In May 2023 the U.S. FCC sided with Starlink over proposed uses of the 12.2–12.7 GHz band, preserving it for satellite services and preventing two-way 5G interference. In August 2022 the FCC denied Starlink’s $885 million Rural Digital Opportunity Fund subsidy due to performance concerns and high equipment costs, including a roughly $600 dish. By…
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Starlink uses a direct-to-consumer model with a Starlink kit (dish antenna + WiFi router) and monthly service, priced around $100–$120 per month, with the kit originally costing about $599 (some markets as low as $350). Speeds reach roughly 50–200 Mbps down and 10–20 Mbps up, with latency around 20–40 ms, far lower than geostationary satellites.…
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As of early 2025 Nicaragua had 8.71 million mobile connections, about 125% of the population, with more than 95% of lines capable of 3G/4G broadband. In January 2025, 4.47 million Nicaraguans used the internet, equal to 64.1% of the population. There were about 371,000 fixed broadband subscriptions in 2023, 5.43 per 100 people, with most…
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Kwangmyong is North Korea’s nationwide domestic intranet that is completely isolated from the World Wide Web and hosts roughly 1,000–5,500 internal websites. Global Internet access is restricted to a tiny elite; only a few dozen websites are reachable from abroad, with a 2016 leak noting 28 .kp domains and North Korea having about 1,024 Internet…
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By the end of 2023, about 1.09 billion Chinese residents were online (roughly 77.5% of the population), with over 99% of users accessing the net via mobile phones. China’s three major Internet Service Providers are China Telecom (state-owned, dominant in southern China), China Unicom (state-owned, dominant in northern regions), and China Mobile (the largest mobile…
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