Really it just probably makes sense to upgrade cellular networks with enough backhaul bandwidth. (And deploy cell towers to cover people who are currently not covered yet, though I imagine that's a fairly small fraction of people at this point).
For truly isolated communities without roads and such, satellite probably remains the best option.
FYI they misquoted the price for Starlink service. They used the city price which is higher.
In the country Starlink makes it cheaper. So essentially city users who don’t really need Starlink are subsidizing the rural users, which is kind of awesome imho.
Sad that journalists can’t get a level of nuance and accuracy about this kind of stuff, but they’re happy to misuse the wrong price to try to make a false dig against Starlink.
I’d like to see a map showing US cell coverage that offers minimum 20 mbps rates (current bar for ‘high speed’ internet). I expect the vast majority of rural locations aren’t covered. Other countries will be far worse on average.
Cell internet is also quite expensive.
Starlink offers 10x the minimum bandwidth.
Running fiber everywhere it needs to go for backhaul would be fabulously expensive, and involve major environmental impacts.
Sure, some cell networks suck. That's not an immutable law of nature though. There is plenty of bandwidth available for terrestrial cellular networks. And backhauls can be point to point microwave rather than fiber.
For truly isolated communities without roads and such, satellite probably remains the best option.