[stinkbeetle]

> Places only Starllink can reach are an insufficient [TAM]

Insufficient for what?

> and shrinking TAM.

Starlink has made quite an impact on planning around servicing commercially non-viable or marginal customers in government and telcos where I am from. It is IMO quite likely that some existing cell towers in remote areas that are very expensive to operate and maintain will eventually be shut down. So that could actually expand the "TAM".

> The only places a terrestrial wireless provider doesn't want to serve are places that can't afford FWA even though it costs less.

No, they also don't want to serve places where it costs more.

[Zigurd]

Satellites that last 5 years and have un-transparent launch economics are very unlikely to win on cost in any land-based market. If the market is too small or too poor to support FWA, it's not going to contribute significant revenue to Starlink.

Starlink needs tens of millions of subscribers to be valued like a telco.

[robocat]

The US military wants to have option to deploy anywhere in the world, so they also want to have comms everywhere.

The starlink network surely has special features to support US military needs (resiliance, encryption, blocking enemy countries from access, robustness against countermeasures, yaddayadda).

[Zigurd]

The military has interoperating and compatible comms everywhere. People have solved many problems before Elon invented a thing.