Ben Thompson interviewed UA's CEO on Starlink a few months ago.
Scott said: "It took time to negotiate, because we wanted to own the consumer data, and at the beginning, Starlink did, so that was hard, and then, the other thing was I wanted to let my big competitors in the United States finish their deals with other providers and get locked in so that we would — eventually, everyone’s going to have Starlink."
Brilliant. Just brilliant. Ensured that UA would be first (of the 3 major US carriers) to Starlink and that everyone else had to wait until their existing agreements multi-year expired before switching. UA's best CEO in decades!
I'm surprised he would admit that publicly on a podcast.
inemesitaffia 39 minutes ago [-]
People like to brag
gpt5 4 hours ago [-]
One nice thing about Starlink is that they force the airlines to offer it for free. I’m not sure why SpaceX is doing this, but it was surprising enough to me that my international WiFi was not only fast, but completely free that I researched it.
SoKamil 4 hours ago [-]
> I’m not sure why SpaceX is doing this
One word: marketing.
nativeit 3 hours ago [-]
A few more words: they’re struggling to find a niche where their ungodly expensive product makes more sense than the readily available alternatives. In this case, fair play it’s objectively better.
lxgr 38 minutes ago [-]
> their ungodly expensive product
Do you have any idea how much other satellite operators charge per megabyte or Mbit/s?
victorbjorklund 13 minutes ago [-]
Their competitors isn’t other satellite in most cases. It’s fiber, 5G and so on.
htx80nerd 3 hours ago [-]
>A few more words: they’re struggling to find a niche where their ungodly expensive product makes more sense than the readily available alternatives
pretty obvious you never worked for an ISP and forgot about all the `middle of nowhere` customers who have no high speed internet.
even for me, in houston texas, we cant get fiber to the home and were stuck with AT&T DSL which was like $60 per month and ungodly slow. Also my GF and I both work from home and she does massive file uploads.
had xfinity not been available starlink would be an easy choice. ive tried 5g hotspots and they are not super reliable.
overfeed 2 hours ago [-]
In all fairness, it was a qualified statement: "readily available alternatives". That immediately disqualifies customers stuck in the boonies, or a few hundred feet away from service coverage.
Wyverald 1 hours ago [-]
Just noting that the phrasing "readily available alternatives" by itself is slightly ambiguous: it could be read as subsetting ("the alternatives that are readily available") or just attributive ("the alternatives, which are readily available").
mattmaroon 1 hours ago [-]
He has readily available alternatives, but they suck.
There are other, far worse forms of satellite Internet, so everybody has a readily available alternative. That makes it not a qualifying statement at all.
kdkdkrjrj 23 minutes ago [-]
To be fair: this is an america regulatory capture problem.
nradov 13 minutes ago [-]
Regulatory capture is only a secondary reason why many parts of the USA still lack cheap, reliable broadband Internet access. It turns out that running fiber everywhere is expensive, and in some areas the potential customer base doesn't justify the cost.
rconti 3 minutes ago [-]
It doesn't justify the cost when they can just rip you off, charging the same amount for a fraction of the bandwidth.. unless and until there's competition.
Funny how quickly my internet options went from expensive cable internet, to 1 gig symmetric fiber for $90, to 10 gig symmetric fiber for $50. And now, magically, Xfinity has 1Gbps+ service for $50 as well.
mattmaroon 2 hours ago [-]
They have several niches where the alternatives are more expensive and worse. Half the RVers in any park have it now. RVing teaches you how much of the country is not covered by cell signal. Boats.
Another one I know first hand: food trucks. I do several events a year where cell signals get overwhelmed and cease to function, but I still have to process my credit cards. I’d say a solid 25% of food trucks are running these now.
lurkingllama 2 hours ago [-]
In the (relatively) rural area that I live in, the only ISP options available were something like $75/mo for 10mbsp speeds. Starlink was an incredible blessing when it became available. Legitimately feels like magic in comparison to the existing options we had.
mediaman 3 hours ago [-]
It's not that expensive. The Starlink Mini is around $200, and service is $50/mo for 100gb.
