[mrtksn]

Okay the world looks extremely well connected. What is Starlink's potential user base? Are there a lot of people in the dark parts of the map?

There's this tendency of maps showing something about humans actually being a population maps simply because the stuff displayed happens where human activity happens.

[varenc]

This is just a map of cell towers. Many people with cell service in their area might not have access to a broadband internet service. Internet access via cellular doesn’t really compare in terms of costs and speed/latency. (At least in the US, cost per GB over cellular is way too high)

[marc__1]

The potential user base is massive once you move away from the urban centers in the developed world.

Take a look at Lagos, Nigeria. Population is ~15m for ~80k towers. Only 1.4k (1.7%) of them are 4G LTE with the remaining either 3G or CDMA.

Or the State of Sao Paulo, in Brazil (home of 22% of Brazil's population and 33% of the country's GDP). Approximately 573k towers, 76k of which are 4G

For comparison, the greater Boston area has ~107k towers and 58k are 4G.

[redisman]

> Take a look at Lagos, Nigeria. Population is ~15m for ~80k towers. Only 1.4k (1.7%) of them are 4G LTE with the remaining either 3G or CDMA.

Isn't the solution for Lagos just to build better infrastructure? Monetizing large and poor urban centers with satellites doesn't make too much sense to me. I thought Starlink was for rural areas where cable isn't feasible. I would imagine most consumers there can't afford an American broadband service and Starlink doesn't want to use its bandwidth for customers paying highly discounted rates.