Yes, as the first public internet provider in North Europe (1988) I paid for almost all satellite Internet services before and usually was one of the earliest adopters. For example [1].
In 1997 I met with Ian Alexander and proposed him to deploy his first 400 meter long rigid airships at 10km-20km height to become the first very low-orbit internet provider. He subsequently got an experimental flying permit in my country through my political parliamentary contacts.
It turned out to cost $40K per month to crew the rigid airships 24/7, just barely profitable for a 500km circle of reception.
>Paying less than $1 per GB is something that happened because of starlink.
The actual cost of 1 GB transit traffic in 2024 is $0,00006944 (I am sorry, I may be off by a factor of 1024, than it could be $0,0711, My apologies, as soon as I have this confirmed I won't be able to edit this HN comment anymore).
Starlink buys internet transit traffic locally where your receiver is, then bounces it off their satellite back to you. So they pay very little compared to what they charge you. And I have never ever been able to download 1 GB for $1, they throttle you long before you reach 75 GB per month.
And when your area is oversubscribed they just throttle your traffic, no need to raise the price.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...