I've been somewhat skeptical of the addressable market (doesn't fiber + cell tower network offer good enough coverage?) but I know so many people who have put it on their RV, their boat, or are using it rurally that I've started changing my mind. And the service really is better than cell phone networks, which are far too patchy to provide reliable service at decent speed.
And you can put it on standby mode for $5/mo, so you're not even really locked into $50/mo if you're occasionally doing travel where you want to stay connected.
And in places like Africa, they've had to tightly rate limit new customers because demand is so high.
mattmaroon 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah, as an RVer, I can tell you that you would probably be surprised by how much of the country does not have readily available cell service. And even if it does, they might not have it on your network.
I was paying more to have SIM cards for all of the big three, and getting much less out of it
inemesitaffia 42 minutes ago [-]
Starlink costs around the same as business mobile Internet.
Or see T-Mobile away
wat10000 24 minutes ago [-]
$39/month for 100Mbps in the middle of nowhere is spectacularly cheap.
nelox 21 minutes ago [-]
And show ads for it on the inflight entertainment
technothrasher 3 minutes ago [-]
The built in entertainment systems are so full of ads, that I much prefer the planes with no seat back screens. I've always already got my own devices which I use to entertain myself, whether the airline is providing advertainment or not.
bs7280 4 hours ago [-]
United gives you free access only if you are a mileageplus member I think?
Regardless, having free high speed internet on a flight will motivate me as a consumer every time.
theultdev 3 hours ago [-]
Joining United MileagePlus is completely free, you just sign up.
About the same work as filling out a hotel wifi login.
kevincox 3 hours ago [-]
Completely free as in you don't have to give them money.
But you need to give personal information which also has value.
schmookeeg 3 hours ago [-]
More personal information than you provide them to purchase the ticket to use the free starlink?
kevincox 3 hours ago [-]
Probably, because you are now associating your internet browsing with your personal information. (I don't know if they have the sophistication to actually do this, but it is very possible.)
theultdev 2 hours ago [-]
The people concerned with that hypothetical can use a VPN.
At most they could see domains, ip addresses, timestamps, and http-only sites (are there any left?)
But the person sitting next to you can see everything.
tjoff 2 hours ago [-]
Regardless one of the conditions surely is giving them permissions to sell this to starlink as and everyone else. So whether the information is the same is probably irrelevant, how they are using it is.
chronic20001 20 minutes ago [-]
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mandeepj 3 hours ago [-]
> One nice thing about Starlink is that they force the airlines to offer it for free
There are many ways to circumvent that, even while claiming to offer it for free.
kotaKat 3 hours ago [-]
On the flip side, the "private" aviation customer is 100% forced into the pricey plans privately with (physical) speed enforcement on the terminals.
There's even two tiers of aviation speed limting: 300MPH ($250/mo) and 450MPH ($1000/mo). They know who they're targeting at both speed points (the guy flying for fun in a prop VS the guy in a Gulfstream that wants to Get There Now).
What sucks is that normal "for fun" prop pilots used to be able to use the basic $50 roaming plan, and then Starlink pulled the rug out from under them by taking it away, instead offering the new plan 5X the cost with 1/5 the bandwidth limit. Total scumbags. Even your hated local cable company doesn't have the balls to 5X your monthly bill suddenly out of the blue.
bpodgursky 4 hours ago [-]
Nobody wants their brand associated with price gouging and half-broken in-flight credit card payment portals, and Starlink is better enough than any alternative that they can play hardball with airlines.
oceanplexian 3 hours ago [-]
Delta is still stubbornly refusing to adopt Starlink.
I've got status with them and have started booking with other airlines b/c it doesn't matter how nice the seats are if you can't get any work done. Most airline revenue comes from business flights, I don't think they realize how important this is to their customer base.
inemesitaffia 40 minutes ago [-]
Starlink failed it's Delta Demo.
