Even in Norway there are thousands of people without access to sufficiently fast broadband, and some 80k DSL customers who apparently will never get fiber at all. The proposed solution for the latter is to use 4G/5G, which comes with its own issues of course.
I'd say even in well developed countries, Starlink is a nice option to have. As I understand it, the 42Mbps they see now is only going to improve as well.
I mean someone in Norway also had to draw a powerline to these people, to use electricity. Why not draw a fiber link, too? It's just part of infrastructure.
I'm not saying that Starlink isn't useful. I'm just really wondering what the implications for astronomy are going to be, whether we will always see these things at dusk.
Now it's Starlink, but what if 3 or 4 companies in total want to have a network? What if on top of that China and India want their own, just like GPS?
It just seems we're running head first into this without anyone thinking of the implications or governance of it.
Their limited lifespan is what makes me much less pessimistic than I would be. They have relatively high maintenance costs which means that if utilization is low, it won't make sense to keep replacing them.
More space based telescopes?
Anyway, if governments, businesses and individuals care enough then it's easy enough to develop that infrastructure now. The satellites will come down in a few years.
Who volunteers to tell Musk?
The US is much larger than France of course, but whatever the reason, it's incredible and really upsetting that they can pollute the earth like this, and for the rest of eternity, just to solve a temporary domestic problem.
Temporary domestic problem? It's a problem worldwide, the fact that France can get fast ADSL almost everywhere doesn't means it's true worldwide.
Wireless has the advantage of not needing a huge infrastructure locally, which is a huge help where you don't have any. I remember a presentation from Charles Sirois, one of the guy that brought cellular networks to Quebec. He told us how he helped build some cellular networks in some place where they didn't even have phones. Sure I have no doubt it wasn't easy to build theses towers, but it was certainly much easier than bringing cable to every single building. Every business had cellphones afterward, it was a huge boom, it helped develop so many industry.
Now imagine the same but with freaking internet. This is going to be a huge boom for so many third world countries.
But no you are right, France can pay to lay fiber everywhere, theses third world country should just do the same, they are just not trying enough.