Here is something to think about. A non sequitur to be sure. A whale sinks a sailboat (Raindancer) in March. It is highly reported in major media how StarLink made finding and coordinating rescue possible. Other reports float in of similar cases.
By the end of April StarLink has made using StarLink at sea nearly impossible changing their entire service model. StarLink made using ocean data impossible to save for when you are like on the ocean.
Interesting?
StarLink isn’t SOLAS rated but Raindancer was on Iridium. StarLink was used by vessels to coordinate the rescue not as SOLAS system. StarLink is a capability many sailors/cruisers will likely opt out of just as it was becoming ubiquitous. And, yes these users are out there. But the totality of ocean data users prior to change was likely significantly less than one polygon cell that still has availability.
In general StarLink managed to take a good thing they could take credit for supporting society and sailors and made it worse. The pricing and use models are staggeringly poorly thought out.
The communication models of StarLink are relatively new. Cruisers will just go back to how they did communications before StarLink. All the caveats to the TOS apply but those are guidelines not laws. StarLink chooses their pricing and QOS.
The real winners here are Viasat, Irifidium Next, and StarLink will likely be crushed by Kuiper.
Project Kuiper Terminals https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/heres-your-first-look-at-project-kuipers-low-cost-customer-terminals