I have a Verizon 4G flip phone. Works great. It's strictly for PagePlus use, in emergencies. Small, microUSB charging, works just fine.

This behavior by Verizon isn't unusual at all. AT&T did this for its customers. A buddy of mine, old dude who doesn't care about technology, was happily using an old iPhone. Out of the blue AT&T sent him an iPhone 8, free of charge, just so he could continue to use their service after they shut down 3G voice.

(Do you think they did anything like that on their Cricket side? No sir. They didn't even tell anyone it was happening. Suddenly, day before Christmas a couple of years ago, I had two Samsung phones that suddenly wouldn't do voice at all. No one at Cricket knew what was going on. I bought a couple new phones. A few months later it all comes out--AT&T/Cricket has whitelisted phones they'll allow, and that's it. Aha. Funny that Samsung Galaxy S9 was on the whitelist, but my wife's AT&T branded S9+ was not on Cricket's list...)

This is what it's all about. Rural areas are ignored by wireline ISP's. Yep, they have to make money. They would, but it would take LONGER to recoup the money spent to deploy services to the most remote places. IMO, deploying sat coverage and wireless to the outer limits of the city would be cheaper and faster than laying miles and miles of non-wireless methods.

I have to admit, when it comes to Emergency Response in the communications department, AT&T is the top dog. .

The market for Starlink Maritime will be commercial vessels as soon as they can provide greater coverage. I can see pretty much every major shipper providing this their boats for their crew and the pricing makes sense in that regard. It will cost less than what they charge for a single container on a lot of routes.

The other major market for this is cruise lines who will resell the service to their passengers. In some cases the coverage may even be ready for this. Oil rigs are another big market. Ultimately it is only 'yacht-focused' right now because of the limited coverage.

I think Starlink has as much potential in the mobile market as they do in the fixed rural access market. Perhaps more.