Even in places with decent internet, people in rural areas tend to get shafted. Starlink is almost reliable enough to game on and fast enough to download said games in a reasonable amount of time; both of which mean it’s good enough for streaming and whatever else mundane people use the internet for. The fact that the company is doing well is the biggest non-surprise.
As a rural internet user I find it entirely unsurprising.
Starlink has benefitted from a very simple and obvious market deficiency.
Until they came along, the satellite internet providers - the only viable alternative for internet access for people outside of cable or cell service - were universally shitty. They used the fact that they faced no meaningful competition (other than from each other) to provide shitty, data-capped service for far too much money. Pretty much the only choice customers had was whether they preferred getting fucked over by Hughes or getting fucked over by Viasat.
Then Starlink came along with a very simple strategy - to offer better service without data caps for the same or even less money.
And entirely unsurprisingly, it worked.
That’s it really. The existing providers were so awful that all that was necessary for success was for a new company to not be awful. And Starlink is not awful.
I guess I’m not surprised given the fact that my Starlink costs 150 bucks a month to use while I travel in my RV. Campsites and campgrounds are full of RVers and overlanders with Starlink dishes each paying $150/month for the privilege.
Drive around any rural area and you’ll see plenty of houses with a dish in their yard or on their roof too. Residential service is cheaper than RV service, but not by much.
If terrestrial American ISPs didn’t completely dick over their customers I’m not sure how successful Starlink would be in the US, but right now it fills a niche that traditional telco companies can’t or won’t invest in.
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