Comment on How does streaming compare to "analog"?
Shadow@lemmy.ca 18 hours agoI would counter that it takes significantly more power to provide someone with internet compared to a broadcast antenna.
Google tells me a low power tv antenna broadcasts at around 2.3kw. I’ve deployed datacenters full of racks where each rack pulls more than that. Once you take into account all the networking gear around the world, the internet easily requires more resources. Routers, switches and servers can be pretty power hungry.
Limonene@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Yeah, true, but that’s mostly fixed costs, and has a pretty low incremental cost for each video delivered. The fixed costs we have to pay regardless.
wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
But that’s even more true for broadcast. One 2.3kW transmitter works just as well for one receiver as it does for 10M. Hell even 100M, depending on geography, population density, and frequency band. That’s not true of network infrastructure.