Starlink's speed tests may look impressive, but experts say SpaceX's satellite-internet project is unlikely to win any federal subsidies

[jim bell]

    On Tuesday, September 1, 2020, 11:05:10 PM PDT, grarpamp <grarpamp at gmail.com> wrote:  
 
 On 8/28/20, jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> "Starlink's speed tests may look impressive, but experts say SpaceX's
> satellite-internet project is unlikely to win any federal subsidies
> "https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-beta-speedtest-results-bandwidth-ping-latency-fcc-rdof-2020-8
> Jim Bell's comment:
> I doubt SpaceX NEEDS any Federal subsidies for Starlink.  If it is a working
> system (and these reports seem to show that it works well) then it will
> provide competition to the incumbent wire- or fiber Internet services we
> have been locked into for too long.

>If they accepted an assortment of major cryptocurrencies such as
Bitcoin, Bitcoin_Cash, Monero, Zcash, etc
and enabled fully prepaid service and user owned prepaid hardware,
they might get a lot more customers around the world from those.
More customers = less subsidies. And accepting cryptocurrency
is a big marketing win that matches Starlink's tech image.

I'm hoping that Starlink management will become rather UNcooperative with the various nations in which their customers reside.  Unlike fiber-line internet, which must "play nice" with the tyrant-in-chief for fear he will cut them off, in principle Starlink could smuggle in their "UFO on a stick" devices, which could be hidden and thus operate "unauthorized". 
I talk to a person who communicates with Philipines and Cambodia, and apparently those governments will simply turn off the Internet in those countries.   I have also read that India is rather quick on the 'off switch' in neighborhoods.   https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50819905   

I wonder if a small village could share a single Starlink device, running a WiFi router for local distribution.  
                Jim Bell

  
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/html
Size: 3768 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/attachments/20200902/fff2ab19/attachment.txt>