The article is online.
thinkling 2 hours ago [-]
Delta uses Viasat and has been rolling out free wi-fi on more and more of their planes. Is it not usable?
lxgr 36 minutes ago [-]
It’s pretty good, but the latency is inherently high since Viasat is in GEO.
supertrope 3 hours ago [-]
It could just be the ESPN/gym membership/AAA business model. $ from every single passenger is more revenue than $$ from just those who click buy.
light_hue_1 4 hours ago [-]
> Nobody wants their brand associated with price gouging and half-broken in-flight credit card payment portals
The airlines have no problem with this. T-mobile has no problem with it either.
unsupp0rted 3 hours ago [-]
Nobody had a problem with flip phones that play snake or Blackberry physical keyboards until the iPhone was demonstrated, and then nobody could conceive of ever going back (except in niche cases, e.g. journalists loved those keyboards)
SR2Z 3 hours ago [-]
T-Mobile also offers free Wifi on airplanes.
tonymet 4 hours ago [-]
give the customers the complete experience and they will subscribe.
IF carriers were allowed to charge, they would piecemeal or handicap the service, and passengers would leave with a bad impression.
apitman 4 hours ago [-]
I've only had it once, but inflight Starlink is a game changer. I was able to play a ranked AoE2 game over the Pacific Ocean.
TulliusCicero 6 minutes ago [-]
That sounds somewhat unpleasant even if the connection itself is fine. How much space did you have for a mouse?
rayiner 4 hours ago [-]
I tried Starlink on a United flight the other day (short hop from Hilton Head to DC) and it was amazing.
Hansenq 4 hours ago [-]
I've definitely thought about substituting a nonstop flight for a 1-stop flight on UA regional jets just to get Starlink on the entire route. The annoying this is I live by a UA hub and UA doesn't fly regional planes between UA hubs.
So the best I've been able to do is a regional flight to a UA hub near me, and then a non-regional flight back to my home airport. Which is honestly probably not worth it. And it's definitely not worth doing a two-stop trip so I'm really excited for them to roll it out on their mainline jets!
bblcla 3 hours ago [-]
> The annoying this is I live by a UA hub and UA doesn't fly regional planes between UA hubs.
Oh I actually didn't know this! Do you know why?
SR2Z 3 hours ago [-]
Regional planes are for direct routes to smaller airports, but hub-to-hub flights can be filled up and easily justify larger airplanes.
rootusrootus 3 hours ago [-]
Well, hells bells, next week I'm actually going to be flying on an Alaska Airlines E175. That's quite rare for me, I can't remember the last time I've flown on one of their small planes. And it looks like all of their E175s have Starlink. Sweet! I may have to try it out, even if paying for WiFi on a short flight is generally a waste of money.
Edit: ooh, it's free! Because I have their credit card.
bblcla 3 hours ago [-]
> And it looks like all of their E175s have Starlink
Not quite sorry, we only track the frames that do have Starlink. But if you check back a few days beforehand you can see if yours matches!
rootusrootus 2 hours ago [-]
Took me a second to parse that. It says 28 of 28 E175s have Starlink, but what I am hearing you say is that Alaska has more than 28 E175s.
Indeed, wikipedia says their fleet includes 47 E175s. Consider my hopes dashed :(. Oh well, I don't usually bother with wifi on flights that are only a few hours anyway, but free Starlink speed wifi would be fun!
Feature request: Put a disclaimer on the fleet page that the tracking is limited. Or pull enough data to say "28 airframes of 47 are starlink capable" which is what I think most people will be looking to know in the fleet info.
bblcla 1 hours ago [-]
> Feature request: Put a disclaimer on the fleet page that the tracking is limited. Or pull enough data to say "28 airframes of 47 are starlink capable" which is what I think most people will be looking to know in the fleet info.
