Starlink terminals deployed in Ukraine

Tue Mar 1 21:22:23 UTC 2022

On Tue, Mar 1, 2022 at 10:38 AM Crist Clark <cjc+nanog at pumpky.net> wrote:

> So they’re going to offer the service to anyone in a denied area for free
> somehow? How do you send someone a bill or how do they pay it if you can’t
> do business in the country?
>

It's not like Google is billing anyone for using 8.8.8.8 et al.
[for those who immediately respond "this is SpaceX, not Google,
remember, Google already put a billion dollars into the company
to purchase 10% ownership of it; contributing another billion to
fund service to Ukraine wouldn't be beyond their means by any
stretch.]

Besides, it could be a great "free now, but 6 months after an
armistice is signed, you can cancel the service and return the
dish, or start paying our regular monthly service fee" type
situation.

I mean, if starlink offered you free service for N months, and
then at the end, you had to choose to return the dish or start
paying the monthly fee, how likely are you to give it up once
you've gotten used to using it every day?

If we really want to get creative, there's always the carbon offsets
model for industry.  We could create incentive structures for
global companies to buy "democracy credits" through donations
like that, which would offset a similar amount of latitude in doing
business within authoritarian regions.  That way, if you donate
a billion dollars worth of service to support freedom and democracy
in Ukraine, we'll collectively look the other way if you use slave
Uyghur labour to assemble a billion dollars worth of CPE.

In short--there's lots of ways this could work out, beyond a simple
"let's just give it away for free forever" model.   ^_^

Matt
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