Maybe Starlink could serve people w/o internet if a whole village buys a subscription, or if a cell provider uses Starlink as backhaul for voice? Still seems expensive for the third world that the author is talking about.
I imagine if Mr. Musk wants to keep his shiny new Tesla factory in China, he'll make sure this won't be used to circumvent the Great Firewall.
Countries already do this to pressure countries and/or individual entities. Trade embargoes are against entire countries, trade sanctions are over certain industries/companies/specific individuals.
I clear international freight through customs for a living, when I have a shipment containing something coming from/made in a sanctioned country I have to search the OFAC sanctions list for every party mentioned on the shipment https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/
China, or Fictionaltopia, could easily put pressure on one company to influence another if they have a significant investor in common.
It wouldn't if the satellite network is operating at capacity, and therefore you can't guarantee service.
Satellites communicate with one another to send information around the world. Most servers are not in developing nations— a lot of them are in the US, for example. Satellites from all over the world will all try to reach the ones that are near the US, so those will dictate the actual capacity of the entire network.
If the network operates at capacity, prices will rise so low-profit customers leave and make space for high-paying ones.
Consider the inter-satellite relay is still in development and current mode of operation was described as "bent pipe". Even when it will be developed, it makes sense to offload data to nearest convenient fiber-connected ground station instead of satellites around the globe.
Initially they wont actually do that.
Trains? Buses? These both have density issues with the existing cellular network. How many times have you come to a halt in a traffic jam only to have horrible cellular coverage due to the local cell site being overwhelmed?
5G doesn't solve any of these use-cases. There is plenty of room for adoption of starlink at premium prices.
It's even worse than a cellular network. With a cell network, one can just build more towers in a particular city.
With LEO satellites, the only way to get more coverage over a particular city is to get more coverage over the entire world.
Half a million satellites ought to be enough for anybody.
I mean, they're planning their own internet satellite constellations. None of them are anywhere close to the 12k satellites in the original Starlink proposal. If you added everyone else's proposals together, you might make 1 more Starlink, but probably not.
Having a backup way of communicating can be important, even if you don't use it much. Land lines are expensive. If there is a low enough monthly fee, maybe a backup connection via Starlink will be feasible?
This might put more pressure on national firewalls.