The example isn't contrived.

Before Starlink was official in Nigeria you had to import and pay $150 a month. By the time it was official there were already thousands because people are already paying more for FWA.

And most of those unofficial terminals were in the big cities by upper middle class folks and not rural areas. As at the end of June 2026, Starlink had just about 90k subscribers in a country of over 200 million people after over 40 months of official operation.

For those users it makes a big difference.

I can see my MTN (and Airtel) tower but both of them are connected via microwave and go down together.

If there were more users we'd be talking about neocolonialism and capital flight.

Eventually is ways away (and will likely be in Ado-Ekiti, the capital).

When I lived in Rural Ekiti (I still live in a rural area), I could only get 2G while 3G was deployed.