Do you think space x Starlink will bridge the gap between rural internet connection and city internet connection?

[Kayla45]

Could it entice more internet companies to bring better quality internet to rural users? To compete in the country internet market?

Yes, I believe it could be very beneficial for people with no other option.

No, it will just be a stepping stone for major competition.

Other

[Guanfei]

Starlink is good to bring internet where there is no connection. But it's still not as good as a normal connection. Speed isn't stable, and ping is quite high.
I'd say it's a good solution until you can get better.

[Anonymous]

It’s a revolution and a stepping stone at the same time. Embrace revolution, it’s great we have a billionaire innovating.

[LikeALog]

The density of potential subscribers is insufficient to justify the cost of providing fiber optic internet in rural areas.
Starlight is orbiting 330 miles above us. The time it will take a signal to travel to the satillite and back my be too long for many gamers. For other users, it will probably be the best option available.

[GlassTop]

You are thinking too small. It provides internet to the whole world. Just because the connection may not be 1gps speeds, you still gain all 7 billion population in the world on the internet, when it used to be a only a fraction of the population.

[LikeALog]

@GlassTop I'm aware Starlink has over 2,000 satillites in orbit and over 400,000 subscribers world wide. My comment about gamers related to ping. With a satillite nearly overhead, it takes time for the input from the gamers modem to travel to the satillite then down to a ground station, connect to the internet, travel to a provider, back to the ground station, up to the satillite, and finally from the satillite to the gamer's modem. I admit I have no idea what the maximum ping time is for gamers. I do know that those in geosynchronous orbit have had ping times so great that action gamers lost every encounter.

[GlassTop]

When even think about gamers 😂 is this a South Park episode? What about potential student’s, business people, ITs, or a million other things, you are worried about ping for video games. Even with the perfect connection you can still suffer server lag. Who cares about video games when you are connecting the world to the internet.

[bingbongbangbung]

Yeah who cares when billions of people in the world play video games? Especially by potential students, business people, IT workers, and others.

[LikeALog]

Ping is unlikely to be a problem for everyone else. Starlink will actually be faster than that of Hughes and Viacom satillite service. Starlink satellites orbit at 300 miles above the earth. Hughes and Viacom satellites orbit at 22,000 miles above the earth (that over 73 times higher). Neither of those two have issues for any subscribers other than gamers.

[purplepoppy]

It's way more expensive so only really suitable for business use. I think it's a lot of investment for something that will one day be surpassed by a terrestrial solution.

[jshm2]

Don't be silly.

It's just more Elon garbage, that he's going to claim does, more than it actually does.

All he's doing is putting more junk in space, long term.

[josephinelcajon]

SpaceX: Starlink Risks Becoming 'Unusable' If Dish Gets 12GHz Spectrum PCMag

[jimmy2]

If it's Hughes net run away fsst