I'm not convinced that starlink is cheaper or better for than ground based cellular infrastructure - its closest technical analog.
It does however possess two chief advantages - the appearance of being novel and speed of construction. To build a cellular network to cover the areas that starlink does would take a decade - where it can be done at all. The aforementioned novel appearance also gets it largely free spectrum, which I believe starlink didn't have to go thru auction for.
To be clear - it's not novel, it's more or less a cellular network where the cell sites move about instead of the subscriber - which is something iridium did. I'm still not sure it can make money however.
It does however possess two chief advantages - the appearance of being novel and speed of construction. To build a cellular network to cover the areas that starlink does would take a decade - where it can be done at all. The aforementioned novel appearance also gets it largely free spectrum, which I believe starlink didn't have to go thru auction for.
To be clear - it's not novel, it's more or less a cellular network where the cell sites move about instead of the subscriber - which is something iridium did. I'm still not sure it can make money however.