Oh, this one is very doable and makes sense! We track this internally anyway so it's just a matter of surfacing it on the fleet information.
throwaway132448 2 hours ago [-]
No internet on flights is one of my favourite features.
fdghrtbrt 2 hours ago [-]
Right. I don't know what I find more disturbing: that people are this addicted, or that they don't care. Either way, I'm with you.
osjcisjcjwj 1 hours ago [-]
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andrewcamel 3 hours ago [-]
Big fan. One feature idea/request - a map showing coverage with 0-100% by route (red/yellow/green lines). I’m just curious to see where I should think to look for / expect starlink options. Probing into a few upcoming trips showed basically no coverage.
bblcla 3 hours ago [-]
Oh that's a cool idea! We wanted to do a variant of this, will add it to the list. The tricky part for us is getting a canonical list of all flights + body types on it.
andrewcamel 14 minutes ago [-]
I’d imagine you could seed it more easily by focusing on top 50 routes by passenger count in domestic USA. Then go from flight schedules for top airlines into tail numbers into body types etc.
gadders 3 hours ago [-]
I wish my bloody commuter train into London had Starlink. Even when the onboard wifi works you are limited to 100mb of traffic.
I get a better 5g signal on the Jubilee line than I do on an overground train.
This is awesome! In the past I would use the promise of starlink or other LEO internet as a tiebreaker for booking flights and was disappointed a few times (as clearly not all of the airframes for an airline have the capability)
neilsharma425 3 hours ago [-]
Neat problem to work on. The tail number lookup is the hard part and it sounds like you solved it the right way, by finding the people who actually track this obsessively rather than trying to scrape it yourself.
Two questions: how stale does the tail assignment data get in practice, and do you have a way to detect when an enthusiast spreadsheet goes unmaintained? And what happens to your probability estimate when an airline swaps aircraft last minute, which seems to happen pretty often on regional routes?
bblcla 3 hours ago [-]
Great questions!
> how stale does the tail assignment data get in practice, and do you have a way to detect when an enthusiast spreadsheet goes unmaintained?
These are updated almost every day so far, so they seem very up-to-date. Internally we track all changes/removals, so I'm not that worried about spreadsheets being abandoned yet. It's a good thought though.
> And what happens to your probability estimate when an airline swaps aircraft last minute, which seems to happen pretty often on regional routes?
Honestly our estimate right now is pretty crude. At the scale we're at right now it works, but I think you're right that we could make this more accurate by tracking equipment swaps & really drilling into the details of which aircraft get assigned to which routes.
dvno42 3 hours ago [-]
United has this on some flights. It's no cost but they force you watch ads in the captive portal. I'd rather pay the $8 and be left in peace, every time.
theultdev 3 hours ago [-]
Just an ad one time when you login? That seems fine.
I've never paid for hotel wifi and never will, but I don't mind an ad on the captive portal.
HPsquared 3 hours ago [-]
Looking forward to Starlink on UK trains. I frequently have to go basically without internet for a couple of hours.
tombot 3 hours ago [-]
Here’s a hack, get yourself a cheap eSIM data only plan from an alternative UK network (VOXI, Talkmobile etc) if you main network doesn’t have connectivity; they will!
Doohickey-d 1 hours ago [-]
There's even eSIMs specifically marketed as being a "backup" esim, with coverage on _all_ UK networks.
At least on my android, you could set the second esim as a "backup" that it would switch to for data if the main one lost connection (it took a few seconds, so it wasn't an "always connected" experience, probably because the phone wants to save power)
Lots of options if you search for "esim UK all networks".
caycep 4 hours ago [-]
looking back at the history of starlink, when was it decided to pursue this project at SpaceX? Was it always the natural evolution, i.e. cheap launches = more communications sats? Or was there a specific communications engineer/person that brought it up to Elon or Gwynne?
You can clearly see the tech had an older history at SpaceX pre acquisition
2004
I believe they also signed up a teledesic exec Larry Williams around the same time
bblcla 3 hours ago [-]
I'm not actually sure myself, but I was really surprised to learn how profitable it is. SpaceX made $15b of revenue last year and $8b of profit. Starlink was 60-80% of that!
