This helps setting up internet at regional centers that weren't devastated, for contact and comms. Not for browsing Reddit, taking Zoom calls, and playing Roblox.
As far as regional centers not devastated, those would be functioning cell towers? This disaster largely incurred four issues: (1) mud slides and flooding that killed people, (2) washed out roads, (3) power outage, (4) water outage
Cell towers are what you want to get back up and running. A cut off community needs food, water, or evacuation from the area.
The starlink I think has its use case for the first responders. At this point, I'm not sure how it is useful anymore.
Starlink was available ages ago. This offering was requested by people on the ground.
> This offering was requested by people on the ground
I agree. Though, I just don't see there being scale behind it. Is it still worthwhile? Sure. Meaningful at scale? I would want to see the data for that claim.
There's people with pack mules delivering aid. Including starlink receivers. Without collaboration with SpaceX
Do you have evidence that any starlink receivers were delivered via pack mule?
It would be cool if so, if not - potentially urban legend akin to "spitting on vietnam veterans" (I've read there are zero documented cases of that ever happening)
I mean, we know pack mules have been in use, and we know starlink receivers have been delivered. I don't know though that any receivers were on pack mules (it cannot be assumed).
Before that, a more direct response to my question would have been appreciated too.
I finally see you are responding mostly to: "Those in the cut off areas (via land transit) can't get the equipment anyways, and to boot any cost is a complete barrier."
By that I was mostly thinking of people going out and getting the units themselves. That scales well. I see the statement was not super clear though as to why I was saying that.
The claim in contention is whether the starlink units are more than marginal. I was not willing to accept that claim, and I added the claim that had they been widely deployed in the immediate first two days following - the utility would have been super significant. Stores going from cash only to allowing credit cards is huge. Now that we are almost a week later, the "conventional" systems are coming back online.
Comms before the storm would either have been via cell tower, landline, sat phone, satellite plus generator, or ISP (perhaps other?). The more remote, the more likely there will be satellite (from my observations, I suspect that would be true provided that the remote area is not that impoverished; which they might be). Which does leave a niche that would still benefit from starlink. Early on, most of conventional comm systems were down. That niche would have been even larger. A week later, a lot of "conventional" comms are back. Yet, there is still a niche of utility (even at this time) for starlinks.
Per FEMA, they deployed 40 starlink units to NC [1]. That is potentially 1000 to 4000 people benefitting. Cajun navy efforts might have deployed more. I'm guessing the small towns that most benefit are order 50 to 100 people. If there is another 60 units deployed via cajun navy, we might be talking 10k people. Of 1M in western NC, that is getting significant and certainly very helpful for those people. With those wild ass guesses, I would concede that the utility is likely more than just marginal (which is me changing my mind here and starting to accept the claim of more than marginal utility).
I will point out as an observation, even earlier deployments would have been even more useful. Specifically my family in western NC would have benefited. They had SMS only comms the next day of the storm. The "cash only" for a week was one of their major challenges.
I think for grocery stores, them having conventional satelite is a good backup since that is more cost effective. Though, there is still a place for starlinks since they are highly portable. Particularly for getting payment systems back online, and emergency comms for places without cell coverage (that don't already have someone with conventional satellite plus generator or solar)
[1] https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20241003/biden-harris-adm...
The SMS you speak of were likely delivered over satellite(not necessarily starlink). A lot of sites with the transition to 4G don't have microwave backhaul anymore.
I've been solar powering my mini since I got it with some old hardware I had laying around, just to see if I could.