[p1mrx]

Starlink will never replace 4G/5G in relatively-populated areas, because any RF wizardry they can do from orbit will work even better for talking to a tower at short range.

[tinus_hn]

But it does not have the costs associated with building a tower in that area.

[p1mrx]

If you're in an area where it's not worth building cell towers, then Starlink will have plenty of bandwidth... but that's not where most people live.

When you look at a city from orbit, you see millions of radios all stacked on top of each other, screaming. That can never scale as well as a distributed array of towers.

[tinus_hn]

Maybe. Or maybe in these areas it’s even more expensive to waste space on towers.

[p1mrx]

Land use by towers is ~0%, and the ones we need have mostly been built already.

Next should we eliminate WiFi because it's wasting expensive real estate?

[p1mrx]

Though I have to admit, 4G/5G is never going to draw lines in the sky.