It turns out the demand for really good internet everywhere is huge.
adrithmetiqa 4 hours ago [-]
Does anyone else appreciate the final space where we can be disconnected. I do, for one
rendang 17 minutes ago [-]
Consider paying a visit to one of these if you want to immerse yourself in the world of ideas and disengage from screens:
My ~4 weeks were some of the most memorable of my life
umanwizard 3 hours ago [-]
You can be disconnected wherever you want, with a bit of self control.
halapro 3 hours ago [-]
Always a catch.
throwaway132448 2 hours ago [-]
This misses the point. What’s nice is not that it’s just me, but that it’s everyone.
lxgr 34 minutes ago [-]
Host a “phones off” party, go to a sauna, go for a hike with friends with self control etc., but please don’t hold me hostage (connectivity wise) in a cramped metal tube for your sense of nostalgia.
Planes are just about the least pleasant space to experience involuntary offline-ness. (That said, people scrolling reels with the speaker on (or the display at brightness levels making me consider sunscreen) should immediately go on the no-fly list.)
throwaway132448 22 minutes ago [-]
Nobody is holding you hostage. Sounds like you need the timeout more than anyone.
And the assumption that this view was drawn from nostalgia is completely invalid.
aeblyve 3 hours ago [-]
Not really, personally... time waits for no one.
throwaway132448 2 hours ago [-]
And now you’ll have one less opportunity not to waste your finite time on the internet.
SilentEditor 3 hours ago [-]
This is incredibly interesting, will follow.
oscilloscopin40 49 minutes ago [-]
good read. thanks for sharing
ellyagg 4 hours ago [-]
Thank you for your service. Hopefully something like this can put pressure on airlines to understand how hostile their internet services are and that it matters.
Last year I flew roundtrip to the Philippines on Philippines Airlines. Each way they claimed they had internet and each time, they sent an email reneging the day before the flight.
The same thing happened when my sister-in-law flew with them a couple months earlier.
These are long flights during which I expected to be able to work. Just so infuriating.
bblcla 3 hours ago [-]
That's frustrating. It's possible their link was down for some reason - airline maintenance issues happen all the time. :(
jamesvzb 31 minutes ago [-]
this matches my experience exactly
munk-a 2 hours ago [-]
I had access to it on a long-haul AirFrance flight. While I avoid doom-scrolling in my daily life because there's better stuff to do... on a long haul flight it's a surprisingly good way to pass time intermittently. I still just watched pre-downloaded dropout for 80% of the flight but when I was too tired to appreciate it I'd turn my brain off and watch a bit of that wonderful doom-scroll slop.
The fact that it's powered by starlink is disappointing due purely to Elon Musk's involvement - but this is one of the better use cases for satellite internet technology. I'm not going to go out of my way to book with airlines that use the service though.
chronic20001 22 minutes ago [-]
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claguo 3 hours ago [-]
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elonisaass 3 hours ago [-]
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carodgers 3 hours ago [-]
Lots of examples of anti-Elon pols giving nazi salutes and no one cares. People are done pretending that your concerns are genuine. Move on.
elonisaass 3 hours ago [-]
My personal comment is part of my view.
Just because you do not care about democracy doesn't give you the right to tell me to move on.
Care to tell me why you, probably making good money, care so little about it?
weirdmantis69 2 hours ago [-]
Because your concern is not real. It wasn't a nazi salute period. You are seeing things. Get your eyes checked.
gambiting 1 hours ago [-]
>> People are done pretending that your concerns are genuine
I am absolutely not, and I refuse to spend any money on anything even remotely connected to Elon thanks to his actions. His nazi salutes go far beyond anything even vaguely acceptable in a public figure like him, as someone who lost family in the holocaust I don't find this "funny" or "a mistake" as some people put it. The other day someone was trying to convince me that it was some kind of heartfelt "from the heart" gesture - I've never seen someone so delusional.
