Why does coverage matter... when you know perfectly well if you have decent 5G coverage at the location of your fibre router?

Sounds way too high to me, I am paying €8.80/month for unlimited 5G, calls and texting

I think it’s uncontroversial that cheap, unlimited 5G exists in some places.

Some places = Most of the developed world

I pay $25 for my backup 5G internet - but unlike a mobile plan, it's actually unlimited at 300mbps, and I don't have to resort to TTL shenanigans and such to use it for my whole network. It's just plugged into one of the ports on my router, and provides it with real public IPv4. Ran it for a few days when the fiber dropped out and consumed 200GB without complaint from either myself or the ISP.

UK is a bit more expensive than that but not silly.

I can get close to £10/mo but that's because I'm already paying that carrier ~£30/mo for two separate SIMs (mine and my kid's).

The £9/mo deal offered below is just half price for 6 months, it then becomes £18/mo.

https://5g.co.uk/unlimited-data-sim/

The bottom of the page does give some details about what "unlimited data" means here in the UK between the different carriers. Some cap speeds, some monitor usage and then either turf you off on "fair use" grounds or do traffic management/shaping. The general rule seems to be 650GB in 6 months is just about the limit of what is ok.

That wouldn't be anywhere near enough for me. Looking at my router I see I've downloaded 522GB in the last 34 days alone.

Do you expect your main broadband connection to be out for a month? An hour is unusual enough.

This was in the context of replacing broadband with a 5G dongle.

Where on earth are you living with that kind of price point? Unreal.

Italy, France and Spain have 200GB+ plans for 10€. Romania reportedly has unlimited for 4€ but I don't know which operator.

US plans just aren't comparable as they've been historically f'd with astronomical monthly payments.

> Romania reportedly has unlimited for 4€ but I don't know which operator.

Orange Yoxo is the only one which has actually-unlimited, all the others have a fine-print somewhere with "up to X GB/month, then bandwidth is severely throttled".

I'm using the 4.9€ plan for a mountain webcam[1] and they have been true to their word, no throttling so far.

[1] https://ignis.maramures.io/

I mean it's more to do with the cool factor of using a satellite, not practical concerns. Practically a mobile failover is superior if you have coverage.

See the power outage in Iberia as a counterpoint.

Also when there's a fiber cut, it usually takes out everyone since there are frequently shared conduits or poles.

Everyone reverting to mobile usually takes everyone out.

Wouldn't a widespread ground-based infrastructure outage also take out (or at least severely degrade) Starlink in the affected region if people were to widely use it as a backup solution?

Starlink has been known to carry traffic over lasers from Southern Africa to Europe and from New Zealand to Eastern USA. During the power outage in Spain/Portugal they proactively moved traffic to the UK

Local failures don't matter unless your country doesn't allow landing user traffic in other countries (Indonesia, Bangladesh)