| We kinda are. Starlink has won $885.5M in FCC subsidies already. However, as others have pointed out, Starlink doesn't have infinite bandwidth. Starlink works because they're building a constellation of thousands of satellites. Previous satellite internet companies had comparatively few satellites so they needed to restrict how much you could use the internet with low data caps. Starlink still has capacity constraints. Terrestrial wireless infrastructure is likely to be cheaper for the amount of capacity you get - especially when you consider that most of the cost will be shared with existing mobile networks. With terrestrial wireless, it's relatively easy to split cells when you need more capacity. Wireless cells can cover hundreds of square miles in rural areas. That's not to say that Starlink doesn't have a place, but it isn't a cheap service. $100/mo and $550 sign-up cost isn't cheap internet. $100M wouldn't buy a Starlink Dishy for even 200,000 people, never mind the monthly cost and never mind the fact that we're already spending $885.5M on Starlink. $65B looks like a big number, but if we're talking 25M people it's only $2,600 per person and that pays for less than 2 years of Starlink per person (including the $550 startup cost). Plus, Starlink won't have capacity for 25M people. Elon Musk has said that they'll probably be able to serve the 500,000 preorders and that things get more challenging in the several million user range - never mind 25M users. If we're talking 43M people like Broadband Now estimates or the 120M that Microsoft estimates, it gets even more clear that we'll need more than Starlink. Starlink is a good way to serve extremely rural customers who likely won't even get decent wireless signals and it's a good way for SpaceX to get large government subsidies for providing service to rural areas. Starlink isn't a private company solving a problem for the public. It's public money being offered for a solution to a problem and SpaceX wanting to go after some of that money and hopefully create a decent business out of it. |
By a large measure when you look at the actual costs and not just the amount they charge the customer. The dish's actual cost is >$1,000. So $100M really buys dishes for less than 100,000 people.