Elon Musk does not particularly impress me, nor do any of his enterprises. He just happens to be the only one forging ahead, because all the old money has been and continues to be so concerned with preserving the status quo. heh. That's at least, a bit of luck of circumstance.
His constellation of satellites, I've heard, is obstructing the work of astronomers, as well; and to add to that, on receiving that complaint, he argues, there is plenty of room for even more profit driven space junk to be floating up there (basically a middle finger to star gazers, amateur or professional). Also, he has been talking about building underground vacuum tubes in California (which lies on a major fault line and is earthquake prone (no thnx)). And I wasn't very impressed by his dick waving move of blasting a tesla car into space on a rocket, or his flame thrower, etc.. etc..
That all being said, low-latency satellite internet is an appealing prospect, and perhaps, stands a chance of giving near broadband or broadband type speeds to a lot of different people. If you can do that, while cooperating with the global endeavor to understand the cosmos by not obstructing telescope imagery, and, also, not make so expensive only the wealthy or moderately wealthy can afford to use it, then, kewl.
So, yeah, I mean, as it stands, satellite internet has already been around for years, it's just not very quick and the bandwidth is pretty weak; but, if I had the money to afford Elon's Internet service, I'd just use it for traditional satellite internet, for when I'm camping, if I did that frequently enough to need it, and then stick with the wires at home.
As for the fiber, thing, in my opinion anyway, for whatever it is or isn't worth, shouldn't be scoffed at as a viable solution. Here is why: for one, fiber rollout isn't really expensive or difficult, it's just the regional ISPs have monopolies and control everything. Secondly, you don't need to literally lay the fiber right down and into the house, you can lay a single fiber, and use wireless technology to reach multiple end points. So, there are many, many ways, the cut the cake; but, the big money status quo keepers, as mention before, are what is preventing this. Elon just happens to have his fingers in a lot of pies, and one of them is re-usable rockets (I will admit that's a genius idea brought to fruition and i'll credit him on that at least.) And when you have your own rocket company, you can kind of get around the regional monopolies a littler easier than the millions you'd need to bribe the politicians to get your fiber rolled out.
There are some instances of rural type communities creating their own ISPs, which is pretty neat; but, that's hard to get done in America unless you have the politician bribe money ready, or if not that, an indifferent or non-hostile political regime in your local municipal governing bodies, etc.. etc..
