Comment on Starlink loses out on $886 million in rural broadband subsidies
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 11 months agoI don’t think you quite understand just how remote some people are. Besides, Starlink is also being used on vessels and aircraft, good luck getting copper out to them.
Also, fibre optic is how the cool people Internet these days.
echo64@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I don’t think you understand that a lot of copper is still less than infinite rockets forever
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 11 months ago
This is the kind of dumb statement that really gives this platform a bad name. I know people who were quoted a six figure sum to get mains power to their property, fibre would have been a similar cost. And this is people who are at a fixed location, we also have those who are mobile to consider.
There are people for whom a wired connection to anything is out of the question.
echo64@lemmy.world 11 months ago
If only someone like a government would subsidise the installation just like the subsidised starlink because that also isn’t profitable. But a lot of money today is cheaper than an infinite amount of money from launching infinite rockets forever.
How do you think everything got built thus far?
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 11 months ago
First, I’m not in America.
Second, I don’t think you comprehend just how remote some people are. I live in New Zealand, where over 90% of the country has fibre broadband thanks to a government initiative to get everyone connected, and we still have a large number of people using Starlink or other systems to get online, because it is simply not cost effective to wire them in.
Reality does not align with your smug one-liners.
Lmaydev@programming.dev 11 months ago
Still doesn’t help ahips
echo64@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Ships don’t need infinite rockets full of infinite cell towers launched forever.
Maybe when we have fusion power and don’t have to waste the resources. We don’t. We have to choose what we want to use. I say that launching infinite rockets with infinite cell towers forever is not worth being able to watch tiktok in the middle of the Atlantic.
There’s always actual satellite internet for the needed communications.
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 11 months ago
They need 12,000 of them, which isn’t a huge amount considering you’re covering the entire globe.
alsimoneau@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
The issue with starlink is the choice to be in LEO instead of using geosats. It lowers the latency but it makes the whole project completely unsustainable.
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I suspect they’ll eventually move to a slightly higher orbit, where their satellites can last a decade or so, once the technology is more mature.
mosiacmango@lemm.ee 11 months ago
A lot of glass is much better than a lot of copper.