You can’t really expect a private company to keep providing $100 million or $400 million service free of charge.
But it’s brilliant strategy by Musk. Provide free service to a war zone, proving how invaluble your service is, and then say you have to start charging.
The Pentagon and NATO will have to decide if Starlink is the best and most cost effective method going forward. And what the costs of changing horses mid stream will be. And they’ll either pay Elon or provide an alternative.
They will probably negotiate the rates down.
There is a rumor that Russians have figured out how to jam starlink.
Exactly. He got a valuable service in place early, demonstrating its value, and as US Congress sent mountains of cash - and the recipients became belligerent - got the system in place such that free service could end.
“FU” is not a nice way to treat someone giving you tens of millions of dollars of lifesaving infrastructure for free. Good timing - value proven, pay up.