I think you are missing/ignoring most of the history of starlink. You can look at my post history to read more if you'd like. Virtually everything starlink had promised from the start has turned out to either be lies or missed the mark significantly. This isn't just me speculating, the Ookla data shows that both their latency is significantly higher than Musk said, and it's also slower now that they've added more customers. This also has nothing to do with the lack of ISL; the latencies are higher in areas that wouldn't even benefit from ISL. It's purely due to network congestion, which again, is something everyone involved in this industry knew would happen.
Starlink is still not profitable. Musk and Shotwell have hinted at this or directly said it. It requires an immense amount of money to fund the engineering, support, and launches to keep even the current number of subscribers they have.
While Starlink is "successful" by your definition, you have both Oneweb and TeleSat's lightspeed both being relative failures. This isn't because they were worse systems. In fact, Telesat's was supposed to have the best bandwidth economics. But it failed largely because it didn't get the funding SX gets due to Musk, and they realized the economics of a LEO constellation are nearly impossible to sustain.
What you're seeing right now is an ISP that's akin to Uber or Lyft. Are they profitable? No, but they're around and they're big names. Your rides are subsidized from VC money hoping one or the other will lose and the other can raise prices.
Starlink is raising prices because they have to. Not because "they can". They are decreasing prices in unfilled areas just to use the capacity that is otherwise completely stranded. Once those areas fill, wash, rinse, repeat.
Starlink is still not profitable. Musk and Shotwell have hinted at this or directly said it. It requires an immense amount of money to fund the engineering, support, and launches to keep even the current number of subscribers they have.
While Starlink is "successful" by your definition, you have both Oneweb and TeleSat's lightspeed both being relative failures. This isn't because they were worse systems. In fact, Telesat's was supposed to have the best bandwidth economics. But it failed largely because it didn't get the funding SX gets due to Musk, and they realized the economics of a LEO constellation are nearly impossible to sustain.
What you're seeing right now is an ISP that's akin to Uber or Lyft. Are they profitable? No, but they're around and they're big names. Your rides are subsidized from VC money hoping one or the other will lose and the other can raise prices.
Starlink is raising prices because they have to. Not because "they can". They are decreasing prices in unfilled areas just to use the capacity that is otherwise completely stranded. Once those areas fill, wash, rinse, repeat.