It’s also surprisingly reliable given the physics of it all. I built a house out in the country in 2007 and 10Mbps DSL was all that was available for terrestrial connectivity up until literally yesterday.

The DSL would go down for hours a couple of times per month. I got on an early starlink pilot program and had a dish up in early 2021. Aside from momentary blips on the leading edge of a stormfront and occasional network issues a couple of times per year, it’s been rock solid with half the latency and 20x the bandwidth.

I don't understand. Starlink satellites are just routers to ground stations. Why are there no wired connections available? Do the connections not reach the famous last mile?

I live in a rural neighborhood with fiber. Multiple neighbors go with Starlink because it’s cheaper and good enough.

Starlink is also satellite internet, right?

Same, except I had DSL--the local provider 'guarantees' speeds of 10Mbps to my house.

So, needless to say, starlink has been amazing.

My parents in rural America had a local ISP that did long distance wireless (highly directional antenna mounted on the house pointed at the top of the grain elevator a few miles away) but it was an unreliable 20 Mbps because the ISP wasn't interested in upgrading their equipment.

Is it really $55 a month?

Africa is mostly on 4G networks, and while 3G isn't a majority of the connections, it's still the next biggest share of infrastructure, far ahead of 5G which is relatively scarce.

This is in the context of a population that really depends on mobile wireless for market information if they are farmers, and for payments. Having a mobile phone can take priority over having a flush toilet.

Starlink has both opportunities and challenges: 5G is faster and cheaper and more reliable. But mobile wireless revenue is low, so capex is low too. Combine this with a big rural population, and Starlink has a great opportunity, if they can find customers who can afford it.

> jump technology generations

Satellite internet is not a “generation above” fibre internet

> When you don’t have an established wired infrastructure, it becomes significantly easier to jump technology generations.

Same with electricity: there are many rural places in Africa where solar panels + batteries are a revolution.

But then there's a reason why a country with more than 3x the number of people in the US was "missing" technologies: Africa is, overall, very poor (GDP per capita in Africa is something like 1/40th of the GDP per capita in the US: 1/40th!). So there's a limit to how far the jump is possible: as someone commented, most of Africa is still on 3G and it's not clear if StarLink shall be able to find customers rich enough to buy their services.

> Isn’t this a similar argument to how Africa adopted mobile phones significantly faster than other regions?

You didn't read the article:

>Africa’s internet infrastructure is not fit for purpose. During a communications boom in the early 2000s, the continent eschewed fixed-line internet for cheaper mobile broadband; today more than 400m Africans, the bulk of the continent’s users, gain access to the internet this way.

>But the technology has not kept pace with the rapid increase in data demand from streaming and AI-powered applications.

I’m not sure regular internet access is changing the risk like you say, but I agree that people like connectivity and hence will do more risky things because they think it’s safer.

Rescues even with EPIRB’s can still be difficult.

Whenever landline ISPs fail, Starlink swoops in.

Having competition is important, and Starlink, being what it is, can compete with everyone everywhere at all times.

Starlink is a natural fit for sparsely populated underserved rural areas. But if going with Starlink begins to make economic sense in city centers, local ISPs have failed very hard. And Starlink is always there to punish them for it.

From a pure competition standpoint, Starlink existing puts pressure on the entire industry all at once. No longer are so many people bound by a sole supplier in certain communities and now actual competition will eventually forced these companies to start fighting hard for customers. If there is one thing Elon is good at it’s scaling and that pressure should mount pretty quickly

I had the same problem in San Francisco with Comcast. The only alternative was wireless service (which was somehow much slower than my iPhone) or slow fixed wireless as my street doesn’t get fiber. Ended up getting my partner to resubscribe to Comcast as a new customer.

Unfortunately Starlink will never be able to make substantial inroads into urban areas since their cell size is far too large to serve a high of density customers well.

How do they know Starlink isn't going to jack the prices up?

No short cuts but it’s an amazing service that’s benefiting millions of people already and will likely start to benefit millions more in africa

I mean, it's not a shortcut to send tens of thousands of satellites into space instead of running copper wires across vast stretches of desert where they're going to get stolen, but it has certain advantages.

Doesn’t work for me

This is misleading, Starlink does not need to provide "30% to the state", they only have to give 30% ownership to a local company with historically disenfranchised owners providing real economic value to South Africa. This can be a private company.

>one of the primary reasons it has not been allowed in South Africa.

That's just nonsense. The regulator has been very clear on what the hold up is. A ECNS license is needed, which in turn requires 30% black ownership which musky boy isn't willing to do and isn't likely to change his mind on given his stance on DEI.

That's why the communication minister tried to create an alternative pathway around the 30% requirement

https://www.businessday.co.za/companies/2025-12-12-starlink-...