[JumpCrisscross]

“In the US, Starlink Mini is an add-on to Residential plans — at least for now. The Mini kit costs $599 which is $100 more than the standard dish, and will cost an extra $30 per month to add the Mini Roam service to existing $120 Residential plans. That gives Starlink Mini users up to 50GB of mobile data each month, with the option to purchase more for $1 per GB…”

[sigio]

Last I checked, starlink was $50/month for the residential plan here in the Netherlands... that's quite a large difference.

[elmerfud]

$120 here in the USA. Which is high for the kind of service it is but if that's your only option then it's within a reasonable range.

It's not unusual for us customers to pay a higher premium for the same service that is sold at a lesser costs around the world. This is for a great many things. This can be due to companies actively using their us customers to subsidize their market share and other places but I don't imagine that's what's at play here. It could be that the government in the Netherlands is offering some sort of subsidy that is allowing the price to be less. Also could be that local competition is necessitating a lower price as well in that area.

[jorvi]

It’s just what the market will bear, nothing more nothing less.

Often, identical medicine is sold in the US for 5-20x the price that it is sold for in even North-West EU.

If US customers as a whole really couldn’t pay this, the price would drop.

[elmerfud]

That's not quite true with medicine. If US customers couldn't pay this, as in the insurance companies and or Medicare, then cost might come down but also research and development would effectively halt or other countries would stop getting lower priced drugs. United States pharmaceutical industries subsidize the world healthcare market for drugs.

And you're up there's two things at play the government is subsidizing the cost of drugs but also demanding a lower price. If you're up was the only market or the primary market at the prices they're demanding there would be no more research and development for a great many of the drugs that we have.

[Retric]

US drug prices mostly subsidize US drug advertising. The impact of high drug prices on R&D spending after you take this into account is fairly limited.

[Tostino]

Also, a whole bunch of research is done with public dollars from either universities, or grants to private companies. Those are then always commercialized by a for-profit company.

[jcims]

>Which is high for the kind of service it is but if that's your only option then it's within a reasonable range.

Relative to what? It's not marketed at population centers. My 10Mbps DSL was 90/mo, bonded I could get 25M down 1.5 up for $140/mo.

[elmerfud]

It's high in a sense of typical broadband for the speed and latency. In the specific sense of limited option areas or satellite only areas it is a reasonable price for that level of service.

I live in the country a good 6 miles from any City and that City is maybe 8000 people. My service is $99 a month for 1 gig fiber. The only other options I would have is some satellite-based internet or a cell based internet.

[rkangel]

I'm guessing that's because there's some actual competition for home internet in the Netherlands. Unlike the US where many customers are served by (at best) one provider, who therefore has no incentive to provide good service or be good value.

If Starlink achieves reasonable service, for many customers in the US it can get away with charging a lot.

[TrueGeek]

I moved to the Netherlands last week. I was paying $120 a month for 100 mbps with Spectrum. New customers paid less and got more. I complained and explained that was hardly fair since I had been a customer for 15 years at the same address. They said I was welcome to cancel my service for 3 months and re-activate.

I now pay €67.50 for 4gbps up / 4gpbs down. I'm actually getting those speeds and the day I arrived service was already turned on. I just had to ride my bike down to the post office and retrieve my modem.

[sebzim4500]

There's a fixed supply of how much network capacity is available per km^2 and the demand differs globally, so the price does as well.

[Gys]

40 in Portugal. I thought it was the same in all of Europe.