Feel free to stick fingers in your ears and cover your eyes and pretend that people don't care about this or that this wasn't a nazi salute - but Musk is exactly who he is, nothing more nothing less.
drcongo 3 hours ago [-]
The fact that you're getting downvoted is a great example of why America is in the state it's in. Personally this tool looks like a useful way of booking a flight without financially funding the rise of fascism.
weirdmantis69 2 hours ago [-]
Mamdani did exactly the same thing I think we should worry more about the mayor doing it than a private citizen.
gambiting 1 hours ago [-]
Who is Mamdani? You've got mayors somewhere doing nazi salutes? Where is that?
osjcisjcjwj 1 hours ago [-]
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kleiba 2 hours ago [-]
Even when flying intercontinental for many hours, I usually just pull a Puddy on flights and do nothing. I have my laptop with me, of course, but I usually leave it just in the overhead compartment.
Scott said: "It took time to negotiate, because we wanted to own the consumer data, and at the beginning, Starlink did, so that was hard, and then, the other thing was I wanted to let my big competitors in the United States finish their deals with other providers and get locked in so that we would — eventually, everyone’s going to have Starlink."
Brilliant. Just brilliant. Ensured that UA would be first (of the 3 major US carriers) to Starlink and that everyone else had to wait until their existing agreements multi-year expired before switching. UA's best CEO in decades!
https://stratechery.com/2026/an-interview-with-united-ceo-sc...
One word: marketing.
Do you have any idea how much other satellite operators charge per megabyte or Mbit/s?
pretty obvious you never worked for an ISP and forgot about all the `middle of nowhere` customers who have no high speed internet.
even for me, in houston texas, we cant get fiber to the home and were stuck with AT&T DSL which was like $60 per month and ungodly slow. Also my GF and I both work from home and she does massive file uploads.
had xfinity not been available starlink would be an easy choice. ive tried 5g hotspots and they are not super reliable.
There are other, far worse forms of satellite Internet, so everybody has a readily available alternative. That makes it not a qualifying statement at all.
Funny how quickly my internet options went from expensive cable internet, to 1 gig symmetric fiber for $90, to 10 gig symmetric fiber for $50. And now, magically, Xfinity has 1Gbps+ service for $50 as well.
Another one I know first hand: food trucks. I do several events a year where cell signals get overwhelmed and cease to function, but I still have to process my credit cards. I’d say a solid 25% of food trucks are running these now.
I've been somewhat skeptical of the addressable market (doesn't fiber + cell tower network offer good enough coverage?) but I know so many people who have put it on their RV, their boat, or are using it rurally that I've started changing my mind. And the service really is better than cell phone networks, which are far too patchy to provide reliable service at decent speed.
And you can put it on standby mode for $5/mo, so you're not even really locked into $50/mo if you're occasionally doing travel where you want to stay connected.
And in places like Africa, they've had to tightly rate limit new customers because demand is so high.
I was paying more to have SIM cards for all of the big three, and getting much less out of it
Or see T-Mobile away
Regardless, having free high speed internet on a flight will motivate me as a consumer every time.
About the same work as filling out a hotel wifi login.
But you need to give personal information which also has value.
At most they could see domains, ip addresses, timestamps, and http-only sites (are there any left?)
But the person sitting next to you can see everything.
There are many ways to circumvent that, even while claiming to offer it for free.
There's even two tiers of aviation speed limting: 300MPH ($250/mo) and 450MPH ($1000/mo). They know who they're targeting at both speed points (the guy flying for fun in a prop VS the guy in a Gulfstream that wants to Get There Now).
https://starlink.com/support/article/9839230e-dc08-21e6-a94d...
I've got status with them and have started booking with other airlines b/c it doesn't matter how nice the seats are if you can't get any work done. Most airline revenue comes from business flights, I don't think they realize how important this is to their customer base.
The article is online.
The airlines have no problem with this. T-mobile has no problem with it either.
IF carriers were allowed to charge, they would piecemeal or handicap the service, and passengers would leave with a bad impression.
