(my comments from elsewhere on this)
Honestly, I have no problem with them having carriers for groups only. It just make logical sense.
BUT
They should really have something else to make up for it as well for the solo player. An asteroid base for example (of the kind often mentioned in the forums, basically a personalised garage). That's something that's been whispered about as a possibility for ages now, and this would work perfectly here.
Basically most people who want a carrier want a "base" - well, it's only fair that a true carrier intended to carry a squadron of ships be incredibly expensive and hard to maintain, and one person owning one makes about as much sense as one person owning an aircraft carrier today. That said, a person CAN own their own airplane and their own airfield or hanger on an airfield.
Asteroid bases are often referred to for a number of reasons (it dates back to the Rock Hermits referred to in the old 84 edition), but it also makes sense. An asteroid base would be affordable to a single player, could be used to store their ships and modules, could be customizable as well (since they talk about carriers being upgradable).
Game wise, it would make sense to have it an asteroid instead of on a planet due to instancing issues and potential griefing - if you've got a base in an asteroid belt and only you can see the signal beacon, there's no way someone can randomly find it, so you don't even have to have it "exist" other than in your game. But if it's on a planet anyone with the right coordinates should be able to find you and would complain because either a) your base isn't there unless you are or b) people will inevitably find ways to grief people's bases. So asteroids are best.
Now personally I think this is the perfect compromise between single player and group content. A solo player is only essentially being denied the ability to jump from system to system. But chances are they only want this as a garage anyway. Their carrier ship is for going from system to system after all, and providing support to large numbers of players.