Starlink is now cheaper than leading internet provider in some African countries

Is Starlink also officially prohibited like in Saint Helena [1]? Seems to be a very similar situation (down to the same ISP Sure!).

That said, there I do somewhat see the benefits of giving a fibreoptics provider exclusivity for a while in such a small market.

[1] https://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/2023/news/reminder-on-the-use..., previous discussion see also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37645945

This is the sad situation in many Pacific nations. ISPs charge a fortune (an absolute not relative fortune) for internet services to very low income populations. Starlink is of course banned.

Meanwhile not far away in New Zealand, with a much wealthier population Starlink is prolific in rural areas. I am sure it’s also super popular in rural Australia.

> 5 Mbps

Less than a year ago, relatives of mine in rural France still only had around 1.5 Mbps via ADSL. Video chat was borderline impossible. YouTube wasn’t possible in real time (i.e. buffering took significantly longer than the runtime).

Difficult situation. 5 MBPS was certainly better than nothing in the past...and yet the Sure business (now) appears largely obsolete with Starlink, Kuiper etc.

Do you actually live in the Falklands? That's pretty neat.

The competition will get even stronger when SpaceX's Starship launches the next generation of Starlink satellites. More satellites with more capacity per satellite and at lower altitudes could make Starlink a viable competitor even in some urban areas with crappy ISPs.

Also I hope Amazon succeeds with their Kuiper constellation. Imagine two competing global satellite ISPs!

Just a guess — but I imagine that Starlink passing over a continent and not having any customers below would be a waste of that orbit arc. I mean Starlink could just give away the bandwidth until it actually was running low on it.

Google Fiber had the same effect in Austin, it's so awesome.

There are no data caps on any providers because Google Fiber doesn't have them. Everyone upgraded their service to try to match Google's speeds, so Gigabit is easy to get pretty much anywhere in the city. Google is offering up to 8gb now and ATT is trying to match those speeds.

Company reps regularly knock on doors trying to get people to switch to their service offering deep discounts for 1 year+.

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It's cheaper, at least where I live in Central Africa.

You can pay as your budget allows — per day, per hour, night bundles, or even smaller data packages like 150MB.

Public Wi-Fi isn’t common in places like malls, gyms, schools, offices, or hospitals here. However, mobile data ensures you stay connected on your cellphone.

I've switched between three ISPs in the past three months, all of which have been disappointing, mainly due to poor customer service. With cellular data, I can easily top up using mobile money whenever my data runs out.

I also use my phone’s hotspot to connect my PCs at home or on the go.

> Will it be possible for Starlink to ever be better than proper fibre though?

i doubt it, the speed of light is only so fast. Latency up to LEO, down to earth, back to LEO, down to you will always be more than to your local telco CO and back.

No. Starlink won't be able to offer enough capacity to completely eliminate fibre, even in rural areas.

it will never be better than fiber for the simple fact that’s it’s less reliable. The “uptime” of a fiber connection to the home will most likely be higher than a fiber-like connection from a satellite. And you’ll have better “ping”.

Fiber doesn’t care about cloudy days, typical storms, etc.

Starlink is of course superior when there’s a massive natural disaster, or major power loss to your region. Or if you’re in a rural area with zero other good options.

I had a coworker who grew up in Africa and was involved with ISPs there. He had some pretty important jobs in a couple countries.

His explanation why he came to the US to do what were lower level jobs was that in the places he worked it was all who you knew and if your given buddy who got you that job fell out of the good graces of those in power ... you were screwed forever.

He had enough of that, good guy, very capable, worked his way up again in the US.

you better read history on colonization in Africa. letting foreign companies to have a grip on resources (data and propaganda channels in modern days) wont end well for host nations.

If you guys are so pro business why blocking TikTok and other Chinese firms?

Starlink is significantly more resistant to graft than terrestrial service.

For the most part SpaceX is playing nice with regulators, but if Zimbabwe's government tried to extort Starlink users, SpaceX could just open up service and Zimbabwe could do absolutely nothing to stop them.

Lagos can't use starlink very much because starlink has limited capacity in any given area. The future sats might improve that a bit with more sats and more capacity per sat, and also there will be more non starlink constellations, but it's an inherent problem. If they targeted any densely populated area they would vastly over-provision the rest of the more sparsely populated world.

So in general it's good news for the rural population (if they can afford it), but it doesn't really help too much for the cities.

I wonder if they used the official exchange rate or the black market one

It's more nuanced than that. African governments, like any other government, want to regulate and control access to all communications and related infrastucture. Governments for example would like a killswitch they can force Musk to push if need be.

Also ISPs are big businesses with telecom companies paying huge sums for licenses (3G,4G licensing etc). Starlink is seen as jumping to the front of the line with little to no similar license requirements (or bribes if you want to call them).

I've gotta agree on this. That's a bummer for the thousands of people working with hyper-expensive providers. It might not even be those providers' faults: it's probably not cheap being the first company to run infrastructure into less developed areas. And yet, should we hold down the millions of people who want affordable Internet access because of it? I don't think so.

Edit: And for transparency, I'm about as far from a Musk fan as it's possible to be. I'm not saying this because it's him doing it. I'm glad someone is, and if happens to be him, fine, so be it.

Africa is a graveyard of infrastructure.

> Public services are not a jobs program.

It definitely feels like a one in Canada (or France).

There is a lot of idealism wrapped up in this statement and just because we think something should be does not make it truth.

> Public services are not a jobs program.

Indeed but wealth extraction from already piss poor countries by artificially dumping prices that cannot be sustained by domestic industry has been a problem with Africa for decades, and that after centuries of colonialism on top of it.

Africa used to have a vibrant textile and agricultural industry - Simbabwe for example was known until two, three decades ago as the "grain chamber of Africa" - but Western "donations" aka mitumba and "aid" programs completely wiped out the domestic industry, leaving many countries that were self-sufficient now utterly dependant on foreign supply.