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by scottyah 13 days ago
You really can't think of ANY situations that might be helped with instant communication with the outside world? If that's true, please don't go into national forests or BLMs anymore, I don't want my taxes to be spent looking for your body.
2 comments
mauvehaus 13 days ago
It's more that if you're that far off the beaten path, you'd better be prepared to hunker down and live with any kind of emergency that comes up for several hours up to a couple of days anyway. Which, for the record, is my standard and expectation for myself.

On the other hand, if you're dealing with being eaten by a bear, having a dangerous encounter with another person, or are at risk of being overrun by wildfire or flooding, a phone isn't likely to help much with the next 30 seconds of your possibly soon-to-be-abbreviated life. That's the risk you (and I) take by being out in the woods. You can't mitigate all or even much of that with technology.

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mrweasel 13 days ago
I won't suggest that you can't find situation where having Starlink wouldn't be nice, but as another comment suggests: It's increasingly a niche product. Starlink may not be able to survive on being a product that provides internet access for campers and rural populations. That market might not be large enough to sustain the Starlink satellite fleet. There are entire countries where even to most remote areas have at least 2G cell service and fiber is frequently available even out in the country side.

Defence contracts are more likely than anything to be what keeps the satellites in orbit.

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latchkey 13 days ago
> It's increasingly a niche product.

I'd argue it is going to go the other way. It is going to find more and more broad usage over time.

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mrweasel 13 days ago
There's going to be more and more use cases, but only in select geographical areas. There's no real reason to pick Starlink over e.g. 5G, when 5G is cheaper and cover 99% of your locations. You can then pick Starlink, microwave, or 2G (if you don't need a lot of data) for those special cases where 5G doesn't have coverage.

Then you have the truly remote areas where you have no choice, it's Starlink or OneWeb, but that's still a niche.

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latchkey 12 days ago
The U.S. recreational vehicle market is valued at approximately $23.57 billion and accounts for nearly 92% of the North American market.

Seems like an opportunity to me.

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