Starlink might be bigger than even Musk can imagine
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I signed up for Starlink. I paid a small fee for a service that doesn't work where I live...and it won't for at least a year.
Still, I am pretty sure it is the best early adopter decision I have ever made and when it launches, it will demolish the current eco-system for network, data and mobile systems. It might seem a bold prediction, but the market is ripe for disruption and the destructible elements (expensive incumbents, static market, monopoly behaviours, over-regulation) are already starkly in place and ready for a new ready player.
Consider the state of the current proposition:
Broadband (expensive, unreliable, bundled with stuff you don't want);
Mobile: ugly masts, dominated by undifferentiated operators (in the UK, Vodafone, EE, Three and O2)
Handsets: a three-opoly (Apple, Samsung, Huawei) and 3 major OS (iOS, Android and Harmony)
Coverage: good in cities, but 5G over-hyped, and no coverage up mountains, in rural areas, deserts, forests, at sea.
Disruption is often there in plain sight. We take the expense and annoyance(s) of the current service proposition and expect it to trundle on forever. I own shares in Vodafone and I know that they will be toast when phones move from using 4G signals to internet calls connected by an array of satellites enveloping the world. A planet-sized (not just metropolitan) market opens up. The legacy players' PR defence will be immense, and vicious, and early adopters will take on some risk, but I predict Starlink will be more enormous than anyone can possibly imagine, even its visionary founder.
And if Musk pivots from Tesla Cars, to Tesla Phones (just as Apple is reputedly and confusingly pivoting from phones to autonomous cars) then the handset market will find a radical fourth option, where battery life worries will be a thing of the past.
[I will book mark this post. Give it three years. JD]
