[davidlumley]

> Get specific about the concern, otherwise it's easy to get afraid about everything.

There are many reasons to be afraid about a private corporation from a country with little regulation providing a utility to areas with no other choice.

If Amazon was sponsoring this, that's one thing, but them owning the network raises red flags for me surrounding: 1) Privacy 2) The potential for anti competitive practices 3) Quality of service / expected lifetime of service

I simply don't trust Amazon (or any other large private company) to do anything else than look out for their bottom line when push comes to shove.

> Govt's hardly own telecom infra, it's all in private hands

I'm old enough to remember when Australia did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstra#Privatisation

Since Telstra was privatised, any impetus to upgrade Australia's struggling networks has gone out the window and when they do end up upgrading capacity, it is usually as part of a Government project. All in all, tax payers still foot the bill to improve utilities while a private company furthers their monopoly.

[jimmaswell]

Privacy: NSA already exists

Competitive practices: there are laws for that, and it's going to be competing with Elon's

Quality of service: if it stinks then people won't subscribe to it, and it's going to be competing with Elon's

[noir_lord]

Same thing happened in the UK with BT.

Usual privatise the profits, socialise the costs.

[rayiner]

This is false. When BT was privatized, the UK government sold the shares and collected the proceeds. That’s not “socializing the costs” any more than in any other divestiture transaction.

Additionally, these companies went from requiring huge operating subsidies to becoming net contributors to the exchequer through paying taxes: https://www.cps.org.uk/research/the-performance-of-privatisa....

> When the Conservatives came to power in 1979, the major nationalised companies were receiving large sums of taxpayers’ money. NERA’s report reveals that in the year to March 1980, the 33 companies it examined were contributing nothing to the exchequer: in fact they absorbed a total of £483 million between them, including £1,199 million in loan finance. British Steel was one of the worst companies requiring £1,020 million in the financial year 1980/81 on a turnover of just under £3 billion (thereby earning itself a place in the Guinness Book of Records).

> This dismal state of affairs has been reversed. In 1987, the 33 companies examined by NERA contributed £8,374 million to the exchequer. Net contributions have continued at a high level in each of the last eight years.