[olliej]

You’re missing the point. Musk has a track record of offering services to remove competitors and then reneging on that once it’s no longer necessary. (Similar to the hyperloop: the whole purpose was to divert funding from public transit programs not produce anything actually useful)

Adopting a “free” starlink service that later becomes $$$ only once there’s no alternative is overtly worse than the current state.

[ianburrell]

The "free" Starlink service is calling 911. It is expected that mobile provider offers 911 service to everyone.

Starlink, in partnership with T-Mobile and others, will be offering service with messages and voice but no data. I don't think pricing has been announced, or if going to be add-on or free extra. My guess is that it will be cheap cause it isn't much demand, the emergency is the important part.

Also, there are multiple companies working on LTE from satellites. They are at disadvantage cause can't piggyback on lots of low satellite. But might be able to work with fewer, higher satellite. They might be able to partner with other providers.

[olliej]

> The "free" Starlink service is calling 911. It is expected that mobile provider offers 911 service to everyone

What?

No one is saying "they'll charge for 911" they're saying - the satellite connection is what costs money. The concern is that they're offering that connection for free now, because it means to be competitive, every other service must provide that service for free. How are they going to do that when the service costs money? They cannot - so spacex leverages its income from other industries (and government subsidies) to fund a service below operating costs until the competitors are gone. At that point they can introduce pricing, and there is no alternative or competition, so they can charge much more than the actual cost.

This is not a new or novel concept, and is a historically common anticompetitive practice.

Given Musk's prior behavior, it is sensible to assume any claims or promises are at best misleading, and it is not unreasonable to assume intentional malice.

[admdly]

Unrelated, but frankly there should be no publicly accessible network that won’t route a “911”/emergency transmission.