News about things we have no effect on. (Or so I assume. Are you doing anything about launching satellites?)
I don't claim that a public satellite network will never happen. However, as an observer, projects that are happening are more interesting to me than projects that aren't happening (yet).
It'll never happen, because no one cares and we can't do anything about it anyway.
More defeatism.
We should all just roll over and play dead because we are all going to die, no one cares, and there's nothing we can do about it anyway, right?
NO! We all have an effect on everything and every problem is ours to solve.
Even if that means just talking about it. Raising awareness. Creating ideas. Pointing out the flaws in our reasoning and direction. Opportunities for improvement.
I agree that writing matters sometimes, but it seems like if you want to get attention for this idea then it means taking writing more seriously? If someone wants to write a blog post going into detail about how a public satellite network might work then that seems like a worthy effort.
I don’t think it’s a reason to stop cheering for Starlink, though, because it’s not everything you want? This thread started out as criticism of Starlink.