So the best I've been able to do is a regional flight to a UA hub near me, and then a non-regional flight back to my home airport. Which is honestly probably not worth it. And it's definitely not worth doing a two-stop trip so I'm really excited for them to roll it out on their mainline jets!
Oh I actually didn't know this! Do you know why?
Edit: ooh, it's free! Because I have their credit card.
Not quite sorry, we only track the frames that do have Starlink. But if you check back a few days beforehand you can see if yours matches!
Indeed, wikipedia says their fleet includes 47 E175s. Consider my hopes dashed :(. Oh well, I don't usually bother with wifi on flights that are only a few hours anyway, but free Starlink speed wifi would be fun!
Feature request: Put a disclaimer on the fleet page that the tracking is limited. Or pull enough data to say "28 airframes of 47 are starlink capable" which is what I think most people will be looking to know in the fleet info.
Oh, this one is very doable and makes sense! We track this internally anyway so it's just a matter of surfacing it on the fleet information.
I get a better 5g signal on the Jubilee line than I do on an overground train.
Two questions: how stale does the tail assignment data get in practice, and do you have a way to detect when an enthusiast spreadsheet goes unmaintained? And what happens to your probability estimate when an airline swaps aircraft last minute, which seems to happen pretty often on regional routes?
> how stale does the tail assignment data get in practice, and do you have a way to detect when an enthusiast spreadsheet goes unmaintained?
These are updated almost every day so far, so they seem very up-to-date. Internally we track all changes/removals, so I'm not that worried about spreadsheets being abandoned yet. It's a good thought though.
> And what happens to your probability estimate when an airline swaps aircraft last minute, which seems to happen pretty often on regional routes?
Honestly our estimate right now is pretty crude. At the scale we're at right now it works, but I think you're right that we could make this more accurate by tracking equipment swaps & really drilling into the details of which aircraft get assigned to which routes.
I've never paid for hotel wifi and never will, but I don't mind an ad on the captive portal.
At least on my android, you could set the second esim as a "backup" that it would switch to for data if the main one lost connection (it took a few seconds, so it wasn't an "always connected" experience, probably because the phone wants to save power)
Lots of options if you search for "esim UK all networks".
https://x.com/greg_wyler/status/1116101020675977218
You can clearly see the tech had an older history at SpaceX pre acquisition
2004
I believe they also signed up a teledesic exec Larry Williams around the same time
It turns out the demand for really good internet everywhere is huge.
https://labri.org/
My ~4 weeks were some of the most memorable of my life
Planes are just about the least pleasant space to experience involuntary offline-ness. (That said, people scrolling reels with the speaker on (or the display at brightness levels making me consider sunscreen) should immediately go on the no-fly list.)
And the assumption that this view was drawn from nostalgia is completely invalid.
Last year I flew roundtrip to the Philippines on Philippines Airlines. Each way they claimed they had internet and each time, they sent an email reneging the day before the flight.
The same thing happened when my sister-in-law flew with them a couple months earlier.
These are long flights during which I expected to be able to work. Just so infuriating.
The fact that it's powered by starlink is disappointing due purely to Elon Musk's involvement - but this is one of the better use cases for satellite internet technology. I'm not going to go out of my way to book with airlines that use the service though.
Just because you do not care about democracy doesn't give you the right to tell me to move on.
Care to tell me why you, probably making good money, care so little about it?
I am absolutely not, and I refuse to spend any money on anything even remotely connected to Elon thanks to his actions. His nazi salutes go far beyond anything even vaguely acceptable in a public figure like him, as someone who lost family in the holocaust I don't find this "funny" or "a mistake" as some people put it. The other day someone was trying to convince me that it was some kind of heartfelt "from the heart" gesture - I've never seen someone so delusional.
Feel free to stick fingers in your ears and cover your eyes and pretend that people don't care about this or that this wasn't a nazi salute - but Musk is exactly who he is, nothing more nothing less.
I don't even watch movies or read.