Hacker News Reader

It is infinitely more competitive than no signal in many parts of the US.

That's because theres only a handful of satellites covering the entire area currently, they've already said voice and data will come but that the current cellular satellite network is just a couple satellites providing the coverage.

The main reason it will never be competitive is that the signal from a small device to satellite will always be weak. The Starlink V2 satellites have a big antenna to even work.

The cells for Direct-to-Cell are hundreds of miles in diameter which means the modest (10 Mbps) bandwidth is spread over thousands of people. There is enough bandwidth for voice and very limited data, but they would need to get it working first.

The article says as much but I think this is fantastic anyways.