It's worth it.

If you're in the middle of the Pacific often.

Starlink makes sense for the scenario it was designed fill the gap for. A lack of any other terrestrial options.

Legacy satellite has always been terrible, but the only option in many rural areas, and obviously the middle of nowhere. Starlink is an insanely reliable and decent deal in most of those circumstances. That's it's bread and butter.

But if you have literally any other option, it's usually not the best choice, it's not meant to be the best choice, it's intended for use where it's likely the only choice.

Yeah there are always exceptions of course. I’ve seen some in that position able to get away with direct line-of-sight connections for a reasonable rate, but it depends heavily on the layout of the surrounding mountains and location of the service provider plus you have to shell out for an antennae or dish. For any wondering, that’s almost always cheaper than the Starlink sign up costs.

Then again, if internet is important to someone, gotta consider if mountain-side living is the right choice to begin with. I’m sure your acquaintance has his reasons though!

But for those large parts of the world, 240 USD per month is even more ridiculous

I cant speak for other countries, but in the US, we are spending hundreds of dollars a month per household in these areas to the richest man in the world for shitty internet service instead of EITHER holding ISPs to the contracts they agreed to when municipalities gave then the right to build without competition from public services for which they were meant to supply high speed wired services to everyone, OR throw those contracts away and build reliable and profitable public services anyway and fuck the useless ISPs over. Instead we are just inviting in another ISP to fill the gap, this one also a racist fascist who is littering space with unregulated junk.