OT but related... Starlink would really be useful in Tonga right about now, with their fibre-optic connection severed and expected to be out of commission for at least a month.
It is not magic. You signal from the user terminal has to reach a ground station / gateway connected to the Internet. Either there are inter-satellite links and the signal can be routed to a gateway far away. Or there are not and the gateway need to be at most a few hundred kilometers away if you satellites are in orbit at 400km.
> Afghanistan not being able to do anything against their citizens using Starlink apart from “shaking their fists at the sky”.
Or sentence to death people caught with a Starlink dish on their roof.
Edit: Looks like Starlink doesn't have great coverage at this latitude anyway, currently: https://findstarlink.com/#4032402;3
Starlink is definitely available at that latitude (in the sense that there is signal, not in the sense that SpaceX is currently taking customers or has set up base stations), in the southern hemisphere the only significant landmass that doesn't have more or less constant coverage is Antarctica.
Back when coverage was more spotty, I made this map. I'd probably change some things if I revisited it now that there are lots of satellites up, but it's good enough for demonstrating the point: https://droid.cafe/starlink
Fiji is the nearest realistic location to downlink, Suva, where many cables land (including the cable from Tonga). It's 466 miles, way over the horizon.