EDIT: Data customers would pay for access on an individual basis. Helicopter-parent countries might cry foul, but what leverage do they have? It's not like they were going to launch things with SpaceX and they can threaten to stop.
EDIT: Data customers would pay for access on an individual basis. Helicopter-parent countries might cry foul, but what leverage do they have? It's not like they were going to launch things with SpaceX and they can threaten to stop.
You really think North Korea wouldn't damage a satellite giving its citizens open internet access if it had the ability to do so?
They could always keep operating anyway, but it's only a matter of time before these governments set up jammers.
At a subscriber level, monthly billing to 'SpaceX Broadband, Redmond' might be cause for inquisitive State Police to visit.
At a state level, the legality of jamming / interfering with satellites over national territory has never been definitively established. So SpaceX might find it easier to just turn-off over hostile nations than have them upset the network.
The buying, selling and using of satellite internet equipment will be outlawed in countries that don't allow free access to the internet (unless of course the internet satellite company signs agreements to impose the blocking of choice of the regime in question).
SpaceX might be safe from the Turkish, Chinese or Egyptian governments, but the users won't be.
You can bet that the US government will want to exert control over it anyway to some degree so even if they are not always sympathetic to other governments requirements that lack of sympathy is a negotiating position not a matter of principle.
How phased array antennas respond to jamming is unfortunately beyond my knowledge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Q...